Pupils in 6.1 and 6.2 enjoyed a Religious Studies A Level trip to Cambridge on Thursday 21 November to attend the Candle Conference.
Students departed before school began and sadly endured a little traffic before reaching the venue, a Wesleyan Church in the centre of Cambridge, where they encountered the famous Philosopher and Lecturer Dr Peter Vardy. He was absolutely magnificent at bringing to life their studies through a series of lectures. His main focus was on Language and how we may or may not be able to use it to talk meaningfully about God.
It was great to hear views of scholars such as Anthony Flew, a famous Falsificationist battling against the work of the important Thomas Aquinas, who used analogy to enable us to try to talk meaningfully about God. Equally, students discussed the implications of these approaches on Ethics and realised that saying something is ‘good’ and ‘bad’ can be challenged to be meaningless dependent on the scholarship we followed.
The day ended with a debate involving students from other schools entitled; ‘This House believes the claim ‘Sex before marriage is wrong’ is meaningless.’ It was a great debate with several contributions from students from our own school providing great insights and making connections with previous study.
Students reflected on the journey home at what a fantastic opportunity it was to engage with a university-style lecture and hear from the great Dr Vardy, who has published many works including ‘The Puzzle of God’ and ‘The Puzzle of Christianity’ that they use in their current course of study.
