{"id":471,"date":"2009-11-01T13:08:59","date_gmt":"2009-11-01T19:08:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/relaxandhavefun.com\/?p=471"},"modified":"2009-11-01T13:08:59","modified_gmt":"2009-11-01T19:08:59","slug":"darwins-legacy-day-three","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/relaxandhavefun.com\/?p=471","title":{"rendered":"Darwin’s Legacy, Day Three"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sunday morning we enjoyed the final two presentations, prior to heading back to sunny Mexico.\u00a0\u00a0 Jonathan Kirsch<\/a> gave a very interesting, very scary presentation on the Long Shadow of the Inquisition<\/em>.\u00a0 He defined the Inquisitorial Toolbox as set of techniques, thoughts and methods that had been defined during the original Inquisition and that are still in use by the Church and by governments around the world today.\u00a0\u00a0 He pointed out that the Inquisition caused suffering due to habit of mind (i.e., the Cathars were persecuted because they did not believe in transubstantiation) and that only Christians were persecuted (although once a Jew or Muslim converted to Christianity for any reason……..they were fair game too).\u00a0 Kirsch, too, was on an book tour.\u00a0 Although in the Q&A session he recommended his God Against the Gods: The History of the War Between Monotheism and Polytheism<\/a>\"\" as his best book overall, he told us he’d prefer it if we’d all buy a copy of his newest book (from which the material for the presentation was taken), The Grand Inquisitor’s Manual: A History of Terror in the Name of God<\/a>\"\".\u00a0 Kirsch gave several example of tools from the Inquisitorial Toolbox being used today and pointed out that the power of being able to persecute someone based solely on the fact that they had different ideas or thoughts still came in quite handy for Authorities of all types. \u00a0 He ended his presentation with a powerful story about watching Arthur Miller’s The Crucible<\/em> on Broadway right after 9\/11.<\/p>\n

Richard Dawkins introduced the final speaker, Eugenie Scott<\/a>, as a hero in the fight for teaching science in the science classroom and as someone he admired greatly.\u00a0 This was very interesting to me, given the amount of discussion in the blogosphere of late re the accommodationist stance of the Scott’s National Center for Science Education<\/a>.\u00a0 Scott made no reference to this in her presentation: Creationism:\u00a0 Still Crazy After All These Years<\/em>.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 She gave a brief review of the history of creationism and intelligent design attacks on evolution in the classroom, then focused on current tactics including “teach the controversy” and the\u00a0 “either\/or” approach.\u00a0 She pointed out that attacking evolution is just the tip of the iceberg.\u00a0 Attacking evolution is attacking materialistic science.\u00a0 Attacking materialistic science is attacking materialism (non-dualism).\u00a0 Kind of a scary thought, given the subject matter of Kirsch’s presentation right before this.\u00a0 She closed her presentation with some pretty sobering stories about what’s going on in Texas right now with their science textbooks.\u00a0\u00a0 Currently, the creationists are abusing the meaning of the phrase “academic freedom” as one means to try to teach religion in the science classroom.\u00a0 Since Texas purchases so many textbooks, what they choose to purchase is usually what all the other states have to purchase.\u00a0 So the content of the science textbooks chosen by Texas has a huge effect on science education all over the US.<\/p>\n

Conference Summary:\u00a0\u00a0 This was a great conference.\u00a0 The speaker list was incredible.\u00a0 Everything else about the conference was fine, but it was the caliber of the speakers that really set this conference apart from the last few TAM’s (for instance).\u00a0 For me, it was fun to see many of my favorite thinkers and authors in the flesh and it was very stimulating to listen to them in the\u00a0 context of this conference.\u00a0 Very refreshing.\u00a0 I’ll close with some random links (of variable value) to other bloggers’ thoughts on the convention:\u00a0 Linda\u00a0 Ward Selbie<\/a>,\u00a0 Jerry Coyne<\/a>, Russell Blackford<\/a>, PZ Myers<\/a>, Humanist Network News<\/a>, Kate Lovelady<\/a> and Jim Lippard<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sunday morning we enjoyed the final two presentations, prior to heading back to sunny Mexico. Jonathan Kirsch gave a very interesting, very scary presentation on the Long Shadow of the Inquisition. He defined the Inquisitorial Toolbox as set of techniques, thoughts and methods that had been defined during the original Inquisition and that are still […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[29],"tags":[8,30],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/relaxandhavefun.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/471"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/relaxandhavefun.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/relaxandhavefun.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/relaxandhavefun.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/relaxandhavefun.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=471"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"http:\/\/relaxandhavefun.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/471\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":507,"href":"http:\/\/relaxandhavefun.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/471\/revisions\/507"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/relaxandhavefun.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=471"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/relaxandhavefun.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=471"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/relaxandhavefun.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=471"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}