That’s our picture from last year… I’ll be sure to get into the front this year….. as you can barely see me… tucked into the very back left hand corner… I think I was being all “i’m too cool for this” when now I’m like “aaaah! i wanna be in the front!”

So the leadership conference last year was amazing. That’s my coverage…here’s CFI’s actual write up on the weekend… with write ups by me, Tyler Handely, Jack Rivall and Elvia Nidia Gonzalez. Tyler is awesome and will be working at CFI this summer - which is totally awesome. We need a Canadian voice there! Jack is also all sorts of amazing… he’s hilarious and was definitely someone I kept in touch with after the conference was over.

The conference is what really pushed me full throttle into student activism in the secular world… (I was slightly involved previously, but after that conference I was like a weekly visitor to CFI and pretty insistent about taking over the Guelph group.) I thought about doing some “live blogging” of sorts this year - but then realized that I’d have to take a laptop… and not talk to all my USA friends as much as I’d be blogging. So … I won’t be live blogging, but I’ll bring lots or stories and goodness back with me to write about

Anyway - this year’s conference is in July! Yay! And anyone who is involved with on campus activism and what have yous of secular organizations should DEFINITELY go. I wasn’t 100% into all the speakers last year - although they were really interesting - it was FAR more productive and interesting to interact, network and toss ideas around with so many other student leaders from across North America.

So here’s the info for this year! I hope to see you ALL there! (yay Roy!)

CFI Student Leadership Conference 2008

The Center for Inquiry is pleased to announce our 2008 Student Leadership Conference, to be held July 18-20 at the Center for Inquiry Transnational in Amherst, NY. The conference will feature special keynote addresses by Paul Kurtz, Eddie Tabash, Robert Price, high school activist Matthew LaClair, and others.

The conference marks the 12th anniversary of our campus outreach program and will coincide with the opening weekend of the CFI Institute Summer Session and our annual CFI Community Leaders training weekend. The event brings together student and community activists from around North America for a blowout weekend of workshops, networking, lectures, and top-notch entertainment featuring some of the leading minds in the humanist and skeptic movements. You will not be disappointed!

We encourage every campus group to send at least one representative (if not more!) and we are keeping the costs down to make sure this is possible. Registration, room, and board for the entire three-day event cost only $35 for interested students. A limited number of travel and registration grants are available, based on need, to make sure every group can send a representative even if it lacks the resources to do so. The registration form and grant application can be found here.

So, what are you waiting for? Send in your registration today, or email Debbie Goddard at dgoddard@centerforinquiry.net for more information.

GO GO GO! If you’re going from ANY area that is moderately close by there will likely be a carpool. I know from Toronto we took two cars last year and paid very little for transportation. The whole weekend cost me tops $50… if that. It was such a good time.

So I hope everyone interested will attend! (for more info… although I dont know what else you’d need to know… just e-mail me!)

On Friday CFI held an event with the producer of the Agenda, Wodek Szemberg, on the topic of why we see so few atheists in the media. I *really* wanted to go - but again the whole sick thing got in the way.

I heard feedback about the event that wasn’t so hot, on point in particular stuck out to me where one of the members of our group said he was ignoring/disregarding scientific fact. As someone who has spent the last few years fighting for rationality and science that tickled me wrong. However - when I dug for more info the “truth” of the matter came out.

Some people in the crowd were getting angry because the speaker wasn’t feeling sorry for atheists. Because he was telling it like it is. He claimed that all shows that are free of God and religion, are essentially secular - like a sporting game.

Now I can see why people would get angry about this. Because when they think “secular television” they think TV that is actually catering to their… “movement” or whatever. They are thinking a show ABOUT atheism/secular humanism like the Skeptologist or Point of Inquiry. They’re shows made my skeptics/atheists/humanists to cater to that crowd about issues they deem important.

… People want to see atheist propaganda - and simply secular television isn’t good enough for them. Ah ha. But I see where the confusion is coming in for people.

People want to see loud and proud atheists on TV shouting “WOO DAWKINS!” or talking about how awesome science is. Having a secular program, just isn’t good enough for them. An important point that was made is that they weren’t feeling like the victims anymore - and that wasn’t good. Because if we’re not the victims, how can we make everyone feel sorry for us?

Simply put, I feel bad that this guy took flak from the audience for telling the truth. The fact of the matter is - the proposals that are put in to make secularist television shows are SO lame and cheesy. It’s difficult to create a television show surrounding a movement. There aren’t really that many environmentalist television shows, or feminists television shows. There are shows with feminists on them, there are also shows that are written and directed and produced entirely by women - but the theme isn’t always feminism. That doesn’t make it a non-feminist show.

