Atheist and Orthodox Christian Priest to Debate
23/9/2010
By: Stephen J. Lee, Grand Forks Herald
The new Center for Interfaith Projects in Fargo is kicking off its first event with a good one: an atheist professor debates an Eastern Orthodox Priest.
The new Center for Interfaith Projects in Fargo is kicking off its first event with a good one: an atheist professor debates an Eastern Orthodox priest.
It’s at 2 p.m. Saturday in the Fargo Public Library, 102 N. Third St. downtown.
Davis Cope is a retired math professor at North Dakota State University and one of the founders of Red River Freethinkers, which meets regularly and publishes a newsletter to promote atheism, agnosticism and secular humanism and to point out observed foibles among Christians.
The group has led the fight to get the Ten Commandments monument near the Fargo public library removed from city property.
In the believing corner will be the Rev. Oliver Herbel, the priest of Holy Resurrection Orthodox Church and a former resident of rural Fertile, Minn., who blogs and writes on theology and church history.
The two will talk about “Two Life Journeys/Two Worldviews,” and discuss fundamentalism and evolution.
The audience can ask questions.
The Center for Interfaith Projects opened in May and is funded by donations, according to its founder, David Myers, emeritus professor of philosophy at Minnesota State University in Moorhead. The center recently obtained its federal tax-exempt status as a nonprofit, so it will apply for grants.
The center’s board has representatives of Hinduism, Christianity, Islam, Baha’i, Native American Spirituality, Humanism/Atheism and the two faiths he practices, Buddhism and Judaism, Myers wrote in an e-mail response to the Herald.
Saturday’s dialogue between Cope and Herbel is the first of several planned.
The next is Nov. 14, a trialogue with a Jew, a Muslim and a Christian talking about Jesus.
Anyone is welcome to the event, or the center, which has rooms at 111 Broadway in Fargo.
For more information, call (701) 388-7368 or go online at www.centerforinterfaithprojects.org.
