Michael Shermer, head of the Skeptics Society, is hosting a two-day conference in Pasadena, California, called "Origins: The Big Questions". It’s all about the origin of man, the Universe, and everything.
Sadly, I can’t go (it’s October 3-4, and I am frightfully busy then) but oh, how I wish I could. My friend Sean Carroll (from Cosmic Variance) will be speaking, and he’s very good. Also, Hugh Ross will be speaking. He’s an old-Earth creationist. Yes, you read that right: he thinks the Bible should be massaged and twisted and strangled so that it supports the notion that it’s still inerrant, but says the Earth is old.
Heh.
So that would be a fun talk to listen to as well. And to top it all off, they have Mr. Deity speaking! OMMD*! I would so dearly love to hear that. The Mr. Deity videos are really, really funny.
This looks to be a great conference, so I encourage my minions to attend. If anyone goes, let us all know in the comments!
September 3rd, 2008 at 8:41 am
Shermer will also be at Penn State for Univ-Con (http://www.univcon.org/) which is hosted by the Paranormal Research Society – the kids from Paranormal State. I would love to hear him talk, but I am not paying $90+ to those folks…
Eric A
September 3rd, 2008 at 8:50 am
Minions?
September 3rd, 2008 at 8:58 am
Wow that would be pretty cool! The Big Bang, the creation of the universe- pretty heady stuff to delve into.
Looks like the Mr. Deity vids are up on YouTube. Have to check those out later.
BA – What’s going on with your webpage though? When it was first set up all the alignment was to the far left. Then it was fixed, but now it done gone all broke ‘gain. It’s kind of hard to read the way it is.
September 3rd, 2008 at 9:06 am
From The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48 [gcide]:
Minion \Min”ion\, n. [F. mignon, fr. OHG. minni love, G. minne;
akin to E. mind. See {Mind}, and cf. {Mignonette}.]
[1913 Webster]
1. A loved one; one highly esteemed and favored; — in a good
sense. [Obs.]
[1913 Webster]
2. An obsequious or servile dependent or agent of another; a
fawning favorite. –Sir J. Davies.
[1913 Webster]
Quiet Desperation: Let us assume BA meant the word “minion” as in definition number 1 above – and not definition number 2.
September 3rd, 2008 at 9:13 am
YOU have minions?
Is that like PZ’s Trophy Wife®?
September 3rd, 2008 at 9:30 am
@QD
Yep. Minions. Picture Phil as Saruman and all of us as his Uruk-Hai. Wait…they lost, didn’t they. Umm…scratch that analogy.
September 3rd, 2008 at 9:59 am
Cheyenne– the site looks fine to me, and nothing has changed for quite some time. What OS and browser are you using?
September 3rd, 2008 at 10:08 am
@Phil:
“Listening to Hugh Ross” = “fun?” Not to me. Tortured reasoning and overt sophistry just make my blood boil. I guess that’s why you have your job, because you can stand to be around such con men without succumbing to the urge to jump up and throttle them. (That’s meant as a compliment to your patience, BTW.)
September 3rd, 2008 at 10:18 am
@Phil Plait
OT, but Phil, any insight into what happened to the Ed Mitchell followup thread (1098 comments) or the antivaxxers and the media thread?
September 3rd, 2008 at 10:25 am
Speaking of talks and such, will you be attending the Alberta Festival of Science again? I would love to get some notice this time so I can plan to attend.
September 3rd, 2008 at 10:31 am
@Phil:
As previously said before: In Google Reader, I have to click and open the discover magazine blog to read you, which is very VERY (emphasis mine) annoying… Can it be fixed?
September 3rd, 2008 at 10:33 am
I’m so there!
September 3rd, 2008 at 11:02 am
You’ve got to give the man credit. An old earth creationist speaking in front of a bunch of skeptics. That takes a certain amount of balls, I guess. Or delusion. Well, regarding he’s a creationist, I suppose it’s straight delusion. Anyway, I’m really looking forward to how this plays out.
Btw. Phil, any comment on McCain’s choice of VP? Regarding religion and science she doesn’t seem to be a much better choice than the dreaded Bobby Jindal. Apart from the excorcism maybe.
September 3rd, 2008 at 11:04 am
Yep. Minions. Picture Phil as Saruman and all of us as his Uruk-Hai. Wait…they lost, didn’t they. Umm…scratch that analogy.
Actually, I always sort of sided with Mordor. Theirs was a struggle against a decrepit old monarchy.
September 3rd, 2008 at 11:05 am
Regarding religion and science she doesn’t seem to be a much better choice than the dreaded Bobby Jindal. Apart from the excorcism maybe.
Um… she’s better looking? Uh oh…
September 3rd, 2008 at 11:23 am
It seems I’m the only male person who actually thinks she’s not really that attractive. I can’t really judge Jindal but at least he seems to be able to hide his crazy on most photographs I’ve seen of him. Can’t say that about Palin, there’s just something in her eyes and her smile that gives me the creeps.
September 3rd, 2008 at 11:31 am
I too am having issues reading your full posts using the feed in Google Reader. Has something changed with the BA feed that it only sends snippets instead of full content?
