OxTalks will soon move to the new Halo platform and will become 'Oxford Events.' There will be a need for an OxTalks freeze. This was previously planned for Friday 14th November – a new date will be shared as soon as it is available (full details will be available on the Staff Gateway).
In the meantime, the OxTalks site will remain active and events will continue to be published.
If staff have any questions about the Oxford Events launch, please contact halo@digital.ox.ac.uk
All over the world people talk about God, or gods, and what, if anything, to do about it. Do they know what they are talking about? Do they ever seriously consider what it might look like or feel like if God actually spoke to you? How could you tell, if someone said God spoke to them, whether they were deluded, bluffing, or high on drugs? The reflections, dialogues and arguments in this book address such questions, often with humour, sometimes provocatively,, as when the author suggests the ancient gods have returned to invade the institutions of our great religions, or when two spirits, William and James, viewing the world from afar, voice their doubt as to whether the human species will ever attain the pinnacles of cooperation, reason, beauty and love. Ancient texts from the Mayan Popol Vuh through the Bible to the Chinese classics are invoked, and the discoveries of modern science from anthropology through to zoology are brought into play as the reader is gently led to an appreciation of the role of religious language in modern society.