Commonwealth Speakers:Philosophy and Religion


Mac Given's presentation, A Frog Watcher's Guide to the Philosophy of Science, uses the social behavior of frogs to explore human truths.

Learning about religion and philosophy helps us understand who we are. In this category, you can examine the history of religion and also how humor works on different aspects of body and mind.

A Frog Watcher's Guide to the Philosophy of Science
What is truth? How do we know what we think we know? Obviously, we use our senses to extract information from our surroundings. Then, our nervous systems process this in complex ways. That in turn determines what we believe and how we think of ourselves. But are our brains "honest brokers"? Biologist Mac Given will use photography, sounds, stories and humor to recount his experiences studying the social behavior of frogs and how it has shed light on these and other questions: How can you observe something if you don't know that it exists? How can personal beliefs, such as a subtle sexist bias, prevent you from seeing something that is, in retrospect, embarrassingly obvious? How do these insights relate to the global issues that humans are facing or choosing to ignore?

Mac Given, Media
Professor of Biology, Neumann College

Re-Imagining Mary Magdalene: Female Disciple, Witness and Icon
Mary Magdalene has emerged in recent years as a figure of enormous mystery and controversy. Who was Mary Magdalene and how should we imagine her today? She has been known as female disciple and witness, saint and sinner, repentant prostitute, preacher, visionary, miracle worker, a new Eve and the bride of Christ. Most often, Mary Magdalene has played the role of religious icon: honored and defamed, silenced and marginalized, yet elevated to sanctity in various historical and cultural contexts. How we think about Mary Magdalene today both reflects and shapes our constructions of women in ancient Christianity and contemporary culture. A PowerPoint presentation of more than 50 artistic and textual representations of Mary Magdalene will invite participants to re-imagine Mary Magdalene as female disciple, witness and apostle.

Anne McGuire, Haverford
Associate Professor of Religion, Haverford College

Black Knights and Dead Parrots: Monty Python and Philosophy
As undergraduates at Cambridge and Oxford in the 1960s, the future members of the seminal British comedy troupe Monty Python studied ideas that are at the heart of modern philosophical thinking. Not surprisingly, the philosophy they learned crept into some of their funniest sketches. Gary Hardcastle will use clips of several of Monty Python's best-known skits to illustrate and explain what philosophers do, why they do it and why what they do actually is important—in short, what philosophy is all about. A rare opportunity to learn philosophy while giggling.

Gary Hardcastle, Lewisburg
Associate Professor of Philosophy, Bloomsburg University

Was America Founded as a Christian Nation?
How religious were America's Founding Fathers? Were they truly devout Christians, as many claim today? The question of whether or not America was founded as a "Christian nation" plays an important part in the nation's political and social life. Examining this question from an historical perspective, historian John Fea will investigate the religious convictions of the Founding Fathers and the relationship between Christianity and America's founding documents.

John Fea, Mechanicsburg
Assistant Professor of American History, Messiah College

What's So Funny? The Biology, Psychology and Philosophy of Humor
A priest, a minister and a rabbi walk into a bar, and the bartender says, "What is this, some kind of joke?"

Why do we laugh, and why do we laugh at what we laugh at? What makes something funny? What does humor tell us about being human? And, for that matter, could your cat enjoy a good dog joke (suitably translated, of course)? Humor certainly is enormously important to us. It entertains us, bonds us to our friends, dissolves uncomfortable situations, conveys complicated ideas and, sometimes, even betrays our deepest hopes, fears and beliefs. But, most of us understand little about how it works. Gary Hardcastle makes use of sitcoms and knock-knock jokes, silent films and stand-up routines to explore some remarkable and surprising modern views—inspired by biology, psychology, sociology, philosophy—that try to understand why we laugh (and why, sometimes, we don't).

Gary Hardcastle, Lewisburg
Associate Professor of Philosophy, Bloomsburg University

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