In this seminar Doctor Alan Levinovitz (Associate Professor of Religion at James Madison University, @AlanLevinovitz) explores how nature has taken over from God as the foundation and justification of ethical commitments in our thinking, and how an unthinking commitment to the goodness of the "natural" can lead to very problematic conclusions. The talk is followed by Q&A which ranges over the place of theology in early modern thought, the "naturalness" of the COVID-19 pandemic, absolutism as a natural phenomenon and the platforms of both the Republican and Democrat parties in the 2016 U.S. election. A video version of the seminar is available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CAK-o7Htvkc&ab_channel=SocialContractResearchNetwork The seminar took place over Zoom on 13 July 2022, and was hosted by Christopher Watkin (Monash University), as part of the Australian Research Council funded Future Fellowship project "Rewriting the Social Contract: Technology, Ecology, Extremism". This seminar is an initiative of the Social Contract Research Network. To find out more about the SCRN, and to subscribe to email updates, please visit https://www.monash.edu/arts/languages-literatures-cultures-linguistics/social-contract-research-network To be notified when future seminars, conversations and interviews are uploaded, you can subscribe to this YouTube channel by clicking on this link: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCq7geWYdmGE3kIcJrw8Ebsw?sub_confirmation=1

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“What did the council decide on item 42?” — answered with the speaker and the moment.

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