The 30th Anniversary Conference of Free Inquiry and the Council for Secular Humanism Schedule
To register immediately, call toll free 1-800-458-1366 ext. 308 during business hours Eastern time.
THURSDAY, OCTOBER 7, 2010
7:00 PM - 9:00: Evening reception. Complimentary hors d’oeuvres, cash bar.
FRIDAY, OCTOBER 8, 2010
9:00 AM - NOON: Plenary session The First 30 Years - Ronald A. Lindsay, moderator
Ronald A. Lindsay is President and CEO of the Council for Secular Humanism and the Center for Inquiry.
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James “The Amazing” Randi, founder of the James Randi Educational Foundation and the world’s most tireless investigator and demystifier of paranormal and pseudoscientific claims, chronicles his (and Free Inquiry’s) investigation of faith-healing televangelists, culminating in Randi’s exposé of faith-healer Peter Popoff on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson.
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Tom Flynn, editor of Free Inquiry and executive director of the Council for Secular Humanism, recounts the controversy when FI became the first major U.S. magazine to republish Danish “Muhammad” cartoons.
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Ed Buckner, president of American Atheists and a former executive director of the Council for Secular Humanism, on his colorful years with the Council.
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Paul Kurtz, founder and former editor-in-chief of Free Inquiry, former chair emeritus of the Council for Secular Humanism and the Center for Inquiry, and professor emeritus of philosophy at the State University of New York at Buffalo, reflects on the Free Inquiry phenomenon.
NOON — 2:00 PM: Luncheon on your own. The hotel includes multiple restaurants, and others are conveniently accessible.
2:00 PM – 5:00 PM: Plenary session - Science and Religion: Confrontation or Accommodation? - Derek Araujo, moderator
Derek Araujo is vice president and general counsel of the Council for Secular Humanism and the Center for Inquiry (CFI), director of CFI’s legal programs, and CFI’s representative to the United Nations.
How should secular humanists respond to science and religion? If we champion science, must we oppose faith?
How best to approach flashpoints like evolution education? A wide-ranging examination featuring a spectrum of distinguished panelists:
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PZ Myers, a biologist at the University of Minnesota-Morris who, in addition to his duties as a teacher of biology and especially of development and evolution, likes to spend his spare time poking at the follies of creationists, Christians, crystal-gazers, Muslims, right-wing politicians, apologists for religion, and anyone who doesn’t appreciate how much the beauty of reality exceeds that of ignorant myth.
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Eugenie Scott, executive director of the National Center for Science Education, Inc. A former college professor, Dr. Scott is an internationally known expert on the creationism and evolution controversy and is called upon by the press and other media to explain science and evolution to the general public. The author of Evolution vs. Creationism: An Introduction, and coauthor (with Glenn Branch) of Not In Our Classrooms: Why Intelligent Design Is Wrong for Our Schools, she is the recipient of numerous awards from scientists and educators and has been awarded seven honorary degrees.
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Chris Mooney, 2009-2010 Knight Science Journalism Fellow at MIT, co-host of the Center for Inquiry’s acclaimed podcast Point of Inquiry, and author of three books: The Republican War on Science, Storm World, and Unscientific America.
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Victor Stenger, adjunct professor of philosophy at the University of Colorado and emeritus professor of physics at the University of Hawaii. He is author of nine critically acclaimed popular-level books that interface between physics, cosmology, philosophy, religion, and pseudoscience. His 2007 book, God: The Failed Hypothesis, was a New York Times best seller. His last two books, both published in 2009, are Quantum Gods and The New Atheism: Taking a Stand for Science and Reason.
5:45 PM – 6:30 PM Pre-banquet reception with cash bar
7:00 PM – 10:30 PM Gala Banquet and 15th Anniversary - Celebration of Center for Inquiry / Los Angeles - James Underdown, moderator
James Underdown is the Executive Director of Center for Inquiry / Los Angeles.
Richard Dawkins, FRS delivers an address on the occasion of the Dawkins Foundation’s receiving a prize award unprecedented in the history of organized humanism.
Dawkins has authored ten books, including: The Selfish Gene (1976); The Extended Phenotype (1982); The Blind Watchmaker (1986); Climbing Mount Improbable (1996); Unweaving the Rainbow (1998); The Ancestor’s Tale (2004); The God Delusion (2006); and The Greatest Show on Earth (2009). The God Delusion has sold more than two million copies in English, and is published in more than 30 languages. He is chairman of the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science (RDFRS).
AWARDS CEREMONY
THEATRICAL EVENT
Opening Minds Productions in association with Meadowlane Enterprises presents STEVE ALLEN’S MEETING OF MINDS
Only in L.A.: a live theater revival of Steve Allen’s award-winning PBS series with a cast of acclaimed performers portraying intriguing historical figures, live on stage.
Scheduled to appear:
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Gary Cole as Steve Allen. Appeared in more than 100 film and TV productions; plays Andrew Klein in TV’s Entourage; films: Breach, Office Space; TV: Desperate Housewives, West Wing. (Trivia: Played Capt. Jeffrey MacDonald in TV’s Fatal Vision)
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Charles Shaughnessy. Appeared in more than 100 TV and film productions; played Maxwell Sheffield in TV’s The Nanny and August Martin in TV’s Saints and Sinners. (Trivia: Won a Daytime Emmy and appeared on Days of Our Lives.)
