Sandwalk: PZ Myers Is Coming to Toronto

Friday, September 12, 2008

PZ Myers Is Coming to Toronto

PZ Myers will be giving a talk in Toronto in an event sponsored by the University of Toronto Secular Alliance (UTSA) and the Toronto Center for Inquiry.¹

CFI ONTARIO HOSTS PZ MYERS IN TORONTO

TICKETS AVAILABLE FOR WORLD LEADING ATHEIST & SCIENCE BLOGGER

"SCIENCE EDUCATION: THE WAR BETWEEN SCIENCE AND RELIGION!"²

Friday, October 31, 7:30 pm - 9:30 pm
location - MacLeod Auditorium Medical Science Building, 1 King's College Circle, Room 2158, Toronto, ON, M5S1A8

Centre for Inquiry - Ontario and the University of Toronto Secular Alliance present the popular biologist and author of the stimulating blog Pharyngula. Pharyngula is the world's leading blog dealing with science, atheism, religion and education, especially the creationism-evolution controversy. Dr. Myers was featured prominently in the recent film Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, dealing with the supposed conspiracy to keep ID out of American universities. Dr. Myers was famously "Expelled" from the premiere screening of the very same film.

Dr. Myers is an associate professor of biology at the University of Minnesota, Morris. He obtained his B.S in zoology from the university of Washington and his Ph.D. in biology from the Institute of Neuroscience, University of Oregon.

TICKETS and PRICES!

*NEW AND RENEWING CFI MEMBERS: FREE!!
By becoming a CFI member you will gain free admission to our events, discounts on conferences at all branches, 15% discount on selected Prometheus books, access to FREE MEMBERS ONLY receptions with selected speakers, and reduced subscription rate to Free Inquiry and Skeptical Inquirer. Upcoming events include JAMES BISS - Magician and Mentalist, NICA LALLI - Author, 9/11 DEBATE, DAN FALK - Science Journalist, and many more!

*STUDENTS AND MEMBERS: $5

*REGULAR ADVANCED: $8

*REGULAR AT THE DOOR: $10

Get your tickets in advance to ensure a spot! Buy early as prices may rise. You may:
Buy tickets online through paypal at PZ Myers Comes to Toronto.

Buy tickets in person at the Centre for Inquiry - Ontario (216 Beverely St.) during our opening hours (1-9pm Mon-Fri, 1-5pm Sat-Sun).

Buy tickets through a cheque to: Centre For Inquiry 216 Beverley St. Toronto, ON M5T 1Z3
*Please note if you are sending a cheque please send it before October 24th
Please note that you WILL NOT be given a physical ticket. Your name will be added to a ticket list. Thus you should *arrive early* at the event location to find the appropriate line-up and gain access to the event. Please arrive at least a half an hour before the event. Box Office opens at 6pm.

Full event info: PZ Myers Comes to Toronto.
Please Note: The J.J.R. MacLeod Auditorium is located in the Medical Sciences Building, University of Toronto on the north-west corner of College and University Ave. The closest subway station to the Medical Sciences Building is the Queens
Park exit.

1. We will be sponsoring a number of parties and social events in honor of PZ's visit to Toronto. Watch this blog for more information as the date approaches. We may even invite PZ to some of the events so you can meet him in person. He's actually a pretty nice guy when you get to know him.

2. Here's what PZ says about this talk as he leaves for Denver, "I'm going to gargle some tabasco before giving it, because this one needs to contain some bile and pepper, sorry to say. I'm going to say exactly what's wrong with the state of science education today, and it's all those weasely suck-ups who make excuses for religious idiocy. Anyway, if you can't make the talk, now you know what I'm going to say. It should be fun. It's OK if people argue with me, too. I expect people to fight back."

5 comments :

Eamon Knight said...: What's a "world-leading atheist"? Someone who disbelieves more, and sooner, than everyone else? However, we have our tickets; will see y'all there (well, unless CFI hires burly rent-a-cops to arbitrarily expell random attendees).; Friday, September 12, 2008 4:52:00 PM
Anonymous said...: Thanks, Prof. Moran.

Just FYI, your Paypal link is wrong. The correct one is http://www.centerforinquiry.net/ontario/events/pz_myers_of_pharyngula_comes_to_toronto/

Eamon, glad to see another Ottawa resident who will be attending. Maybe we can scare up a few more, eh? Let's talk at the PharynguFest at the Clock Tower in a couple of weeks.; Friday, September 12, 2008 5:16:00 PM
Eamon Knight said...: Eamon, glad to see another Ottawa resident who will be attending. Maybe we can scare up a few more, eh?

There was keen interest from several people at the last Ottawa Skeptics meeting. We shall see how many make it.; Saturday, September 13, 2008 12:29:00 AM
Ritchie Annand said...: Bastards!

