Free Inquiry Forum

From Meigs:

First Friday Freethinkers Group at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Saraota - All are welcome!

Due to the July 4 holiday, the meeting will take place Thursday, July 3. This discussion group has been formed with the goal of nurturing a social climate in accord with humanist, secularist, rationalist, and Unitarian Universalist principles. Both Bill Sorrell and Rick Sandler will tell us how they came to Unitarian Universalism. This will be followed by the topic: “The Battle For Your Mind: The Media’s Influence on the Public” presented by Rick Sandler. A discussion of the topic will follow. Suggested reading: “Just How Stupid Are We?: Facing the Truth About the American Voter,” by Rick Shenkman.

When: Thursday, July 3, 2008 (due to the July 4 holiday)
Where: Jefferson Room
Time: 10:00-11:30 am
Membership: Open to all
Questions: Call Tom Dente 921-1598

Sarasota UU, 3975 Fruitville Road, Sarasota, FL 34232

Sam Harris is looking for volunteers:

The Scripture Project
Volunteer Editors Needed

Steve Wells, the creator of the Skeptic’s Annotated Bible, Qur’an, and Book of Mormon, has donated the full contents of his website to the Reason Project. This is a very generous gift, as Steve spent the better part of a decade annotating these holy books and highlighted all passages notable for their historical inaccuracy, internal contradictions, scientific errors, absurdity, injustice, cruelty, sexism, intolerance, etc. (he also flagged the good parts).

At the Reason Project, we intend to refine Steve’s work in a section of our website entitled “The Scripture Project” where we will have religious scholars, historians, scientists, and other qualified people continue to annotate these texts on a Wiki. With the input of the right scholars, we are confident that the Reason Project website will quickly become the preeminent place for scriptural criticism on the internet. We are happy to say that Steve Wells will continue to supervise the Scripture Project as it moves forward.

In the meantime, however, we need help porting the full contents of the Skeptics Annotated Bible, Qur’an, and Book of Mormon over to the Reason Project website. Unfortunately, the entire process cannot be automated. We are seeking volunteers to help us edit each page of the Scripture Project Wiki to see that it correctly duplicates the parent-page on Wells’ site. This is a big job, but it will be quickly accomplished by a hundred or so volunteers. If you are familiar with adding to Wikis and are willing to donate a few hours over the next few weeks to the launch of the Reason Project website, we would be enormously grateful for your help (some knowledge of HTML would also be useful).

Instructions and relevant links can be found here.

All the best,

Sam and Annaka Harris

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From Sam Harris:

We are preparing to run another fMRI study of belief and disbelief, and we need volunteers to help us refine our experimental stimuli. This promises to be the first study of religious faith at the level of the brain. By responding to the four surveys I have posted online, you can make an enormous contribution to this work.

Please answer as many of the surveys as you can. If you only have time to answer one, please choose at random (otherwise, we will have many more responses to the first than to the others).

Feel free to post this message to your blog or to forward the relevant links to your friends. We especially need Christians to respond, as one of the goals of these surveys is to design stimuli that a majority of Christians will find doctrinally sound.

Please note: Each survey starts with the same first page of questions.

Belief Survey A

Belief Survey B

Belief Survey C

Belief Survey D

Tonight on NIGHTLINE (April 24, 2008):

Growing Up Scientologist

The Church of Scientology is opening lavish new facilities around the globe, and it claims its membership ranks have grown to the millions — helped no doubt by the very high profile of believers like Tom Cruise and Kirstie Alley. But this expansion is in the face of a mounting wave of criticism — in online videos, and in protests across the country. Tonight on Nightline, we hear from a woman who is part of that wave. Yet her criticisms of the church are even more surprising, perhaps, given her family tree. Not only was she raised in the church — she is a niece of the church’s leader. She tells us her story of her life in the church — including how she grew disillusioned, and how she reached the point when she finally left. ABC’s Lisa Fletcher reports. Read more here.

VIDEO

Part 1:

Part 2:

Actor Jason Beghe is the first celebrity Scientologist to sit down and publicly talk about his experiences after leaving the group.

Video was pulled from YouTube. Still available here.