If there was an “atheist” show on television, I likely wouldn’t watch it. Just like I don’t read many blogs that are loud and proud about atheism 24/7. The one statement that really got me worked up was this by Rod “He sure doesn’t sound like an atheist.”

Why? because he didn’t tell you what you wanted to hear? because he didn’t make it seem like the media was giving atheists a spanking? because he didn’t start spouting anti-religious propaganda? Ask me about my views on religion - I don’t sound like your everyday Dawkins, Hitchens and Harris atheists. I can assure you of that. To say that someone “doesn’t sound like an atheist” because they didn’t tell you that the people in your movement are being victimized is pure crap.

I really wish I would have gone to that talk. I think the speaker was spot on, and deserved much more credit and appreciation than what he was shown.

*UPDATE*

Zak has a blog. I think I knew it existed a long time ago, but couldn’t find it again. Anyway, he does write ups about CFI stuff - and I like them because he a) doesn’t sugar coat things and b) usually formulates some of my thoughts into sentences that I usually don’t know how to formulate. His sum-up of the event:

Overall, the evening was a refreshing look into atheist activism in Canada. I now realize that about half the visitors at CFI events are morons who have more in common with the religions they claim to oppose than the freedom of thought and ideas that CFI is suppose to really be about. However, the question period that followed was long (as was expected) but the questions were generally polite and supportive since the rude and crazy people made themselves heard throughout the presentation and, I suppose, couldn’t think of any new ways to rant. More importantly, the activists in the crowd (the ones who actually do things) were generally supportive of the message being presented so I hope we can use the opportunity to start working towards more productive and realistic goals.

Amen.

*update #2*

So… I had to take all the quotes out from the e-mails, it’s hard to gain the same message from the post, but alas… gotta do. Everyone who has been reading my blog for a while knows I hate more than anything on earth taking stuff off of my blog - especially when it’s been there for more than a few days and has gotten a lot of reads. I remember when the christian camp asked me to take stuff down it nearly went as far as court.

I think the last time I willingly took content down from my site is when a friend of mine was arrested for manslaughter… after I posted the stuff, I decided I didn’t want it up.

However. …I … whatever.

I’m running out of energy to keep blogging. I get in trouble too much.

Last night the Guelph Skeptics were fortunate enough to hold an even featuring one of my favorite science bloggers Larry Moran. The talk was entitled Evolution as a Fact and Theory, and addressed just that. We had just over 80 people show up for the talk, and plenty of discussion right until the school started shutting lights off. Our good friend Andrew from Campus for Christ showed up and gave an entertaining debate on creationism and evolution with Moran.

He asked one of the age old questions about how a bug with chemicals that would explode on their own could evolve. Larry didn’t know the specifics to answer him back, but Ryan (an evolutionary biology prof here at Guelph) has been kind enough to give resources for an answer.

The executives of the Guelph Skeptics took Moran out to dinner before the event. This was nice… I wished it would have been longer, and that my co-executives would have stopped talking so much about biology, there were so many projects I’m working on that I wanted to share with Moran, and so much about religion I would have liked to hear his opinion on. However - I have a very chatty vice-president so I didn’t get to much of what I wanted to say being as quiet as I often am. Such is life, and perhaps I’ll run into him at CFI one of these days and get to talk a little more.

Stuart Kauffman, Ron Brown and Larry Moran at the Center For Inquiry - Ontario, Feb. 8 2008 (click to inflate)

Event synopsis:

REINVENTING THE SACRED: How the Paradigm of Emergence Offers New Scientific Views on the Origin of Life and Biodiversity, Economics, Ethics, and Spirituality

Stuart Kauffman, Institute for Biochemplexity and Informatics, University of Calgary

“I would like to begin a discussion about the first glimmerings of a new scientific world view - beyond reductionism to emergence and radical creativity in the biosphere and human world. This emerging view finds a natural scientific place for value and ethics, and places us as co-creators of the enormous web of emerging complexity that is the evolving biosphere and human economics and culture. In this scientific world view, we can ask: Is it more astonishing that a God created all that exists in six days, or that the natural processes of the creative universe have yielded galaxies, chemistry, life, agency, meaning, value, consciousness, culture without a Creator. In my mind and heart, the overwhelming answer is that the truth as best we know it, that all arose with no Creator agent, all on its wondrous own, is so awesome and stunning that it is God enough for me and I hope much of humankind.”

