Terahertz

19Jul/080

CFI Day Two or Post-moderninism is ideologically wrong

So today was a long day. I awoke at 6:45 am, had a really nice shower, and headed to breakfast on the first shuttle (I apparently grabbed food before it was kosher this morning, but no one told me not to...). There were several good sessions today.

This morning we listened to scientific naturalist philosopher Dr. John Shook who emphasized my worldview eloquently although arbitraily asserted that no one person can be intelligent so working in groups naturally makes you intelligent (while ignoring any mob psychology), and also giving me some neat ideas about democracy (see later posts).

Later Justin Trottier (CFI-Ontario executive director) gave a pretty good speech on public relations, outreach and the media. And after lunch we used breakout sessions (four fast hours worth) to discuss more Canadian sessions, which was very enlightening.

Then the CFI leaders from across the globe (although mainly from across the States at that time) started arriving (for the CFI Transnational Convocation) which ended with a toast of champagne (the irony being they warned campus leaders not to allow or encourage underage drinking during the conference...).

Finally Paul Kurtz gave an hour and a half speech on Secular Humanism and CFI (although a good speech, he's still pretty dry), followed by Dr. Robert Price discussing “The Age of Unreason” (his new book), which was very entertaining. Amon Dr. Price's best quotes:

“Having 2 PhDs doesn't mean you can get your shoes on...”
“[Julia Sweeney] is God's gift to atheism.”
“It's just a human component to be a wise-ass.”
“Being too polite or dignified in your response is to give your opponent too much ground.”
“[Freethought meetings] shouldn't just be a bunch of nerds, geeks and dweebs.”
“My politics are more Klingon.” [He loved Star Trek]
“Now he's reading Ayn Rand, and liking it.”
“The first humanist I ever knew was Captain Picard”
“Science fiction is the mythology of humanism/atheism.”

And on bad arguments:

“It's so ridiculuous, to describe it is to refute it.”

Overall today was fun, although I have been recruited for a few things I'll be reporting on later, and have a more than full list of topics to blog on for the next week (which is good since I'll be busy with ICOOPMA stuff), as well as new ideas for Terahertz.

I'd like to finish by saying oddly enough we emphasized a couple times today that “freethought naturalists” are opposed to “post-modernist” schools of philosophy, even though everyone who brought it up didn't do it justice to give it a full definision. Basically, they were objecting to relativistic knowledge, which I'll likely have to write more about.

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