Greater Worcester Humanists Meeting: Big News

Last night, LL and I went to the Greater Worcester Humanists holiday pot luck and yankee swap. There was a big announcement to start things off. Our chapter's president, David Niose, has been named president of the American Humanist Association. He'll begin serving his two-year term in January, moving up from his current position as treasurer of the organization.

It was also reported that due to the ongoing growth and success of we Greater Worcester Humanists, Cambridge-based Humanist Association of Massachusetts will be changing its name to Greater Boston Humanists to better convey their geographic extent. Big news; GWH is on the map all over the country.

The yankee swap was a hoot. The gifts ranged from the intellectual to the mundane to the hilarious. The most-swapped-for items were a Top 10 reasons why beer is better than Jesus pint glass and the Evolving Darwin play set. LL picked this one from the present pile but it got swapped away for a set of antlers. I was luckier; I traded a Disappearing Civil Liberties mug for a Holy Toast! Virgin Mary bread stamper. I can't wait to try it out.

The present I brought was an assortment of three books: Gould's The Panda's Thumb, Michael Shermer's Why People Believe Weird Things, and The Good Spell Book: Love Charms, Magical Cures, and Other Practical Sorcery. What good is Shermer's book without some weird beliefs as a companion volume, after all? As luck would have it, the person who wound up with the books was a woman whom I think was at least in her early 80's. I told her that I hoped the love spells would work for her. If she shows up at the next meeting with a 20 year-old boy toy, we'll all know why.

Since the Evolving Darwin Play Set seems to be the hot Humanist toy this year, I thought it would be only fair to "teach the controversy." I've thus intelligently designed an analogous toy for Creationists, the Creationist Darwin Play Set. Here's my prototype:

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Greater Worcester Humanists: Potluck and Yankee Swap

Speaking of the Greater Worcester Humanists, our next event will take place on Tuesday, December 9. It's a potluck dinner and yankee swap:

We will host a Dual Humanist Celebration for HumanLight and Human Rights Day which both occur this month. Further information will be listed here, as well as at Meetup.com.

This will be a potluck dinner so plan to bring some munchies! A casserole, dessert, finger food or your specialty dish is appreciated. A safe bet is usually some kind of entree or appetizer. We usually start eating around 6:30.

We will also be having a Yankee swap. Each person that wishes to participate in the swap should bring a small (if possible, "humanism" related gift (suggested target price range of about $10). Last year's event was a fun time, with good food and good company, not to mention some pretty interesting and humorous gifts.

— Source

I'm not entirely sure yet of what I'm bringing for the potluck. I've signed up for an entree, though. I'm thinking about whipping up some hoppin' john. Most people around here have never heard of the stuff, and a bit of novelty goes a long way.

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Non-Belief in America: A Rising Tide of Reason?

I find a recent story in The Wall Street Journal encouraging (hyphal tip to Greater Worcester Humanists for the lead). It talks about the growth and emergence of the secular movement in the USA and the rather humorous, panicky attempts by religious extremists to push back against it.

Atheists Reach Out -- Just Don't Call It Proselytizing

Nonbelievers Think the Time Is Right to Better Organize Their Nonreligion and Swell the Membership; 'Reason's Greetings'

...During the past three years, membership has grown in local and national associations of nonbelievers. Books attacking faith as a delusion shot up best-seller lists. For the first time, the faithless even raised enough funds to hire a congressional lobbyist.

Building on that momentum, nonbelievers have begun a very public campaign to win broad acceptance. On billboards and bus ads, radio commercials and the Internet, atheists are coming forward to declare, quite simply: We're here. And we're just like you...

Not so fast, religious leaders respond. They point out that the vast majority of Americans believe in God. A poll by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life earlier this year found 71% of American adults are absolutely certain God -- or some sort of universal spirit -- exists, and a further 17% said they were fairly certain. Only 5% said flatly that they don't believe.

Atheists "are talking to a very small slice of the population," said Mathew Staver, a leading Christian conservative and law-school dean. "In some ways, they're really just talking to themselves..."

