Silence in Christian History: the witness of Holmes' Dog Lecture 1: Introduction. Voices and silence in Tanakh and Christian New Testament. Professor Diarmaid MacCulloch presents his introductory lecture in our 2012 Gifford lecture series. He discusses a change in emphasis between the Hebrew Scripture (the Tanakh) and what Christians made of what is arguably a minority positive strand in Judaic thinking on silence; we survey the growth of a consciousness of silence, particularly in the...

Former Prime Minister Gordon Brown returns to his former university to give a talk on economics. The lecture argues that there is an alternative to a future of low growth and high unemployment; that the alternative is a future of jobs and justice. Recorded 19 April 2011 at the McEwan Hall, Edinburgh.

Prof Patricia Churchland's Gifford Lecture - Recorded 11 May, 2010 at St Cecelia's Hall, The University of Edinburgh. Self-caring neural circuitry embodies self-preservation values, and these are values in the most elemental sense. Whence caring for others? Social problem-solving, including policy-making, is probably an instance of problem-solving more generally, and draws upon the capacity, prodigious in humans, to envision consequences of a planned action. In humans, it also draws upon...

Professor Terry Eagleton's Gifford Lecture - The God Debate. Recorded 1 March, 2010 at the Playfair Library Hall, the University of Edinburgh. Audio version. In his lecture, Professor Eagleton asks "Why has God suddenly reappeared in intellectual debate? His lecture attempts to put these contentions in the broader political context of the so-called 'war on terror'.

We all tend to forget that we are the law in the sense that we make the rules as a function of our current societal and personal values. As the rationale for our values and beliefs change, so too can the laws we choose to live by. Appreciating the mind/brain system as a downwardly causal system liberates one from a closed loop kind of determinism. Under closed loop determinism, the concept of personal responsibility becomes nonsensical. On the other hand, a downwardly causal system that...

The fith in a series of Gifford Lectures by Professor Michael Gazzaniga. Recorded 20 October, 2009 at the Playfair Library Hall, the University of Edinburgh. Audio version.

The fourth in a series of Gifford Lectures by Professor Michael Gazzaniga. Recorded 19 October, 2009 at the Playfair Library Hall, the University of Edinburgh. Audio version. So what does free will mean? It has become a catch-all term and means several things. In many ways the concept is fundamental to human thought and societal institutions. For example, our system of justice is built on the idea that we are all practical reasoners, working in a normal brain environment to produce...

The third in a series of Gifford Lectures by Professor Michael Gazzaniga. Recorded 15 October, 2009 at the Playfair Library Hall, the University of Edinburgh. The interpreter is the device we humans enjoy that provides us with the capacity to see the meanings behind patterns of our emotions, behavior and thoughts. This concept is central to understanding the relationship between our brain and our strong sense of self. In a way, it is the device that liberates us from our automatic ways...

The second in a series of Gifford Lectures by Professor Michael Gazzaniga. Recorded 13 October, 2009 at the Playfair Library Hall, the University of Edinburgh. Our brains are organised in such a fashion that very little of the processing, which is to say neural work, goes on in our conscious minds. Any simple act, such as pointing to your nose, involves forming the desire to touch your nose, planning a motor response, gathering information about the location of your nose, calculating in a...

The first in a series of Gifford Lectures by Professor Michael Gazzaniga. Recorded 12 October, 2009 at the Playfair Library Hall, the University of Edinburgh. What do we need to know about the human brain in order to discuss the weighty questions of free will, mental causation, morals, ethics, and the law? To understand anything from a biologic perspective we must place this effort in an evolutionary context, consider the nature of the organ that allows us to be asking these questions, and...

The first in a series of Gifford Lectures by Prof Diana Eck. Recorded Monday 27 April 2009 at the University of Edinburgh. In 1893, the World's Parliament of Religions in Chicago convened under the banner of universalism. How do pluralism and globalism today stand in contrast to the spirit of universalism, and signal a new reality? While the phenomenon of globalization clearly relates to economics and politics, to environmental and security concerns, how has it altered our religious...

The second in a series of Gifford Lectures by Prof Diana Eck. Recorded 28 April 2009 at The University of Edinburgh. Multireligious societies have long been a historical reality in some parts of the world. Today, however, there are many recently-multireligious societies, especially in the west, where people of different faiths live in close proximity and struggle with religious difference as citizens of a common society. What are the challenges to the common "we" in the context of...

The third in a series of Gifford Lectures by Prof Diana Eck. Recorded on 30 April 2009 at The University of Edinburgh. Cities are the focal point of religious pluralism, for in cities the cultures and traditions of the world are concentrated. They are, as Lewis Mumford put it, "energy converted into culture." The term "cosmopolis" has long signaled the world-city, and indeed some of the great cities of the world have had a cosmopolitan texture for many centuries. Today, however, the number...

The fourth in a series of Gifford Lectures by Prof Diana Eck. Recorded 4 May 2009 at The University of Edinburgh. Religious diversity poses questions that are not only global, national, and civic, but also theological. In 1910, the World Conference on Mission convened in Edinburgh and addressed the world's religions from the standpoint of Christian missions. Today, as people encounter neighbors of other faiths, face to face, and as communications enable people of every faith to know those...

The fifth in a series of Gifford Lectures by Prof Diana Eck. Recorded 5 May 2009 at The University of Edinburgh. Looking more broadly, the religious traditions of the Indic world have distinctive views on religions, on the diversity of religions and the engagements we would call pluralism. Buddhist, Jain, Hindu, Sikh, and Muslim communities have lived in complex relationship with one another, with distinctiveness as well as common discourse. Discussions of pluralism and its relation to...

The final in a series of Gifford Lectures by Prof Diana Eck. Recorded 7 May 2009 at The University of Edinburgh. Religious pluralism is not only a fact of global and local encounter of religious communities, but it is increasingly part of the lives of people in many parts of the world who identify with more than one religious tradition. The phenomenon of multiple religious belonging is part of families in which parents affiliate with different religious communities; it is part of the inner...