The purpose of the HTOC Socratic Club is to provide an open forum for the discussion of the intellectual difficulties connected with religion and with Christianity in particular.

It almost goes without saying that the modern American scientific establishment is aggressively hostile to religious belief. Indeed, in 2006 at a conference held at the Salk Institute for Biological Sciences in California, Nobel Laureate Steven Weinberg said: “The world needs to wake up from the long nightmare of religion... Anything we scientists can do to weaken the hold of religion should be done, and may in fact be our greatest contribution to civilization.” Recently, in response to the Florida school shootings, Neil deGrasse Tyson said publicly: “Evidence collected over many years, obtained from many locations, indicates that the power of Prayer is insufficient to stop bullets from killing school children.” These types of hostile and condescending remarks are pervasive in academia and popular culture in general.

In this first summer session of the HTOC Socratic Club we will discuss the best and most popular scientific and philosophical arguments for and against God’s existence. Discussions will be motivated through debate analysis. That is, there will be a collection of debates (available on YouTube) that will serve as starting points for the discussions. Links to the debates and discussion questions will be sent to participants at least one week prior to the sessions.