Third Annual Open Dialogue to Focus on Freedom

Are we free? Hear Christian and atheist world views on the matter at the University of Findlay’s third annual open dialogue at 7 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 20 in the Winebrenner Building’s TLB Auditorium. The event is free and open to the public.

Hosted by Campus Ministries, the discussion will include Gregory Ganssle, Ph.D., from Talbot School of Theology, representing Christian beliefs; and Erik Wielenberg, Ph.D., from DePauw University, reflecting on the atheist perspective.

Ganssle earned his doctorate degree in philosophy from Syracuse University in 1995 where he was awarded a Syracuse University Dissertation Award for his dissertation on God’s relation to time. In addition to publishing nearly three dozen articles, chapters and reviews, Ganssle has edited two books and is the author of several others. He was a part-time lecturer in the philosophy department at Yale for nine years and a senior fellow at the Rivendell Institute at Yale. Ganssle’s research interests lie in contemporary philosophy of religion and history of philosophy.

Wielenberg earned his Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, where his dissertation was directed by Fred Feldman. While in graduate school he spent a year at the Center for Philosophy of Religion at the University of Notre Dame. He has taught philosophy at DePauw since the fall of 1999. He explains his view of moral realism and defends it against various challenges in “Robust Ethics: The Metaphysics and Epistemology of Godless Normative Realism” (Oxford 2014). In recent years he has become increasingly interested in psychology and its connections with philosophy.