Good and Evil

Our next series of Sunday conversations will be based on The Moralities of Everyday Life, a series of online lectures by Yale's Paul Bloom. From the course description: "How is it that we are capable of transcendent kindness—and unspeakable cruelty? How do we make sense of people’s strongly-held opinions about abortion, gay marriage, affirmative action, and torture? How do evolution, culture, and religion conspire to shape our moral natures?"

We plan to start Sunday January 26th at 12:30 and meet for six weeks.

Please register for our Sunday sessions. You don't have to, you are welcome to just come whenever you wish and we always have plenty of coffee, but if you register we can let you know if we have to cancel a session.

To see the lectures, you need to register for the free MOOC. Again, this is not necessary, but we expect the lectures to be fascinating.

Preliminary reading / viewing:
“The Moral Life of Babies”, by Paul Bloom, in the New York Times Magazine
“The Moral Instinct”, by Steven Pinker, in the New York Times Magazine
“The Moral Roots of Liberals and Conservatives”, by Jonathan Haidt, TED talk
“Science Can Answer Moral Questions”, by Sam Harris, TED talk

We also have Bloom's book, Just Babies: The Origins of Good and Evil on the new book shelf.