Across the year we hold a Mens' Breakfast Discussion on a Saturday morning. Held in The Pheasant pub in Great Chishill, a wonderful traditional English breakfast is followed by a noted speaker....buidling awareness of issues and fellowship.

Contacts: Bill Jones (01763 838089 or This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it ) and Peter Knoop (01763 838077 or This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it )

Saturday 8 May 2010 - Dr Rodney Holder, Faraday Institute

The first event in 2010 saw almost fourty people listen to the astrophysicist, Rodney Holder, Director of the Faraday Institute for Science & Religion, addressing "God and the Big Bang". In his latest book, "God, the Multiverse and Everything, Rodney examines the fine-tunings of natural law that were necessary for life to evolve in our universe and assesses their metaphysical significance. Widely applauded as a significant contribution to contemporary argument for God's existence - based on an appeal to cosmic design - Rodney argues that divine design is the best explanation for cosmic fine-tuning. This was a rare chance to share an intimate discussion between a leading Cambridge academic and men from our villages.

"Modern cosmology tells us that the universe is remarkably 'fine-tuned' for life. If the constants of physics or the initial conditions at the Big Bang were different by the smallest of margins the universe would have been dull and lifeless. Why should the universe be so accommodating to life? Many cosmologists believe that the existence of a 'multiverse', an ensemble of universes (usually taken to be infinite) in which the parameters vary between the members, can provide an explanation for the existence and specialness of our own universe. The existence of an ensemble is given plausibility if there is a theory which in some sense naturally gives rise to a multiplicity of universes, and a number of candidate theories have been offered. Referring to some of the latest ideas in physics and cosmology (eg string theory), in this paper I expose some of the severe problems faced by the multiverse concept as a viable explanatory alternative to the traditional theistic explanation of design by God. I argue that the latter is preferable, both on the grounds of initial plausibility and explanatory power, and remains the most rational position to take on the basis of the cosmological data." Dr Rodney Holder.

Forthcoming dates for your diary:

Saturday 11 September 2010 - Speaker tbc

Saturday 20 November 2010 - Speaker tbc