**Video recordings of selected Institute events, including Fr Robert Spitzer’s February 2023 talk on God and suffering, can be found on the Institute’s YouTube channel.
Two Talks by Fr. Robert J. Spitzer at Gonzaga in February 2024
Former Gonzaga President and Gonzaga Faith & Reason Institute cofounder Fr. Robert J. Spitzer, S.J., Ph.D., returns to the Gonzaga campus for a series of two talks cosponsored by the Gonzaga Faith & Reason Institute and the Aram Professor of the Gonzaga School of Business. Both events will be held in the Coughlin Theater, Woldson Performing Arts Center, Gonzaga University. Fr Spitzer will be available to sign his books after each talk at a book table in the Theater lobby.
“What’s Missing in Contemporary Approaches to Business Ethics? The Devaluation of Principles, Conscience, and Faith”
Wednesday, February 7, 2024, 7:00-8:30 PM | Coughlin Theater, Woldson Performing Arts Center, Gonzaga University
There can be little doubt that business ethics has been beset by major scandals in the last two decades, causing most of the American public to believe that business ethics in the U.S. is on the decline. At the same time, compliance training and rule development has been increasing. So, what’s missing? Fr. Spitzer will suggest four “interior” causes of the decline and corresponding solutions—the undervaluation and decline in ethical principles, conscience, moral courage, and faith. Though the external solutions to ethical challenges (e.g., compliance training) are important, they are much less efficacious without interior ethical conviction coming from one or more of the above causes of ethical behavior. If we are to reverse the current trend, it will be incumbent upon business leaders to acknowledge and encourage the development of personal codes of conduct, moral courage, and the formation of conscience.
“Why Is There Increasing Openness to Transcendent Intelligence in Contemporary Big Bang Cosmology?”
Thursday, February 8, 2024, 7:00-8:30 PM | Coughlin Theater, Woldson Performing Arts Center, Gonzaga University
Today, scientists are more open to belief in the transcendent than ever before. In the last Pew Survey of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, 51% of scientists overall and 66% of young scientists declared themselves to be believers in God or a higher transcendent power. What has produced this sharp increase in theism? Fr. Spitzer will consider three major reasons:
i. The evidence of the high unlikelihood of eternal inflation and an infinite multiverse (by Stephen Hawking, Thomas Hertog, and others) has reignited the problem of fine-tuning for life in the exceedingly, exceedingly improbable initial conditions and constants of our universe.
ii. The increasing acknowledgement (even among atheists such as Thomas Nagel) that physical processes and structures alone cannot explain the quantum and mind-like dimensions of our universe.
iii. The recent peer-reviewed medical studies of near death experiences and terminal lucidity that present convincing evidence (summarized in the 2022 Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences) of a credible possibility of consciousness surviving bodily death.
The mysterious nature of our universe and our mind points beyond materialism -- to something like transcendent intelligence.
This talk is cosponsored by the Gonzaga Socratic Club.
About Fr Spitzer
Rev. Robert J. Spitzer, S.J. Ph.D., is a Jesuit priest, teacher, author, and lecturer on topics ranging from ethics, philosophy, and the relationship between modern physics and Christian faith. Fr. Spitzer has academic degrees from the Gregorian University and the Weston School (Cambridge), and a Ph.D. in Philosophy from the Catholic University of America and has taught philosophy and business ethics at Georgetown University and Seattle University.
Fr Spitzer led Gonzaga University as President from 1998 to 2009, at which time he significantly increased programs and curricula in faith, ethics, service, and leadership, guided efforts to build 20 new facilities, increased the student population by 75%, raised more than $200 million for scholarships and capital projects, and founded the Gonzaga Faith & Reason Institute.
Fr Spitzer has made many television appearances and currently appears weekly on EWTN in “Father Spitzer’s Universe.” Among Fr. Spitzer’s many works are the books The Soul’s Upward Yearning: Clues to Our Transcendent Nature from Experience and Reason; The Light Shines on in The Darkness: Transforming Suffering through Faith; New Proofs for the Existence of God: Contributions to Late Twentieth Century Physics and Philosophy; Evidence for God from Contemporary Science and Philosophy, and the recently released Science at the Doorstep to God: Science and Reason in Support of God, the Soul, and Life after Death(Ignatius 2023).
Fr Spitzer currently directs the Magis Center on Science, Reason, and Faith, which offers Fr. Spitzer’s unique take on the complementarity of faith & reason as found in the Catholic Intellectual Tradition and in dialogue with contemporary philosophy and natural science