CFI Day Three or How to keep conferencing on no sleep
Last night I got to sleep at 6:00 am. I was not the last to go to bed (I got up this morning at 8:45 for a 9:00 am checkout). Needless to say I am tired, and most of the people here are too as well.
Yesterday featured some amazing speakers: Joe Nickell, Matt LeClair (who hung out with the student leaders all evening), and more.
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).
Annoying people at a CFI conference
Annoying person #1: the neo-cons and libertarians here. There's too many and I can't deal with arguing socio-economics any more this weekend (it was my Thursday night arguments).
Annoying person #2: The guy who's in physics which makes him an expert on big bang cosmology and the likes, so he can argue for a deist god, even though he keeps calling himself an atheist. He also argues like a really annoying creationist (very in your face, at least I called him on it last night after a bit of drink).
Annoying person #3: The girl who thinks "old anonymous" (when they were just mischievous hackers online doing stuff for the "lulz") was justified because it was "for the lulz" and also thinks she deserves to call herself a humanist. (I argued with her for an hour before I couldn't do it).
However I have about 13-14 hours of sessions today, and then hopefully I don't get into any arguments tonight.
CFI Transnational or Meeting Freethought Leaders
Crossing the border was easy and fast. We left Toronto at 8:00 am and were in Buffalo by 11:30. They didn't ask twice when my ID was just a birth certificate and driver's license (although the Ontarians wondered what an “Operators License” was).
We shopped around a Buffalo mall through the early afternoon and had an American sized lunch and the Cheesecake Factory (although we didn't have any cheesecake), The deals weren't any better hear, and there's a 8.75% state sales tax on your purchases. I found a couple things at a bookstore at the very least.
Runner Up
I got runner up prize in Hemant's latest Motivational Poster contest. Check out the other winners for this poster.
I also think he borrowed my title 
Western monotheisms and knowledge
Can the “big three” Western Monotheisms (Judaism, Christianity and Islam) justifiably continue the pursuit of knowledge and science without contradicting their faith?
It would seem even the most liberal interpretations are being hypocritical when acquiring knowledge as it directly contradicts the story of the Fall of Eve and Adam in the Garden.
CFI-Ontario or The plane has landed
I arrived in Toronto today almost exactly on schedule We started disembarking the plane at about 2:14pm local, which is exactly what my ticket advertised! Kudos to WestJet!
After a little confusion (Justin Trottier parked at the wrong terminal) I made it to the inconspicuous CFI-Ontario headquarters. Homebase of scepticism in Canada.
I met with Katie, and a few others there and we all went to dinner. There are a large number of events to be prepared for for this conference, and Toronto is uncomfortably warm and muggy. Hopefuly the weather cools or dries a bit, but regardless its so far so good.
I'll post more updates later. Ceers.
It sounds like a bad idea…
I'm not generally for carbon-capture technologies to reduce our emissions, firstly because it seems like a shoot, shovel, and shut-up approach, and second it just puts the problem to the future.
Now some are talking about burying the carbon under the sea off the BC-California coastline. The first thing that rang through my head is "wow, that'd be a lot of carbon dioxide released in a single earthquake, perhaps they're trying to increase the danger of Armageddon scenarios." But the researchers assure us:
While the region is famous for earthquakes and seismic activity, Goldberg and his colleagues have mapped out a 68,000-square-kilometre area they say would be isolated from quakes, hydro thermal vents or other factors that might upset a CO2 storage system.
I'm still questioning it. We don't know a hell of a lot about earthquakes, and again, if in 200 year there were a couple big quakes which moved this 68,000 square kilometre area into the fault region, who's going to clean up the mess?
Carbon sequestering is a screw the future approach to saving the environment. If we're just going to bury the mess we make, we might as well use nuclear energy.
CFI Student Leaders Conference
On Wednesday morning I will leave for Toronto, Ontario. There I will visit CFI-Ontario and several Canadian freethinkers.
Then on Thursday I will head to Amherst, New York (near Buffalo) via carpool to attend the 2008 CFI Student Leaders Conference. Hopefully I'll get a lot of good ideas for the UAAA and can bring some cool SWAG back.
I'll be sure to post from the road as much as possible (since it will also give me a log of what I did there). So stay tuned!
After I get back (Sunday night) I will also be helping out the ICOOPMA conference at the UofA, which is more physics oriented. I'll post a bit on that if I can too.
It looks to be a busy couple weeks!
Friendly hypocrisy
When trying to present the atheist side of the god debate, there's a continuum of ways to go about it (none of this false dichotomy stuff), stretching from the offencive to the friendly way to discuss beliefs.
The offencive way is best illustrated recently my PZ Myers promise to desecrate any stolen communion wafer he can acquire. The friendly way is more espoused by Hemant Mehta who would rather hold constructive dialogues with religious people than offend them.
Each extreme has its advantages, being angry fuels that self-righteous feeling inside, and being friendly means you don't get death threats.
But it occurred to me today, if you are holding dialogues with religious leaders, you are essentially being a hypocrite.
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