Of course Staver would say that. Staver says a lot of things that don't make much sense. As far as his being a "law-school dean," that's technically true... if you consider Liberty University a school instead of a religious indoctrination center. That's a hard case to make in light of their doctrinal statement and the statement of belief that all faculty there is required to sign, though.

In this case, Staver is twisting facts to suit his argument when he says "only" 5%. Even if that figure were true, 5% is not an insubstantial number of people. To put it in context, the Pew Forum's most recent U.S. Religious Landscape Survey shows that only 1.7% of the population follows Judaism and 1.7% is Mormon. Unless Staver wishes to argue that Jews and Mormons have no impact on the rest of America, that they are "really just talking to themselves," then the same can't be said about nonbelievers. I wonder how these other groups feel about Staver suggesting that they should be ignored?

Secularist groups say their membership began to surge in 2005, when Congress sought to prevent Terri Schiavo's husband from removing her feeding tube. Many new members said they hoped nonbelievers could serve as a counterweight to religious influence in political affairs...

Bingo. As is noted later in this article, the rational community is by no means homogeneous and, by its very nature, is not particularly prone to organizational efforts for that reason. Still, the increasing stranglehold of those who believe that their religion should serve as the blueprint for law over political discourse in this country has served as a goad for nonbelievers to put aside differences and come together to push back against the American shariah movement. We can have rational arguments about those areas of disagreement later; they're just not as important in light of a much greater challenge. To do otherwise is tantamount to rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.

Rather than renew old battles, such as the symbolic fight to remove "In God We Trust" from currency, members are mobilizing to repair what they view as breaches of the wall between church and state -- such as federal funding for faith-based charities and teaching of intelligent design in science class. They believe many others sympathize with their views -- but are too timid to commit.

I have to admit that as much as I usually dislike having "In God We Trust" on currency, there's a certain irony to the slogan that I can enjoy during the current economic meltdown.

The new ad campaigns and other public-relations efforts are designed to raise comfort levels about atheism by making the point that nonbelievers are "just as ethical and moral as anyone else," said Lori Lipman Brown, who lobbies Congress on behalf of the Secular Coalition for America.

As Doug Krueger, a philosophy professor in northwest Arkansas, put it: "Step one is for people to know we're not crazy, we're just regular people [who have] perfectly satisfactory lives without believing in God."

There's an irony, too, in the necessity for people who don't believe in an invisible, omnipotent being and its winged, praise-singing minions to demonstrate that they aren't crazy while belief in divine intervention and incorporeal evil spirits is the norm. Sarah Palin can talk about an immaterial divine hand "opening doors" for her to "plow through" and much of America nods its head in agreement that such things happen, but if we contend that no bearded man from a parallel dimension provides opportunities, that we humans are responsible for the state of our own and one another's lives, we're a bunch of misfits!

So the American Humanist Association is spending $42,000 to plaster buses in Washington, D.C., with ads asking: "Why believe in a god? Just be good for goodness' sake." FreeThoughtAction and its local affiliates have put up billboards all over the country asking: "Don't believe in God? You are not alone." Eight billboards are going up this month in Denver...

Organizers of such efforts generally say they aren't trying to evangelize. Instead, they say their goal is to make the public more comfortable with the concept of atheism and give fellow nonbelievers a sense of community.

In seeking the spotlight, the movement risks a backlash. Some Christians find the billboards deeply offensive, especially at this time of year. In recent weeks, press releases from the religious right have accused atheists of "mocking" and "insulting" Christmas. In rural Chambersburg, Pa., one Christian group responded to an "Imagine No Religion" billboard with a giant sign of their own, asking: "Why Do Atheists Hate America?"

