Ayodhya Decision...

The BBC is reporting:

A court in India has said that a disputed holy site in Ayodhya should be split between Hindus and Muslims, lawyers for the Hindu petitioners say.

However in a majority verdict, judges gave control of the main disputed section, where a mosque was torn down in 1992, to Hindus, lawyers said.

Other parts of the site will be controlled by Muslims and a Hindu sect.

You can read the Guardian's 10-year-ago feature on this - with some helpful background, at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/sep/28/ayodhya-mosque-india-guardian-report

Also see: http://gu.com/p/2k36h

RPE Lecturers in Turin

Dave and I attended the CESNUR 2010 International Conference in Turin on 'Changing Gods: Between Religion and Everyday Life' from 9-11 September.  Apart from wine and pizza we heard papers on New Religious Movements from some of the leading scholars in the field, rubbed shoulders with practising Mormon, Unification Church and Family (Children of God) members and learned all about vampires and spiritual therianthropy.  Dave and I will be sharing more of our adventures in due course.

The Examined Life

Hi.

For any new RPE students struggling to find resources for the Induction Project - see http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/examined_life/ where you can access a fair few reviews f of the film.

The trailer is below, and http://www.epistemelinks.com/Main/MainPers.aspx can help you track down info on the individual thinker you have chosen for the presentation; although not all are there - but Cornel West is on twitter ( http://twitter.com/cornelwest ), and I am sure you can use that google-thing...

enjoy...

dave

Welcome!

So - another year...

A big welcome back to all existing RPE students, and an equally excessive welcome to all our new Religion, Philosophy & Ethics students. We will be seeing you all week - but do browse these blog archives to get more of a sense of the course.

The presentation below gives details about the opportunities for travel, that I mentioned during the main Humanities Induction talk... (press the 'play' button > )

contact me on dwebster@glos.ac.uk for more details...

Cheers,

Dave

Humanities Induction on Prezi

Philosophy in the city (and village)

Famous Liverpool Sophists

Those misguided amongst you who thought Athens was the birthplace of philosophy are wrong: it was Liverpool (remember Plato's Cavern?), and to celebrate this fact there is a two-week Philosophy in the City festival which will bring many leading philosophers to a number of cultural centres in Liverpool. It starts on 10th October. If you're looking for something a little more local then the birthplace of Hobbes, the Cotswold village of Malmesbury, has its Thomas Hobbes Festival of Ideas from 14th-16th October. And, if you really want to be even more local than that, the Cheltenham Literature Festival (8th - 17th October) has a number of philosophical, or philosophically-related, talks.

So plenty of things going on in October!

Mocking?

I noticed at http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-11300552 that:

"An ice cream company banned from using an advert displaying a pregnant nun has vowed to position similar posters in London in time for the Pope's visit.

Antonio Federici's advert showed a pregnant nun eating ice cream in a church, together with the strap line "immaculately conceived".

The Advertising Standards Authority has ordered it to be discontinued, saying it mocked Roman Catholic beliefs."

I have reproduced the image here: is this really offensive?

Flickr updates

Just a quick note: have finally begun to add some stuff to the RPE Flickr page (see widget to the right) - or http://www.flickr.com/photos/58244916@N00/ - hope to add some more soon...