Talk on Humanity and God

■ Friends of Richard Dawkins Association (FoRDO) hosts Dr Sean Davison, right, who will deliver a talk titled “Can God be a construct of the brain?” on Thursday May 23, at the Rotary Hall, Lourensford Road, Somerset West, at 7pm for 7.30pm. Founder and director of DignitySA, and president of the World Federation of Right-to- Die Societies, Professor Davison was born and raised in New Zealand. In 1992, after he completed his PhD in molecular virology at the University of Otago, he moved to South Africa to carry out scientific research. He is currently Professor of Biotechnology at the University of the Western Cape where he heads the Forensic DNA Laboratory. In 2016 he established a cognitive neuroscience research programme at the University of the Western Cape. The focus of this research is to explore genetics aspects of consciousness. He has a particular interest in studying the brain activity that can lead to a person believing in God. He says: “The quest for scientific knowledge has taken us on a breathtaking journey of discovery. We’ve unravelled the physics that govern the universe and the tiny atoms that form our bodies, but science has not yet found proof that God created all this. Yet from the dawn of history humans have believed in divine forces that created our world and today most of us still prey to a higher power. We have meditated, fasted and communed, and enchanted to make contacted with the divine.  But is God really out there? Now there is a new place to look for an answer, because recent research suggests the truth may not be out there, but in our brains. Did God create humanity or did we invent God?”