CSCA members may find Regent College’s Laing Lectures to be of particular interest this year:

Psychiatrist, writer, and speaker Iain McGilchrist offers three lectures on “God, the Brain, and Paradox.”

Iain McGilchrist came to medicine from a background in the humanities, writing about issues in literature and philosophy. He trained in medicine because of an interest in the mind-body problem and practised in psychiatry and researched in neuropsychology, including neuroimaging. He seeks to understand the mind and the brain by seeing them in the broadest possible context—that of the whole of our physical and spiritual existence, and of the wider human culture in which they arise. His most recent book, The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World, explores the nature of the brain’s two hemispheres, their relationship to one another, and their link to the creation of our consciousness and our culture. He is working on books about creativity and mental illness and the current plight of the humanities, and is one day hoping to complete a short book of reflections on spiritual experience. (Source)

 

LAING LECTURE 1: “WHERE SHALL I GO FOR TRUTH?”

Wednesday, Mar 9, 2016 at 7:30pm – 9:30 pm

Why are we inclined to attribute greater truth to some aspects of experience? Are we right to do so? Should we abandon the hope of truth altogether? (Source)

LAING LECTURE 2: “WHAT BRAINS CAN AND CAN’T TEACH US ABOUT GOD”

Thursday, Mar 10, 2016 at 11:30am – 1:30 pm

What kind of understanding can brain science importantly yield, and what kind can it, just as importantly, not yield? (Source)

LAING LECTURE 3: “THE POWER OF NO”

Thursday, Mar 10, 2016 at 7:30pm – 9:30 pm

We mistake the nature of the world by imagining it to present a series of problems that require solving by knowledge and action, but this misconception compounds the “problems” and paradoxically blinds us to the creative power that is in our hands. (Source)