Ah, there's the humorous part. It hearkens back to the days of 2003, when 83% of Americans supported the invasion of Iraq and those of us who thought it a bad idea were confronted with that stupid question, "Why do you hate America?" If any empty-headed question is symbolic of blind faith, of going along with the crowd simply because it's the majority, that's the one. And just as we in that 17% minority spoke our minds then not because we hated America but because we hoped to steer it away from a direction we thought bad for it, those of us in the 5% that Staver insists is talking to itself are trying to change the course of America toward one that leads to greater reason, to policy based on empirical reality rather than wishful thinking, and to a better future in general. It has nothing to do with hating anything, whether it's a religion or a country, and everything to do with simply being rational. If we have to organize to do that, if we have to reach out to others who have no connection to other nonbelievers in their own localities, so be it.

Still, leading activists say nonbelievers tend to be just as wary of organized atheism as they are of organized religion -- making it tough to pull together a cohesive movement.

"A pastor can say to his flock, 'All rise,' and everyone rises. But try that in an atheist meeting," said Marvin Straus, co-founder of an atheist group in Boulder, Colo. "A third of the people will rise. A third will tell you to go to hell. And a third will start arguing....That's why it's hard to say where we're going as a movement."

No kidding! Independent thought doesn't necessarily lead to agreement; it often results in the opposite. Aside from the core idea behind secular thought — that theology shouldn't be the basis for policies that affect the lives of all Americans — there's plenty of disagreement and debate about the particulars and priorities beyond. That very debate, though, is what reason should encourage. It's how a society learns, changes and progresses. If you find ten nonbelievers in a room agreeing with one another about some aspect of social policy, you can bet that they've been in that room for at least a couple of hours and half of them will probably have exhausted their voices. The very fact that we can change our minds is a strength.

If the theocratically-inclined find this offensive, if they believe that their religions are under attack because we put up a billboard expressing dissent against it and offering some other way of thinking, too bad. It's going to keep happening and all indicators point to it becoming more widespread, not less. That's America for you, and that very freedom is one of the reasons that I, and other secularists, believe it's worth inciting the outrage of those who would take it away. It's a risk we're willing to take on behalf of our country.

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Worcester: Speaking of Politics

If your one of those people who hasn't had their fill of slicing and dicing the results of this last election and what it means going forward, and you happen to live in or near Worcester, consider coming to the UU church on Holden Street at 7:00 PM tomorrow night. The Greater Worcester Humanists will be holding an open discussion about these topics.

The event is free and open to the public. Moreover, tickets will be on sale for the GWH's Darwin Bicentennial celebration to be held on February 14 at the Tower Hill Botanical Garden in Boylston. Tickets to the event are $45 and include a luncheon, music and a talk by Harvard biologist David Haig.

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Worcester Humanists Outing with Matthew LaClair

Greater Worcester Humanists held its third annual summer outing at the UU Church on Holden Street yesterday. The weather was fine, the food was good, and the conversation was jocular and illuminating.

The main event on the afternoon's agenda was a presentation by young humanist activist Matthew LaClair of Kearney, NJ. Readers may recall that LaClair was a junior in high school when he crossed paths with American History teacher and Baptist minister David Paszkiewicz, a popular teacher and full-time preacher who used the classroom as his pulpit. LaClair played excerpts from the recordings he made of Paszkiewicz's lessons as well as his statements during a meeting between LaClair, Paszkiewicz, principal Alfred Somma and superintendent Robert Mooney. His story is quite compelling, particularly in light of the maneuverings that took place by religious elements in both the academic administration and the news media after the story broke. It was too windy yesterday to record LaClair's presentation, but a similar one is available for viewing at C. Moran's Blog on the GWH website. Some of the audio recorded by LaClair can also be heard by playing the following MP3. The beginning of it is a bit muffled, so be patient. The quality improves.

boomp3.com
Matt spoke for nearly two hours, ultimately fielding every question that came from the audience of about 50 people. I remember when I was 18 and had that kind of stamina! Well, vaguely, anyhow. It was the first time I've heard LaClair speak and I was impressed by what I heard. He was articulate and thoughtful well beyond what I'm used to experiencing from people his age. Matthew will be starting college at The New School in New York this fall and plans to major in journalism.

