Mark Hutchinson, president and CEO of GE China, opens the public seminar series at Princeton University’s Center for the Study of Religion on Thursday, September 19, noon to 1 p.m. David W. Miller, director of the Princeton University Faith and Work Initiative, will moderate. Location has yet to be announced.

 

This is actually the second seminar for the CSR but the first is open only to the university community, perhaps because it is a controversial topic, or because it will attract so many eager listeners. The topic? You might guess that it has sex in the title and you would be correct.  Frank Schaeffer is to talk about The Politics of Religion and Sexuality. I saw him speak several years ago at CSR. He is the son of evangelical theologians Francis and Edith Schaeffer, founders of L’Abri, but does not necessarily toe his parents party line.

 

The next topic is perplexing as well: Good and Evil. Yale University’s Paul Bloom will discuss Just Babies: The Origin of Good and Evil on Thursday, September 26, 4:30 to 6 p.m., in Friend Center, Bowl 006 (that’s on Olden Avenue, part of the EQuad.) It is co-sponsored with the Center for Theological Inquiry. Bloom’s most recent book deals with How Pleasure Works. As here:

Here, he will talk about whether babies are born selfish.

From John Locke to Sigmund Freud, philosophers and psychologists have long believed that we begin life as blank moral slates. Many of us take for granted that babies are born selfish and that it is the role of society—and especially parents—to transform them from little sociopaths into civilized beings. Paul Bloom argues that humans are in fact hardwired with a sense of morality. Drawing on groundbreaking research at Yale, Bloom demonstrates that, even before they can speak or walk, babies judge the goodness and badness of others’ actions; feel empathy and compassion; act to soothe those in distress; and have a rudimentary sense of justice.