Origins Conference Buzz:
Michael Shermer v. John Lennox, in Sydney, Australia
In the weeks leading up to the Origins — the BIG Questions Conference at Caltech, we’ll be posting links to various topics of interest in this “Origins Conference Buzz” section. The content in these links does not necessarily represent our position; we simply aim to host the full range of dialogue around the issues.
This week, we link to a debate between between Michael Shermer and John Lennox about the existence of God and about the belief in God.
Origins — the BIG Questions Conference runs from October 3–4, 2008 in the Beckman Auditorium at the California Institute of Technology.
the Fall Season of Caltech Lectures
Mark your calendar! The Skeptics Society is pleased to announce its Fall season of the Skeptics Distinguished Lecture Series at Caltech. This continues the fifteen-year-long series, presenting over 200 lectures by some of the most distinguished experts in the world. First up…
The Grand Inquisitor’s Handbook:
A History of Terror in the Name of God
with Jonathan Kirsch
Sunday, September 14, 2008 at 2:00 pm
Baxter Lecture Hall, Caltech (map)
The twelfth century birthed a new brand of sanctioned terror, an international network of secret police and courts, an army of inquisitors whose sworn duty was to seek out anyone regarded as an enemy, and a casualty list numbering in the tens of thousands. The original agents of the Inquisition — priests and monks, scribes and notaries, attorneys and accountants, torturers and executioners — were deputized by the Church and their worst excesses were excused as the pardonable sins of soldiers engaged in a holy war against heresy.
In this lecture based on his new book, Jonathan Kirsch delivers a sweeping and provocative history that explores how the Inquisition was honed to perfection and brought to bear on an ever-widening circle of victims by authoritarians in both church and state for over 600 years. Ranging from the Knights Templar to the first Protestants, from Joan of Arc to Galileo; from the torture and murder of hundreds of thousands of innocent women during the Witch Craze to its greatest power in Spain after 1492, when the secret tribunals were directed for the first time against Jews and Muslims to the modern war on terror — Kirsch shows us how the Inquisition stands as a universal and ineradicable symbol of the terror that results when absolute power corrupts.
Jonathan Kirsch is the author of the best-selling and critically acclaimed The Harlot by the Side of the Road, Moses, The Woman Who Laughed at God, and A History of the End of the World. Kirsch is also a book columnist for the Los Angeles Times, an attorney, and a guest host and commentator on NPR.
Book signings will follow all lectures.
followed by these lectures…
The Enemy Within:
2,000 Years of Witch-Hunting in the Western World
with Dr. John Demos
Sunday, October 19, 2008 at 2:00 pm
Baxter Lecture Hall, Caltech (map)
READ about this lecture >
Superstition:
Belief in the Age of Science
with Dr. Robert Park
Sunday, November 23, 2008 at 2:00 pm
Baxter Lecture Hall, Caltech (map)
READ about this lecture >
Black Holes Sing:
Black Holes, Their Orbits & Gravitational Waves
with Dr. Janna Levin
Sunday, December 14, 2008 at 2:00 pm
Baxter Lecture Hall, Caltech (map)
READ about this lecture >