From Randi.org:

Friday May 11th at 9pm Eastern. ABC 20/20 will air a 2 hour special: “Seeing is Believing: The Power of Faith.” One of the topics in the special is Peter Popoff, who Randi exposed 20 years ago on the Tonight Show (watch video). ABC sent a video crew to the JREF and got a good interview with Randi discussing Popoff and the so called Faith Healers. Make sure not to miss it. Afterward make it on over to the forums for further discussion on the topic.

State Representative KEITH FITZGERALD has just arrived back in Sarasota on Sunday after the conclusion of the 60-day Florida Legislative session.

He will speak on this WEDNESDAY, MAY 9 at 7 PM in the auditorium of SELBY PUBLIC LIBRARY, 1331 First Street, downtown Sarasota on WHAT THE FLORIDA LEGISLATURE HAS DONE TO OUR CHURCH-STATE WALL. This is the spring quarter public forum of the Sarasota-Manatee Chapter of Americans United for Separation of Church and State.  THE PUBLIC IS INVITED AND THERE IS NO CHARGE FOR ADMISSION.

At least equally important as what was enacted is what some legislators concerned with keeping religious doctrine out of our laws did to keep several bad bills from passing.  Learn about what happened or might still happen (a special session has been called for June 12) regarding tax credits for religious schools, sectarian prayer in public bodies, stem cell research, abortion restrictions, gay rights,  potential murder charges for foetal death, religious interference in public health vaccination, and other issues. Find out about the stands of Legislative leaders, Governor Crist and others at Tallahassee on church-state separation.  Rep. Fitzgerald was directly involved in most of these issues.

Dr. Keith Fitzgerald was elected to the State Legislature by the voters of Legislative District 69 in November 2006.  He serves on the Legislature’s Economic Expansion and Infrastructure Council, the Environmental Protection Commitee and the Ethics and Elections Commitee.  He is a professor of Political Science at New College of Florida.  He earned his PhD in Political Science at the University of Indiana. He and his wife are the parents of six-year-old twins.  Rep. Fitzgerald was directly involved in most of these issues.  His presentation will be informal, and there will be ample time for questions and discussion.

Christopher Hitchens will be the guest on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart Monday, April 30. Will be interesting to hear him talk about his new book: “God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything“.
UPDATE: Video of the interview is available here.

Also, on CSPAN2’s BookTV on Sunday, April 29:

Panel discussion on Religion & Culture: Do They Mix? featuring authors Christopher Hitchens, God Is Not Great; Zachary Karabell, Peace Be upon You: The Story of Muslim, Christian, and Jewish Coexistence; Jonathan Kirsch, A History of the End of the World: How the Most Controversial Book in the Bible Changed the Course of Western Civilization (LIVE 1:30 PM ET - Repeats at 10 PM and 5:30 AM on Monday)

UPDATE: Video available here.

From Christian News Wire:

After ABC ran a story in January about hundreds of atheists videotaping themselves blaspheming the Holy Spirit, best-selling author Ray Comfort contacted the network and offered to prove God’s existence, absolutely, scientifically, without mentioning the Bible or faith. He and Kirk Cameron (co-hosts of an award-winning Christian TV program) challenged the two originators of the “Blasphemy Challenge” to a debate on the existence of God. According to Comfort, he and Cameron (an ex-atheist) are qualified to debate on the subject. Comfort had not only written a book titled “God Doesn’t Believe in Atheists”, but had spoken at Yale on the subject of atheism, and been flown by American Atheists, Inc., to their 2001 annual convention to be a platform speaker.

ABC loved the idea, and will host a debate in New York City on May 5, 2007. Moderated by Martin Bashir, the debate will be streamed LIVE on their website and will also be filmed for “Nightline.”

For those of you not familiar with Ray Comfort, he is the genius that came up with using the banana as proof of the existence of God. I’m not kidding. Watch the YouTube video of this argument here. (Nice rebuttal here.)

If they plan on using the “banana argument” as “absolute proof of God’s existence” in the debate on May 5th, they might as well not even show up.

Nightline has more here.

UPDATE 5/11/07:
The full unedited version of the debate is available here.