The Worcester Telegram and Gazette covered LaClair's talk; there's an article in this morning's edition by Bronislaus Kush in this morning's edition. It's a bit strange, though. For example, the photo that accompanies the article is not from the presentation given yesterday; it appears to be a very bad job of photoshopping that was composited from several different photographs). Most of the quotes in the article aren't real quotes but a paraphrasing of what LaClair said. The first paragraph is inaccurate as far as I recall; LaClair never said that he took the class hoping to learn about "how the founding fathers, among other things, framed the U.S. Constitution to guarantee that the government would be free of religious influences." Nor did he ever say that he "...should have guessed that he might find Mr. Paszkiewicz's course objectionable." Ironically, it seems that the article in the T&G is another example of the same sort of media bias that LaClair talked about during his presentation. Where the bit about LaClair reporting that the history teacher claimed that there were dinosaurs aboard Noah's Ark came from is beyond me; LaClair never mentioned it and it wasn't in any of the audio or video that he used in his presentation. It's worth noting that Kush has written some biased and inaccurate article in the T&G before on the subject of religion; it's not the first time his byline has appeared in this blog (see Catholic Men's Conference in Worcester Gets an Earful of Anthropic Fine-Tuning for a previous instance of Kush's reporting).

I spoke with facilitator David Niose about the possibility of having Michael Dowd give a presentation to our group next spring. David hadn't had time to go over the material I'd sent him — understandable, considering the schedule he keeps — but the outcome of our talk was positive in terms of the possibility becoming a reality. The next step in that will be to run the information by the GWH steering committee, which I'll get to over the course of the coming week.

Interestingly, one of the topics of conversation that came up at our table was that of the now-infamous Magic Cracker Kidnapping Incident. I promise that I wasn't the one who introduced it; the subject was broached by a woman whose name tag read Anne if I'm recalling correctly (and I apologize if I'm getting that wrong). This led into a broader talk about religious ritual in general, particularly as it pertains to Catholicism and Judaism and how complicated it all is. As all of the discussion of the incident in which I've been involved over the past couple of days has been in the nebulous blogosphere, I found it interesting to hear the discussion that took place in meatspace where at least half of those involved were not bloggers. It doesn't seem to make a difference, though. Everyone was agreed that Bill Donohue is a distemperate buffoon as far as I could discern. Those who knew of the fellow held that opinion of him before this latest incident, though, so this isn't exactly a surprise.

Tycho came along to the outing as well and got on well with the Humanists despite his not being human himself. He got to sample some of the fruit salad that someone brought and seemed to enjoy all the attention he got. There was one little boy there who was particularly enthused about Tycho's presence, so after a couple of hours, when Tycho had tired of riding on my shoulder and wanted to go exploring, I let him run around on the grass. The little boy followed him around and was quite focused on his behavior. At least a dozen people were brave enough to make physical contact with Tycho and everyone wanted to know to where he was native, what he ate, etc. It was a big day for Tycho and by the time the outing ended at 4:00 PM, Tycho was exhausted. He fell asleep in the car on the way home and didn't wake up when I put him back in his cage. This morning, he woke up hyper and, I think, ready to go out and explore the world some more.

It was a quite enjoyable day overall, despite the announcement that the membership fee is being increased for next year. If I can scrape the money together, though, I'll become a paid member. There's no meeting for GWH in August; the next one is on September 9, which I'll have to miss as I won't be back from fieldwork in Florida until the day after. I guess I'll see the GWH people next in October, then, when there is going to be a special surprise speaker. Who? I don't know. If I did, it wouldn't be much of a surprise. At some point next year, though, we're going to have Michael Newdow address the group.

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Matthew LaClair Visiting Greater Worcester Humanists in July

Matthew LaClair, the high school student from New Jersey who took on a teacher who used his classroom as a religious pulpit in 2006 and a civic textbook used to indoctrinate political bias, is scheduled to be a guest of the Greater Worcester Humanists at their summer outing on July 12.

..on Saturday, July 12, we'll be having our summer outing on the grounds of the UU Church of Worcester. Right now we tentatively have two important guests attending this event. One will be Matthew LaClair, the New Jersey high school kid (soon to be college kid) who was disciplined for secretly taping his public school teacher preaching conservative religion to his classroom. Matthew more recently has been involved in challenging anti-science content in textbooks...

