How do we engage the world with philosophical and apologetical ideas that can change the world?

InterVarsity hosted a series of God questions at Northern Illinois University on March 8th.

Do we All Worship the Same God?

In this talk Professor Sweis addressed whether there is any truth in religion. Is truth all contextual and relative? Are all religions the same fundamentally? Do Christians worship the same God as other religions, especially Muslims and Jews? We will discuss the difference between the great religions of the world and the person, example and influence of Jesus of Nazareth on history...."

Short lecture on different theories on truth

Short lecture on what is philosophy and Plato's cave

A short talk taken from my Introduction to Ethics Class, first lecture.

“Existing Without My Body: The Technological and Spiritual Possibilities and Actualities.” Key-note address for the ICSA VII: Brave New World conference in Pasadena, California, August 3 2012.

This is a talk I gave at Trinity International University, my alma mater, in Chris Firestone's Apologetics class on Sept 28, 2012.

The sound quality is not that good, but turn up the volume! :)

This is based on the article by the same name published in Think / Volume 8 / Issue 23 / September 2009, pp 45-53 Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2009 DOI: , Published online: 13 October 2009

In this talk, I read my article cited above.

The following is an imaginary conversation on the ever elusive qualia, or the ‘what is it like’ feeling, or conscious experiences, that has left philosophers and cognitive scientists searching for answers. This article is meant to give the beginning reader an overall view of this phenomena. Qualia is the technical name for conscious experiences like seeing the colour red or listening to Handel's Messiah. The problem is that these conscious experiences are apparently nowhere to be found in our physical brains. Thus, it would not register on any physical system in the known world (although the results of it, such as neurons firing, would).

OBJECTION 1: Religion is based on faith. You can’t trust faith. You can only trust what science says. Mark Twain said that "Faith is believing something you know ain't true." Christopher Hitchins wrote that “Faith is the surrender of the mind; it’s the surrender of reason, it’s the surrender of the only thing that makes us different from other mammals.”

b. OBJECTION 2: Christians are arrogant for thinking that Jesus is the only way to God. There must be other truths in the world about God from other religions. Christians only make up 2 billion of the 7 billion people on earth. How dare you think your way is the only way!

c. OBJECTION 3: The Bible is a book of fairy tales, which cannot be trusted. It is full of contradictions.

d. OBJECTION 4: Evil proves that a good God cannot exist. If God does exist then he cannot be good.

I attempt to address these objections and provide encouragement to believers at the same time.

Naturalism is the strongest force against the legitimate expression of religion in the sciences today. I attempt to show the problems of naturalism in this paper which is composed of three parts. Part 1 is a struggle to find a coherent definition of naturalism as it is currently understood. In Part 2, I address the unscientific presuppositions of naturalism. Finally in Part 3, I frame and articulate to the naturalists’ community a strong argument against naturalism ala Alvin Plantinga and Richard Taylor, (different than the one raised by C. S. Lewis).

This was a paper given at EPS 2008 in Rhode Island.