Ermm, I mean, I guess I'll try to go drive up to Edmonton when he's there.; Saturday, September 13, 2008 2:44:00 AM
Anonymous said...: I wouldn't mind *meeting* PZ, but I'm probably not interested in attending the talk. (I don't think I'll learn anything new, and I'll probably just get irritated.)
So if there are any events he will be at while he's in town that have less chance of evolving (oh, haha) into a re-enactment of the average comment thread on Pharyngula than the talk I'd like to hear about those.; Sunday, September 14, 2008 4:55:00 PM

Quotations

The old argument of design in nature, as given by Paley, which formerly seemed to me to be so conclusive, fails, now that the law of natural selection has been discovered. We can no longer argue that, for instance, the beautiful hinge of a bivalve shell must have been made by an intelligent being, like the hinge of a door by man. There seems to be no more design in the variability of organic beings and in the action of natural selection, than in the course which the wind blows.Charles Darwin (c1880)

Although I am fully convinced of the truth of the views given in this volume, I by no means expect to convince experienced naturalists whose minds are stocked with a multitude of facts all viewed, during a long course of years, from a point of view directly opposite to mine. It is so easy to hide our ignorance under such expressions as "plan of creation," "unity of design," etc., and to think that we give an explanation when we only restate a fact. Any one whose disposition leads him to attach more weight to unexplained difficulties than to the explanation of a certain number of facts will certainly reject the theory.

Charles Darwin (1859)

Science reveals where religion conceals. Where religion purports to explain, it actually resorts to tautology. To assert that "God did it" is no more than an admission of ignorance dressed deceitfully as an explanation...

Peter Atkins

Quotations

The world is not inhabited exclusively by fools, and when a subject arouses intense interest, as this one has, something other than semantics is usually at stake. Stephen Jay Gould (1982)
I have championed contingency, and will continue to do so, because its large realm and legitimate claims have been so poorly attended by evolutionary scientists who cannot discern the beat of this different drummer while their brains and ears remain tuned to only the sounds of general theory. Stephen Jay Gould (2002) p.1339
The essence of Darwinism lies in its claim that natural selection creates the fit. Variation is ubiquitous and random in direction. It supplies raw material only. Natural selection directs the course of evolutionary change. Stephen Jay Gould (1977)
Rudyard Kipling asked how the leopard got its spots, the rhino its wrinkled skin. He called his answers "just-so stories." When evolutionists try to explain form and behavior, they also tell just-so stories—and the agent is natural selection. Virtuosity in invention replaces testability as the criterion for acceptance. Stephen Jay Gould (1980)
Since 'change of gene frequencies in populations' is the 'official' definition of evolution, randomness has transgressed Darwin's border and asserted itself as an agent of evolutionary change. Stephen Jay Gould (1983) p.335
The first commandment for all versions of NOMA might be summarized by stating: "Thou shalt not mix the magisteria by claiming that God directly ordains important events in the history of nature by special interference knowable only through revelation and not accessible to science." In common parlance, we refer to such special interference as "miracle"—operationally defined as a unique and temporary suspension of natural law to reorder the facts of nature by divine fiat. Stephen Jay Gould (1999) p.84

Quotations

My own view is that conclusions about the evolution of human behavior should be based on research at least as rigorous as that used in studying nonhuman animals. And if you read the animal behavior journals, you'll see that this requirement sets the bar pretty high, so that many assertions about evolutionary psychology sink without a trace.

Jerry Coyne
Why Evolution Is True

I once made the remark that two things disappeared in 1990: one was communism, the other was biochemistry and that only one of them should be allowed to come back.

Sydney Brenner
TIBS Dec. 2000

It is naïve to think that if a species' environment changes the species must adapt or else become extinct.... Just as a changed environment need not set in motion selection for new adaptations, new adaptations may evolve in an unchanging environment if new mutations arise that are superior to any pre-existing variations

Douglas Futuyma

One of the most frightening things in the Western world, and in this country in particular, is the number of people who believe in things that are scientifically false. If someone tells me that the earth is less than 10,000 years old, in my opinion he should see a psychiatrist.

Francis Crick

There will be no difficulty in computers being adapted to biology. There will be luddites. But they will be buried.

Sydney Brenner

An atheist before Darwin could have said, following Hume: 'I have no explanation for complex biological design. All I know is that God isn't a good explanation, so we must wait and hope that somebody comes up with a better one.' I can't help feeling that such a position, though logically sound, would have left one feeling pretty unsatisfied, and that although atheism might have been logically tenable before Darwin, Darwin made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist

Richard Dawkins

Another curious aspect of the theory of evolution is that everybody thinks he understand it. I mean philosophers, social scientists, and so on. While in fact very few people understand it, actually as it stands, even as it stood when Darwin expressed it, and even less as we now may be able to understand it in biology.

Jacques Monod

The false view of evolution as a process of global optimizing has been applied literally by engineers who, taken in by a mistaken metaphor, have attempted to find globally optimal solutions to design problems by writing programs that model evolution by natural selection.

Richard Lewontin

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Friday, September 12, 2008

PZ Myers Is Coming to Toronto

5 comments :