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Some Thoughts on "Religion and Politics in an Election Year"

Last night's Greater Worcester Humanists event, a discussion panel on Religion and Politics in an Election Year was interesting in one vein and not terribly interesting in another. I had to leave at 9:00 and so might have missed something of interest, but overall I didn't hear anything new or unexpected. By and large, it was a panel of very nice people who have slightly different points of view but generally agreed with one another that while people's faiths will influence their politics, it isn't appropriate for clergy to tell people what to think and how to vote on almost all issues and that religion or the lack thereof is a personal thing.

That's a very liberal, New England-influenced approach to religion. I say that as someone who not so long ago lived in a place where the opposite view was much more common. Religion and politics are frequently inseparable in great swathes of America, and certainly in North Florida they tend to be tightly linked. One need only look at the recent battles over teaching evolution and the role of the First Baptist Church therein for a pretty typical instance of this. On a personal level, then, the meeting was a reminder to me of how different things are here and how glad I am to be in a place once again where this is the case.

On the other hand, some basic assumptions made by the religious — as inclusive as they might be — wound up going unchallenged. For instance, there was an agreement on the panel that a proper role for the religious is to be the conscience of the country. Is that really true, though? Perhaps the argument could be made that religious people might be a useful conscience for other religious people, but I don't think it's necessary to have religion to have a moral conscience, whether on the personal, local or national level.

At one point in the discussion, Father Frank Scollen stated that whatever religion one looked at, one could see that religion gave meaning to people's lives. His assertion was essentially that religion creates meaning in this regard and so one sees this common thread through all faiths. This isn't an unusual argument, but I think its equally plausible that religions are created in the first place as a response to our finding meaning in the first place, and that meaning arises as a function of interaction with one's environment, particularly when this happens in a social context. Any particular religion bears the mark of the society in which it is created and practiced, and surely the specific meaning ascribed by a given religion to the life of the individual varies with culture. Scollen's statement is an arrogation of meaning; he seems to be saying that without religion there would be a paucity of meaning and so of valuing of individual human life. I don't see evidence for that being the case. All of us find meaning in things that are far removed from religious ideas unless we are so wrapped up in an ideology that our individuality loses its value in our own eyes, and this may be why cults work the way they do (e.g., Jim Jones and The People's Temple certainly overwhelmed their adherents with notions of meaning but as clearly diminished the importance of individual value). I don't think Scollen made the statement with any malicious intent whatsoever toward humanists or atheists or what have you; it's just the way that he, as a priest — someone for whom meaning is defined by religion — thinks about life.

At another point, Tahir Ali (of the Worcester Islamic Center and American Muslim Alliance) made a statement in passing that "not having faith is itself a faith." That's one that gets tossed around quite a lot, and when Mr. Ali recited it he did so in such an off-the-cuff manner that nobody in the audience managed to challenge it. Perhaps most of them didn't even notice it; I can't say. I can only say that I did catch it and that, as always, its simply a wrong-headed statement. As others have pointed out many times over, not having faith is a faith in the same way that not collecting stamps is a hobby, particularly when the assertion being made is really that not having faith in religion of any sort is itself a faith. One can have faith based on precedent and evidence in entirely rational things without ever placing any credence at all upon universal morality, supernatural intercession, divinity, or the notion (as put with a good deal of emphasis by Imam Kareem, who accompanied Mr. Ali) that a particular text is "exactly" the word of God to some prophet. These are very different things; Ali conflated faith that is the belief in things unseen with that which is based precisely upon that which evidence supports. Technically speaking, the latter is inference and not faith.