September 3rd, 2008 at 11:38 am
BA- I’m using Firefox 3 but I think it was something on my end. I hit refresh and it worked fine. I like this new layout you have!
In terms of how good or not good looking she is – She’s a 7. Maybe a 6 1/2. But that’s not really the thing- anybody heard her speak? A bit, um, shrill. Kind of high pitched. That really shouldn’t matter, but it’s a little annoying to hear.
September 3rd, 2008 at 11:56 am
I have a special place in my heart for Hugh Ross. I was raised in the Church of Christ. (Church of Christ = Young Earth Creationism) I didn’t know what evolution meant until I was about 18 years old. When I heard the “E” word, I would tune out because evolution, of course, was evil. Case closed. Well, I started asking questions as I got older, and no one in my church had the answers. I discovered Hugh Ross and Josh McDowell, another old-earth creationist, and thought it was safe to read their books because, after all, they were Christian. Long story short, I kept learning more and more about evolution and decided that my beloved church was wrong. Ten years later, I consider myself atheist and the world makes a lot more sense. Thanks, Hugh Ross!
September 3rd, 2008 at 12:20 pm
Phil, I’m curious to know where you stand on the issue of Panspermia?
Do you consider it a viable hypothesis?
.
September 3rd, 2008 at 12:26 pm
Please bring back the full article in the rss feed! Truncation of is so [...]
September 3rd, 2008 at 12:27 pm
Very cool stuff, but please, BRING FULL RSS FEED BACK!
September 3rd, 2008 at 1:47 pm
Yawn.
That explains it.
Btw, wonder what rationalization got Sean Carroll to overcome his opinions about the TF? (IIRC he rejected to apply for one of their “religions is compatible with science” grants.) But yes, he is good.
Panspermia hasn’t anything to do with origins of any kind, we can’t explain origins of life with it. Panspermia, i it happens, would be part of evolution, explaining how already existing populations distribute and change into new ones. And it was decades or centuries since we described speciation as “origin of species”.
Btw, on that topic, I suspect the idea and term “origin of life” will soon be part of history as well. Seems we will be technically able to detect biospheres of exoplanets and research the environments where abiogenesis occur. As soon as abiogenesis is seen as a regularly occurring process, likely a few decades from now, it will be discussed as such analogous to evolution of species.
Hmm, come to think of it, if inflationary cosmologies stands firm and implies that universes budding off is a regular process as well, maybe all of the former “origin” terms will pass to history.
September 3rd, 2008 at 1:49 pm
BA- not that it’s really important but I figured out the issue with the alingment. I run Firefox 3, when I hit the “Minimize/Mazimize” button, and the browser sizes from full size to something less than that it pushes the text to align all the way to the left.
Minor issue, solved, just thought you might want to know.
September 3rd, 2008 at 2:05 pm
I’m a Hugh Ross fan. I’ve heard him speak a few times. He’s a good guy, and really believes what he’s talking about. I wish you could hear him speak sometime. I know he’s not going to change minds, but he may lend some credibility to the creationist position.
Regarding the comment about Dr. Ross twisting the Bible into support for old earth creationism, young earth creationists are as good with theology as they are with science. Many solid theologians have no problem with millions of years.
September 3rd, 2008 at 3:53 pm
>>>” I’m a Hugh Ross fan. I’ve heard him speak a few times. He’s a good guy, and really believes what he’s talking about. I wish you could hear him speak sometime. I know he’s not going to change minds, but he may lend some credibility to the creationist position.
Regarding the comment about Dr. Ross twisting the Bible into support for old earth creationism, young earth creationists are as good with theology as they are with science. Many solid theologians have no problem with millions of years.”
Heheheheheheeeheeeehehehe! Have fun, people!
September 3rd, 2008 at 4:37 pm
What is thy bidding, my master?
September 4th, 2008 at 3:30 am
god some of you guys are so bigoted
September 4th, 2008 at 3:50 am
quasidog, I thought it was illegal to have more than one wife?
September 4th, 2008 at 4:30 am
I tried reading a Hugh Ross book once. He has some ridiculous views for an “apologist”, like where he talks about sea mammals. He basically says “Whales couldn’t have evolved; the transitional forms of whales were independently created at different times.”
September 4th, 2008 at 6:28 am
If anyone is interested, you can download the Flyer (PDF) of the above mentioned conference from here:
http://media.richarddawkins.net/documents/2008/SkepticConference08-lo.pdf
September 5th, 2008 at 6:07 am
I don’t agree with Hugh Ross — he seems to artfully ignore the volumes of evidence in support of common descent, for example, to support his notions of special creation. But at least he acknowledges (a) that the Bible doesn’t seem the least bit interested in telling us how old the Earth is, and (b) that science is an excellent tool for getting answers to things like this. That’s a heck of a lot more than a lot of Christians here in the States will give you.
September 7th, 2008 at 11:49 pm
Any college students going? Two of my friends and I are flying from Ohio to go because we’re nerdy enough to consider this a vacation (plus we’re looking at CalTech for grad. school, so we’re not completely insane). Anyway, I was just wondering.
September 24th, 2008 at 10:39 am
[...] mixed up with Templeton at all, and it’s been discussed a bit in our beloved blogosphere: see Bad Astronomy, Pharyngula, and Richard [...]