I was excited for this one! Really, I was… I had the option of leaving slightly early and catching a bus to get home at a decent time, or catching the 11:30 bus and getting home super late and getting no sleep. I was going to catch the late bus… because I wanted to hear this speaker sooo badly.

I left early. …And Pamela followed me out.

Alright, the guy is a great public speaker. His voice is fantastic, he is very eloquent and over all really well spoken. But his talk was just flat out bad and boring. He was so redundant. His main point that went on for over an hour - “biology can not be reduced by physics” … Well no. shit.

He went on with a million and a half examples about why biology couldn’t be reduced by physics… Why physics can’t explain life, basically. He went on. and on. and on. and on about it. And all I could think was “well, no shit buddy - that’s why they are totally different departments.” Physics doesn’t explain why we socialize, or why we decide to get together to have discussion, or why we decide to have complex relationships that ruin our lives or why boys blow up at you and go crazy when you can’t keep plans because you have a life that doesn’t involve them. It just doesn’t explain those things. Because that’s not what physics is the study of.

It would be like me getting up and giving an hour and a half lecture about how photography can’t be reduced by urban planning. Well no shit! Photography has nothing to do with urban planning! (alright, sometimes you take pictures of urban areas to compare, but you get what I’m saying…)

To make matters worse the guy’s ego was taking up all the extra space in the room. Every chance he got he’d drop one of his books or a name like Richard Dawkins, Al Gore or whoever. He was telling a “joke” that involved him saying his “best line” to “Mr. Vice President” … and no one laughed. It was clearly an attempt to show who he had conversed with in his time. The worst part was when he claimed to have found the biological definition for life…… okay.

Kate and I are pretty good at paying attention during these lectures at CFI. No matter how boring everyone else (aka Allen) thinks they are we always pay attention and have a comment or two to share at the end. …But we ended up text messaging each other back and forth through the talk. Pamela and I spent the entire walk to the bus station talking about how horrible the talk had been.

Seriously. I rarely give a bad review of lectures. I think anyone with the intelligence to talk to a room of extremely intelligent people deserves my respect, for sure. I think that most lectures have an ounce of reason to them and I can usually find one or two things to take away from it. But this guy. Oh, this guy. Nothing, I got absolutely nothing.

It wasn’t all horrible. I saw Ron, Kate, Joe, Pamela, Justin… etc, all the CFI people who I wish I got to see more often. Next time I’ll look a little more into the speaker and make sure he isn’t going to be totally horrible.

 Larry Moran and David Colquhoun at Center For Inquiry - Ontario reception

David Colquhoun is by far the most modest and underrated man I have ever met. His talk on Saturday night at the University of Toronto (put on by the University of Toronto Secular Alliance) was really quite interesting. Also the reception before hand at the Center for Inquiry was great too. It was nice to see and talk to everyone again after having been engrossed by other far less important things back here in Guelph. (It was especially great to talk to Amanda Peet who always has a new toy to show off - this time it was an unlocked iPhone… I was a little jealous.)

Although homeopathy isn’t my particular area of interest when it comes to debunking, questioning and researching I am still captivated when other people speak about it. Colquhoun not only showed us all a break down of just how much “200C” really is (basically – nothing) he also showed us an enormous list of Universities offering courses and degrees in homeopathy as a science.

This is particularly frightening. I don’t mind homeopathy being available to people – if you’re prepared to spend a ton of money on a placebo that’s fine, you’re an idiot and that’s not my fault. But when it enters academia it is all kinds of scary. Colquhoun spoke about the complete lack of research and case studies that have been done surrounding homeopathy. The problem, it seems, is that those who support it don’t want to do the research because they know what the outcome will be – that it’s all bunk. But those who know that it’s all bunk and is poisoning our scientific community don’t want to put the millions of dollars into researching it because that money can be used for a much better cause.

The only part of the talk that I was discomforted with was when a member of the audience was “boo”ed for trying to start discussion – for disagreeing. … Grrr. I’d assume that the people who did this were not members of CFI or the UTSA since both groups highly encourage discussion and participation from all angles -  not just the speakers, or our own point of views. Luckily Colquhoun encouraged the debate and all was at ease.

For more on the talk check out The Sandwalk and The Unexamined Life. Also take a glance at the National Post article, it’s really good.

“People now seem to think universities will be better if they’re organized like Wal-Mart. The result is a removal of power over the management of science from the people who are involved in science. I think as soon as science is managed by non-scientists it becomes corrupt. They impose a kind of ubercompetitive regime on people, which actually encourages dishonesty.

“Scientists are not perfect, but they know something about science and consequently the best way to get good results is to leave it to scientists, not MBAs.”