David Niose made the point that irreligious people don't have a problem with other people believing in whatever thay like per se but with the way in which religion is exalted, as he put it, in American society. In subtle ways, I think the rest of the panel — as affable and inclusive as they were — proved his point, albeit in relatively subtle ways as I've noted to this point. Perhaps the least subtle comment of the evening in this regard came from St. Francis Episcopal Church rector Richard Simpson. Simpson, while again a very inclusive sort of person who speaks from what seems to be a genuinely broad mind when it comes to social issues, made particular mention of Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens, casting them as people who consider God to be evil. This would be particularly odd in consideration that both maintain that God doesn't exist in the first place; what Simpson was really saying, as far as I could see, is that he believes they consider religion to be inherently evil. I don't think this is a fair assessment, particularly when it comes to Dawkins (I'm not nearly so familiar with Hitchens). That Dawkins criticizes religious thinking is true, but that's not the same thing as calling all religion maleficent. That Dawkins points out that religious belief can open the door to cynical manipulations is also true, and Simpson had a greed with a similar point made by someone else on the panel earlier in the discussion (I think it was UU Minister Aaron Payson, but I may be incorrect). It seemed to me that Simpson's problem with Dawkins essentially comes down to his being a critic of religion who comes from outside of a religious context, and this speaks to Niose's point. If religion isn't going to be exalted — that is, set apart in some way — than it has to be subject to criticism from without as well as from within. Among the religious, what Dawkins does is sometimes termed "New Atheism," but how new is it?

Thomas Jefferson said a couple of centuries ago:

History, I believe, furnishes no example of a priest-ridden people maintaining a free civil government. This marks the lowest grade of ignorance of which their civil as well as religious leaders will always avail themselves for their own purposes.

— Letter to Alexander von Humboldt, 1813

Moreover, Thomas Paine in The Age of Reason had some things to say about Christianity in particularly that are just as critical, if not moreso, than anything Richard Dawkins has ever said on the matter — and Paine himself was more a Deist than an atheist!

This single reflection will show, that the doctrine of redemption is founded on a mere pecuniary idea corresponding to that of a debt which another person might pay; and as this pecuniary idea corresponds again with the system of second redemption, obtained through the means of money given to the Church for pardons, the probability is that the same persons fabricated both the one and the other of those theories; and that, in truth there is no such thing as redemption — that it is fabulous, and that man stands in the same relative condition with his Maker as he ever did stand since man existed, and that it is his greatest consolation to think so.

— The Age of Reason, Part First, Section 6

All in all, I don't find myself coming away with any new insights or having changed my mind about anything due to last night's meeting. I'm glad to know that religious and irreligious people appear to get on with each other better in this part of the country than in the part in which I was until a few months ago a resident. I still think that there are fundamental problems with a mindset based in religion, however, of which even the bearer of such a mind may be unaware. In a person of liberal mind in general, this is not a terrifically troublesome thing. I didn't get the impression from anyone on last night's panel that they would be inclined to force their views onto others or to defend against an argument with any sort of violence, physical or psychological. On the other hand, these small inconsistencies and presumptions can, in someone who takes a more myopic view of the world, fester into the sort of religious psychosis that afflicts much of our country today. What is simply a flaw in logic in one becomes a bigotry in the other. The leap from one to the other is not itself a momentum imparted by religion, but without the critics to point these things out, I think there would be many more people falling over the cliff than we have already.

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Irreligious Things to Do in Massachusetts: Humanists and Skeptics

Tomorrow at 7:00 PM, the Greater Worcester Humanists will be meeting at the Unitarian Universalist Church at 90 Holden Street to discuss Religion and Politics in an Election Year. There will be a panel discussion and QA session. Panelists for the meeting are:

• Rev. Richard Simpson, Rector of St. Francis Episcopal Church in Holden
  
• Fr. Frank Scollen, Priest at St. Peters Catholic Church in Worcester
  
• Rev. Aaron Payson, Minister of the UU Church in Worcester
  
• Mr. Tahir Ali, Public Affairs Rep. of the Worcester Islamic Mosque
  
• Mr. David Niose, President of the Greater Worcester Humanists.
  
