The Infidel and The Professor is a lean, easy to digest read while being rich with interesting detail. It is anchored by weighty scholarship but not burdened by its excessive demonstration. Pick it up and you might find yourself agreeing with Hume that “reading and sauntering and lownging and dozing, which I call thinking, is my supreme Happiness.”
ReadJOURNALISM, POLITICS AND FAKE NEWS: NEW PERSPECTIVES – MOUNT STEWART, 14 October. A BBC Northern Ireland event with John Lloyd.
ReadRELIGION AND ATHEISM: BEYOND THE DIVIDE – SHEFFIELD, 10 OCTOBER. Panel discussion with Anthony Carrol, Angie Hobbs and Richard Norman at Sheffield Cathedral, 19:30.
ReadBELIEF AND BEYOND BELIEF – LONDON, 23 SEPTEMBER. Taking part in two panel discussions on a day themed “How To Be good”. The first at 11:30 is on “Gurus, Gods and Guidance” with Rabbi Shoshana Boyd Gelfand and Revd Canon Dr James Walters, chaired by Arifa Akbar. The second, at 16:30, is called “Beyond Good and Evil” and features Coline Covington, Dave Tomlinson, Bana Gora and chair Ike Anya.
ReadThere is no religion-shaped space that needs to be filled. Rather, there are many spaces which religions have managed to occupy. The need for meaning, for example, is not religious, but it is a need religions attempt to fulfil. The same is true of the needs for values, community, the marking of life-stages.
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