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Wendie Malick. Appeared in more than 100 TV and film productions; played Nina Van Horn in TV’s Just Shoot Me, receiving nominations for Golden Globe and Emmy awards. (Trivia: Won four straight CableACE best actress awards for comedy Dream On.)
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Robert Forster. Appeared in more than 100 film and TV productions; nominated for a supporting actor Oscar for Jackie Brown; first film was Reflections in a Golden Eye, co-starring Marlon Brando and Elizabeth Taylor. (Trivia: Played lead role in Haskell Wexler’s 1969 Medium Cool.)
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Ron Perlman. Currently appearing in TV’s Sons of Anarchy, this versatile stage and screen actor won a cult following with TV’s Beauty and the Beast. Films include Quest for Fire, Alien: Resurrection, and the title role in Guillermo del Toro’s Hellboy franchise. (Trivia: The oldest actor to portray a lead superhero.)
- Directed by Frank Megna. Frank Megna has written a number of plays, screenplays, and TV scripts (for shows like Crime Story, Wiseguy, Nasty Boys and Veronica Clair). He recently directed and co-wrote the indie feature film The Seekers. He is the founder and co-owner of Working Stage Theater in West Hollywood and has conducted many seminars and workshops on writing, directing, and acting.
SATURDAY, OCTOBER 9, 2010
8:45 – 9:30 AM Plenary session: special presentation, to be announced.
9:30 AM – 12:30 PM: Plenary session - Secular Humanism and Human Values - Richard T. Hull, moderator.
Richard T. Hull is professor emeritus of philosophy at the University of Buffalo. He and his wife, Elaine, are co-plaintiffs in the Council for Secular Humanism’s ongoing lawsuit challenging the Faith-Based Initiative in the state of Florida.
Secular humanism is distinguished from mere atheism by its emphasis on values and ethics. What can philosophy, ethics, aesthetics, and the sciences contribute to our pursuit of the good life in this life?
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Mark Johnson, professor of philosophy and Knight Professor of Liberal Arts and Sciences at the University of Oregon. His research has focused on the philosophical implications of the role of human embodiment in meaning, conceptualization, reasoning, and values. He is co-author, with George Lakoff, of Metaphors We Live By (1980) and Philosophy in the Flesh (1999) and author of The Body in the Mind (1987); Moral Imagination: Implications of Cognitive Science for Ethics (1993); and The Meaning of the Body: Aesthetics of Human Understanding (2007).
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Jennifer Michael Hecht, the author of award-winning books of philosophy, history, and poetry, including The End of the Soul: Scientific Modernity, Atheism and Anthropology; Doubt: A History; The Happiness Myth; and a book of poetry, Funny, which Publisher’s Weekly called one of the most original and entertaining books of the year.
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Ronald A. Lindsay, president and CEO of the Center for Inquiry and the Council for Secular Humanism, asks, “What That Is Unique Does Humanism Bring to Values?”
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Christopher diCarlo, assistant professor of science and ethics at the University of Ontario Institute of Technology and one of Canada’s most prominent humanist activists, on “The New Ethics: A Synthetic Approach to Understanding Good and Evil.”
Dr. diCarlo is a past visiting research scholar at Harvard University, where he conducted research for two forthcoming books he is currently writing titled The Comparative Brain: The Evolution of Human Reasoning and The Evolution of Religion: Why Many Need to Believe in Deities, Demons, and the Unseen. His book, How to Become a Really Good Pain in the Ass: A Practical Guide to Thinking Critically (McGraw-Hill Ryerson), is now being re-edited for a wider audience in the United States.
12:30 – 2:30 PM Speaker Luncheon
Lawrence Krauss, Foundation professor, director of the Origins Initiative, a co-director of the Cosmology Initiative at Arizona State University, on the John Templeton Foundation’s strategy to change science. Krauss is an internationally known theoretical physicist with wide research interests, the author of more than 250 scientific publications as well as numerous popular articles on physics and astronomy and several acclaimed popular books, including the best-selling The Physics of Star Trek. He is the recipient of numerous awards for his research and writing, including the Presidential Investigator Award and the American Association for the Advancement of Science’s 1999-2000 Award for the Public Understanding of Science and Technology.
2:30 PM – 5:30 PM Plenary session, The Paradoxes of Secularism - Tom Flynn, moderator
Tom Flynn is executive director of the Council for Secular Humanism and editor of Free Inquiry.
From the courtrooms of America to the Muslim enclaves of major European cities, relations between church and state are inflamed across the West, with important implications for freedom of conscience, civil liberties, and the future of the secular state.
