Free Inquiry Forum

Hat tip to Jack for sending this.

From Slate.com:

There’s just one person at oral argument in Salazar v. Buono this morning who really wants to talk about whether a 5-foot cross on federal government land in the Mojave National Preserve violates the Constitution’s Establishment Clause. But Justice Antonin Scalia really, really wants to talk about it. He looks particularly queasy when Peter Eliasberg—the ACLU lawyer whose client objects to crosses on government land—suggests partway through the morning that perhaps a less controversial World War I memorial might consist of “a statue of a soldier which would honor all of the people who fought for America in World War I and not just the Christians.”

Read the full article

From Meigs Glidewell:

MONDAY, OCTOBER 5, 2000 – 7:00 PM
HUMANISTS OF SARASOTA BAY AREA, MONTHLY LECTURE SERIES
At The Howard Center Community room
1400 South Cattlemen, Sarasota.
See the directions below.

Our speaker this evening will be Alan B.Grindal, M.D. neurologist, expert witness.
Dr. Grindal regularly teaches courses and lectures about consciousness, the aging brain, and other issues in neurology and brain science. He spoke to our group two years ago, and members found him one of the best presenters of the year.

Dr. Grindal graduated from Northwestern University with a B.A. and received his M.D. .from the University of Illinois. His neurology training was completed at the Medical College of Virginia where he later served as a faculty member. Dr.Grindal has been in private practice specializing in neurology in Sarasota Florida since 1978. He has been chosen by his peers to be among The Best Doctors in America and currently serves as a neurological consultant to the Memory Disorder Clinic at Sarasota Memorial Hospital and as a Clinical Assistant Professor at Florida State University.
Dr. Grindal’s topic this evening:
Conflict! An age-old problem
Self-oriented and motivated behavior is often at odds with the requirements of social communities. Dr. Grindal will speak to us about the neurobiological basis of this evolutionary conflict.

DIRECTIONS:
Our lecture series meetings this year are at The Howard Center, 1400 South Cattlemen, Sarasota, Florida 34236. The Howard Center is on the west side of Cattlemen Road, about two blocks south of Bahia Vista, and about eight blocks north of Bee Ridge Road. If you are coming from Tamiami Trail, take Bee Ridge Road east for about three miles, then turn north (left) onto Cattlemen Road, and go about a mile to The Howard Center. If you are coming from I-75, take Bee Ridge Road west exit, go one or two blocks, then turn north (right) onto Cattlemen Road, and go about a mile to The Howard Center.

The Howard Center is a one-story white building with lots of parking in front and behind the building.

Questions? Call Meigs Glidewell 941-927-5665.

From NatGeo:

Move over, Lucy. And kiss the missing link goodbye.

Scientists today announced the discovery of the oldest fossil skeleton of a human ancestor. The find reveals that our forebears underwent a previously unknown stage of evolution more than a million years before Lucy, the iconic early human ancestor specimen that walked the Earth 3.2 million years ago.

From NEWSWEEK:

When a committed Christian says he believes in the Second Coming of Christ, he believes it the way he believes that Michael Jordan was a basketball player. When an avowed atheist says there is no such thing as God, she knows it the way that she knows that Elvis was a rock star. According to new research—published yesterday in the online science journal PLoS One—by Sam Harris (the neuroscientist and atheist author of The End of Faith) and colleagues, “belief is belief is belief,” as Harris puts it. “We seem to be doing the same thing when we accept a proposition about God or the virgin birth as we do about astronomy.”