Prof. Kelly Clark gave a speech at “God and The Brain” conference, which was organized by the Department of Philosophy. The conference was held in March 7, 2019 at Mesnevi Hall of our Basaksehir campus.
The keynote speaker of the conference, Prof. Kelly James Clark, is a Senior Research Fellow at the Kaufman Interfaith Institute at Grand Valley State University in USA. Our President Prof. Recep Senturk, our General Secretary Erkem Tuzgen, faculty members and students from different departments of our university attended the conference, during which Prof. Clark talked about what he wrote in his last book, “God and The Brain” that will be published soon. During his speech, Clark brought together science and philosophy to examine some of humanity’s more pressing questions about the nature of belief and the human mind such as: Is belief in God a delusion? Are atheists smarter or more rational than religious believers? Do our genes determine who we are and what we believe?
Can our very creaturely cognitive equipment help us discover truth and meaning in life? Clark’s surprising answers through the speech were both defending the rationality of religious belief and contributing to the study of cognitive science. Talking about how the subject “God and The Brain” came out, Prof. Clark said: “There is a strong relationship between philosophy and social sciences. When we learned Philosophy we didn’t pay much attention to the social sciences, we talked about knowledge totally independent from how our minds actually worked.” Prof. Clark expressed that the philosophy for the past 2500 years centered around knowledge and speculating about definitions such as what is the truth and added, “I have got increasingly interested in how our minds actually work, what really goes in our minds, how we take in information, how do we process information, how do we have experiences and then outcome belief?” The conference ended by questions asked by the audiences and taking souvenir photographs after presenting a gift to our guest by our President Prof. Recep Senturk.
Kelly James Clark (born March 3, 1956) is an American philosopher noted for his work in the philosophy of religion, science and religion, and the cognitive science of religion. Prof. Kelly, who received his Ph.D. from Notre Dame University in 1985, wrote his dissertation on “Probabilistic Confirmation Theory and the Existence of God” under the advisory of Prof. Alvin Plantinga. Kelly James Clark has held postdoctoral fellowships at Oxford University, the University of St. Andrews and the University of Notre Dame. Currently focused on the philosophy of religion, epistemology, and Chinese philosophy, he is the author, editor, or co-author of more than twenty books including Abraham's Children: Liberty and Tolerance in an Age of Religious Conflict, Religion and the Sciences of Origins, Return to Reason, The Story of Ethics, When Faith Is Not Enough, 101 Key Philosophical Terms of Their Importance for Theology, and the upcoming God & the Brain.