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Ibn Warraq, Islamic scholar and a leading figure in Qur’anic criticism, is a senior fellow at the Center for Inquiry. He is the author of five important and distinguished books on Islam and Qur’anic criticism, including the classic Why I Am Not a Muslim (1995), The Origins of the Koran (1998), What the Koran Really Says (2002), and the forthcoming Which Koran?—all from Prometheus Books. Warraq’s op-ed pieces have appeared in the Wall Street Journal in America and The Guardian in London, and he has addressed
distinguished governing bodies all over the world, including the United Nations in Geneva and members of the Dutch Parliament at The Hague. Mr. Warraq completed in 2007 a critical study of the thought of Edward Said, Defending the West: A Critique of Edward Said’s “Orientalism.”
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Douglas Murray, director of the Centre for Social Cohesion (UK). A best-selling author and political commentator, his writings have appeared across the British and foreign press. A columnist for Standpoint magazine, he writes regularly for many other publications including the Daily Telegraph and the Spectator and appears regularly on the BBC and across the British and foreign broadcast media.
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Shadia Drury, Canada Research Chair in Social Justice at the University of Regina and a FREE INQUIRY columnist, Drury is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and the author of books including The Political Ideas of Leo Strauss; Terror and Civilization: Christianity, Politics, and the Western Psyche; and Aquinas and Modernity: The Lost Promise of Natural Law (2008).
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Richard Hull, see bio above.
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Eddie Tabash, Council for Secular Humanism board member, chair of the Center for Inquiry / Los Angeles, and noted civil liberties attorney, on “The Founders Actually Intended Government Neutrality in Matters of Religion.”
7:30 PM – 9:30 PM Keynote Dialogue - Ronald A. Lindsay, moderator.
Ronald A. Lindsay is president and CEO of the Council for Secular Humanism and the Center for Inquiry.
Sam Harris and Robert Wright
“Where Should Seculars Stand Today and Tomorrow on Questions of Religion and Belief?”
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Sam Harris is the author of the New York Times best-sellers The End of Faith (winner of the 2005 Pen Award for Nonfiction) and Letter to a Christian Nation. Mr. Harris’s writing has been published in over fifteen languages. He and his work have been discussed in Newsweek, Time, The New York Times, Scientific American, Nature, Rolling Stone, and many other journals. His writing has appeared in Newsweek, The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The Times (London), The Boston Globe, The Atlantic, The Annals of Neurology, and elsewhere. He is co-founder and CEO of The Reason Project, a nonprofit foundation devoted to spreading scientific knowledge and secular values in society.
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Robert Wright is the author of the New York Times best-seller The Evolution of God. Previous books include The Moral Animal: Evolutionary Psychology and Everyday Life (named by the New York Times Book Review as one of the best 10 books of the year) and Nonzero: The Logic of Human Destiny (which President Bill Clinton required White House staff members to read). Wright, a recipient of the National Magazine Award for Essay and Criticism, has been a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and has been named one of the Top 100 Global Thinkers by Foreign Policy Magazine.
He has taught philosophy at Princeton and religion at Penn. He is a senior fellow at the New America Foundation and editor in chief of Bloggingheads.tv, which he co-founded. He has written for the New Yorker, The Atlantic, The New York Times, and many other periodicals.
SUNDAY, OCTOBER 10, 2010
9:00 AM – NOON Plenary Session: Barry A. Kosmin - The challenge of the Rise of the Nones
Barry A. Kosmin, research professor in the Public Policy & Law Program at Trinity College and founding director of the Institute for the Study of Secularism in Society and Culture. A sociologist, Dr. Kosmin has been a principal investigator of the American Religious Identification Survey series since its inception in 1990 as well as national social surveys in Europe, Africa, and Asia. His publications on the ARIS include One Nation under God: Religion in Contemporary American Society (1993) and Religion in a Free Market (2006).
New Directions for Secular Humanism: A wide-ranging open discussion on secular humanism and its future.
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Derek Araujo, see bio above
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Richard Carrier, the renowned author of Sense and Goodness without God and Not the Impossible Faith, as well as numerous articles online and in print. He received his Ph.D. in ancient history from Columbia University in 2008 and now specializes in the modern philosophy of naturalism, the origins of Christianity, and the intellectual history of Greece and Rome.
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Shadia Drury, see bio above
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Sean Faircloth, executive director of the Secular Coalition for America. He served a decade in Maine’s legislature and was elected majority whip. An accomplished legislator, Faircloth spearheaded more than thirty laws, including the Deadbeat Dad Child Support Law, saving hundreds of millions of dollars. Faircloth graduated from the University of Notre Dame, and chaired a sex-crime commission and an early childhood commission. As an attorney, Faircloth has spoken extensively on children’s policies, the Constitution, obesity policy, and justice reform.
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Tom Flynn, see bio above
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Barry Kosmin, see bio above
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Lawrence Krauss, see bio above
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Ronald A. Lindsay, see bio above
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Robert M. Price, fellow of CFI’s Committee for the Scientific Examination of Religion and co-host of it’s acclaimed podcast Point of Inquiry, is a professor of theology and scripture studies at Coleman Theological Seminary and the author of books including , The Reason Drivien Life, Deconstructing Jesus, and The Incredible Shrinking Son of Man.
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James Randi, see bio above
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Victor Stenger, see bio above
To register immediately, call toll free 1-800-458-1366 ext. 308 during business hours Eastern time.
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