Next up was Carolyn Porco<\/a>.\u00a0 After a brief comparison of science and religion in terms of ways of knowing, she talked a lot <\/a>about using stories (movies, shows, novels….) to communicate the advantages of science.\u00a0\u00a0 All of this was done with no visuals.\u00a0 Then she switched gears and used images from the Cassini Mission (she is the leader of the imaging team) to describe the amazing discoveries around Saturn.\u00a0 Listening to her and looking at those images was incredibly moving.\u00a0\u00a0 All the images from Cassini are available at www.ciclops.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n Martin Pera<\/a> gave a presentation on Embryonic Stem Cell Research<\/em>.\u00a0\u00a0 He reviewed the short history of stem cell research, covered current scientific and political issues, and emphasized the need for flexible legislation instead of restrictive legislation given the early stage of the science (first embryonic stem cell was discovered in 1998).\u00a0 He closed his lecture with a survey of emerging areas in stem cell research.<\/p>\n Jerry Coyne<\/a>, author of Why Evolution Is True<\/a>, gave a great presentation on……why evolution is true<\/a>.\u00a0 He was introduced by Richard Dawkins as the scientist to whom Dawkins now turns\u00a0 for expert information on evolutionary biology.\u00a0\u00a0 As I told Professor Coyne when I met him later Next, Daniel Dennett<\/a> gave a presentation on The Evolution of Confusion<\/em><\/a>.\u00a0 Dennett is probably my favorite living philosopher.\u00a0 I first heard him speak at TAM4 several years ago and have been a huge fan of his since then.\u00a0 He talked about his efforts to reverse engineer religion, to try to understand it better.\u00a0 Those efforts include studying active preachers who are actually atheists and defining the functional role of theologians (spinmeisters<\/em> for religion).\u00a0 He also covered the pernicious effects of the use-mention error (UME) as he segued into criticisms of Robert Wright’s and Karen Armstrong’s recent books (or, all her books in Armstrong’s case).\u00a0\u00a0 He closed his presentation with an overview of his thoughts on the evolution of the god meme, and stated that to extinguish religion or to mutate it into something harmless, we have to understand it.\u00a0 [Note:\u00a0 particularly in the case of this speaker, my brief notes in no way do justice to the depth and breadth of his thoughts.\u00a0 Please see his books Consciousness Explained<\/em>, Darwin’s Dangerous Idea<\/em> and Breaking the Spell<\/em> for full explanations of his thoughts on consciousness, evolution and religion respectively.]<\/strong><\/p>\n John and Dan (as he asked me to call him)<\/p><\/div>\n I’ve been juggling several of Dennett’s books\/writings on consciousness over the last few months, and was happy to have a chance to ask him about the order in which a layman should read them.\u00a0 I caught him in the hallway after he’d come out of an interview with a journalist, so I imagine he was happy to field a fanboy question.\u00a0 He suggested I read Elbow Room<\/em> to understand the place-holders he was building for his future writings, Consciousness Explained <\/em>to see the full picture of his thinking on the multiple-draft theory (and he warned me that this book was written for laymen but contained pointed arguments targeted at professionals), Darwin’s Dangerous Idea<\/em> to see his take on the power of evolution\u00a0 and then Freedom Evolves <\/em>for the synthesis of evolution and consciousness thoughts.\u00a0\u00a0 Now I know, read them in the order he wrote them.<\/p>\n The final speaker on Saturday was Richard Dawkins<\/a>, who started off his presentation <\/a>by admitting that he was on a book tour, then read to us from the last chapter of The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution<\/a>![\"Coyne](\"http:\/\/relaxandhavefun.com\/wp-content\/Coyne-and-John-web.jpg\" "\\"Jerry")
(although this probably didn’t mean as much to him as Dawkins’ comment), his blog posts at WEIT <\/a>are the ones I always read, no matter how many others get culled out when the RSS reader is full.\u00a0 Coyne’s presentation covered the five components of the theory of evolution,\u00a0 predictions which could be made if the components were true, scientific evidence from various fields of study which supported the predictions, and for kicks, what would need to be discovered to disprove evolution.\u00a0 He closed with a discussion of the apparent correlation between success and lack of belief in a god at the country level, summarizing that we need to make the world a better place so people won’t need a Sky Father.<\/p>\n![\"John](\"http:\/\/relaxandhavefun.com\/wp-content\/John-and-Dan.jpg\" "\\"John")
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