Insight Into Humanity

What does it mean to be human? This is the question the Sherborne Insight programme is posing this autumn, with a series of lectures exploring different aspects of humanity and our place in the economy of God.

Sherborne Insight is a programme of Christian education and apologetics run by Sherborne Abbey, looking at the places where faith and life collide. The programme has been running since 2013.

Since the beginning of humanity itself, humankind has struggled with what it means to be human and, for much of the last two thousand years, Christians have understood humanity as part of the creation of God and having a unique role to play within that creation.

The advent of the 18^th Century ‘rational’ world-view, itself a child of the Protestant Reformation, was the first real challenge to that theological perspective. Since then, science, both natural and social, has generated many more challenges to the traditional view of humankind as part of God's economy. In these four lectures, the programme will consider four aspects of being human which continue or are about to pose strong challenges to this understanding.

The series begins with a look at the secular humanism that many now see, rather than faith, as providing core moral values for our liberal modern society, and asks where the origins of these values lie before moving on to consider the coming challenge of Artificial Intelligence to our understanding of what it is to be uniquely human.

Later in the term the programme will consider our mortality and, in Feeling Mortal, explore that sense of something or someone ‘other’ being present at the moments when we confront these realities before finally considering, in Made in the Image, how our daily work and lives point to the mind of the maker in whose image we are fashioned.

All the lectures start at 7.30 pm in the Digby Church Hall, Digby Road, Sherborne, DT9 3NL.

The full programme for the term is:

• 18^th September: Theo Hobson – God Created Humanism
• 9^th October: Jon Riding – I think, therefore I am?
• 6^th November: Andrew Edmeads – Feeling Mortal
• 27^th November: Amy Orr-Ewing – Made in the Image

More details for all the events are available online at www.insight.sherborneabbey.com where tickets for events can be booked in advance.

Jon Riding, programme coordinator for Sherborne Insight says, “Variety is the spice of life and we think that exploring human society, thinking machines, feeling mortal and how we are fashioned all in one series of lectures probably qualifies. We hope you do too”!