• Moderator: Rev. David Miller, Minister Emeritus of the UUC

GWH has also made available video from the last meeting on April 8. The speaker, zoologist Abigail Hafer of Curry College, gave a talk entitled "Unintelligent Design." The video is in three parts:

Part 1	Part 2
Part 3

On Monday, May 26, it's time for another meeting of Boston Skeptics in the Pub. The meeting this time will be at Tommy Doyle's in Harvard Square, which is at 96 Winthrop Street, Cambridge. The speaker will be Patty Pieniadz former director of Narconon Connecticut, who left the Cult of Scientology after 27 years of membership.

Both of these events are free of charge, so if you're within range of Worcester and Cambridge, c'mon out and get rational and/or skeptical and/or drunk (at least at the Boston Skeptics meeting; leave the brewskis at home for GWH).

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Unintelligent Design and Men's Testicles: Abigail Hafer at Greater Worcester Humanists

Last night's talk at the meeting of the Greater Worcester Humanists by Curry College professor of zoology Abigail Hafer was rather funny. I do mean "ha ha" funny by this. Officially entitled "Unintelligent Design," Hafer revealed at the outset that the alternative title was "Unintelligent Design and Men's Testicles," and she used the latter organs as a jumping-off point to explain five selected examples of what would be poorly designed systems in the human body if they had actually been designed. These included testicles, the eye, the epiglottis, the birth canal and the appendix. Hafer gave her audience an understanding of how these systems are only "good enough" in humans and how other living organisms in the world today have better ones (e.g., cephalopods have better eyes, kangaroos have a better solution for the trade-offs needed between bipedalism and birth canal size, whales a better separation of air and food passages that prevents choking). None of it was new information for me personally, but it was clear that most members of the audience considered all of this new information.

From a personal POV, what was most interesting to me was the long Q&A period after the talk. One of Hafer's main points was that the Intelligent Design movement is fundamentally political and not at all scientific. A good number of those in attendance wanted to know why; what is the political end here? This being Massachusetts, a place where in much of the state one can't swing a stick without hitting some sort of scientist or another, people around here really don't have much experience with Neocreationism, I suppose. Hafer seemed to think that money and power were a major motivation, that it was largely about political influence and the ability to pay oneself a handsome salary without actually having to produce anything, such as is done at the Discovery Institute. I added, when the opportunity arose, that people who wanted to find the motivation for Neocreationist politics need look no further than The Wedge Document.

When I had the opportunity to ask a question, I asked Dr. Hafer about what she thought would be an appropriate response to the propaganda embodied in Stein and Mathis' hit piece, Expelled. Interestingly, Hafer had never heard of it and neither had all but one other person in the audience of about 50. While that bit of celluloid trash may be creating buzz in the blogosphere, I don't think it has emerged much into popular consciousness and will ultimately be something that has little impact out in the real world. True-believers may go see the thing because some religious figure in their already anti-science madrass tells them that they should and perhaps a small sampling of scientists and pro-science people will also see it to keep tabs upon how far into the pits of sleazy lunacy the other side has managed to sink, but in the end it won't change things anymore than the Left Behind movies did. It will come and go and ultimately be relegated to the basements of fundamentalist churches, I think.

Another audience member brought up the Dover trial, and he was followed up by a woman who had heard of Michael Behe and essentially wondered what was wrong with the guy. She wasn't a scientist by any stretch; it was amusing to me to hear that she could see through Behe without a science degree.

One funny thing that I noticed is that a lot of the questions were about things far outside of the domain of biology. Hafer fielded questions about everything from artificial intelligence to attempts at getting her to predict the far evolutionary future of Homo sapiens. The inference I draw from such questions is that there are people who think that being a scientist entails some all-consuming knowledge of anything that sounds science-y. Without specific knowledge of a discipline, all this stuff seems to run together. Scientists aren't supposed to say "I don't know," even though that's largely what they do — just like everyone else on the planet, if they're honest. Hafer admitted to that, but clearly she was still having a good time speculating on such things as she answered the questions. That's also a commonality; we all like to speculate about the more interesting aspects of the future. It's fun to toss around some science fiction, even when there's more fiction than science.

So while the talk itself was good, the audience reaction and speculation was more informative for me. Future events are in the works, of course, and I'm sure I'll be attending them as time permits.

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