Here are excerpts from the bios of the production team for TEDx’s execrable April Event. Cringe-makingly named “Brother can you spare a paradigm? Making the quantum leap”, it will be forever be known as “WooFest” (see my posts here and here). These come from a comment by alert reader Jon H, and include half of the eight people involved […]
I’m not really keen on atheist meetings—I think there are too many of them, and they often feature the same line-up of speakers. But TAM (“The Amazing Meeting”), sponsored by the James Randi foundation, is different: it’s a diverse event loosely centered on skepticism, and with a lot of entertainment and (something I dearly want […]
In my studies of on how people try (and fail) to accommodate science and religion, I’ve tried to investigate faiths other than Christianity (the main religion concerned with such reconciliation) and Judaism. But with Islam it’s a dismal failure, for there aren’t many decent books dealing with the topic (for one, see Tanir Edis’s An […]
Over at Cosmic Variance, organizer Sean Carroll gives his take on the “Moving Naturalism Forward” workship that both Massimo Pigliucci and I reported on this week (Sean gives all links to our posts). In his post, “Nudging naturalism just a bit forward,” Sean gives an honest take on the organization of the meeting, and says […]
This is part 2 of today’s summary of the Moving Naturalism Forward workshop (Part 1 is my Powerpoint presentation given below), a meeting that ended yesterday. It makes no attempt to be as complete as Massimo Pigliucci’s account of the conference which he’s posting in bits on Rationally Speaking. (Kudos to Massimo, who was “live-blogging” […]
At the Moving Naturalism Forward workshop, I gave a brief Powerpoint presentation designed to stimulate discussion (Dan had one too, and that, and mine, will eventually be on the YouTube videos. I’ll put it here as well; you can get a complete idea of what I said by looking at the slides. (Click to enlarge). […]
I have returned from the Moving Naturalism Forward meetings, and am now in Cambridge with friends, exhausted and needing a drink. I drove back to Boston with Dan Dennett—just the two of us since Richard Dawkins left for Boston yesterday to avoid the hurricane. Our entire 2.5-hour drive from Stockbridge was devoted to Dan trying […]
We’ve had our first day of the Moving Naturalism Forward meeting, and although it was grueling (listening to smart people say things that are sometimes obscure is hard), it was also enlightening. The two main things I have learned are these: Things—even simple things like the definition of “naturalism”, the subject of our meeting—aren’t as […]
It’s fall in New England! And what would be nicer than a ROAD TRIP across Massachusetts? Three bad boys, all heathens, took off from Cambridge, Massachusetts bound for the Moving Naturalism Forward conference in Stockbridge. Sadly, unlike “Sweet Baby James,” the turnpike from Stockbridge to Boston was covered not with snow, but with leaves. (Click […]
Being in Madrid, I’m unable to indulge in the gustatory excess that so characterizes America on this day, but don’t pity me: tonight the evolution conference is having our official Congress dinner by the penguin tank (the pingüinario) at Madrid’s Faunia Nature Park. I see that the polar exhibit has no fewer than six species of […]
