James Wolcott announced: ” Today I got a flyer from the Council on Secular Humanism announcing their world congress in October attempting to chart a course Toward a New Enlightenment” His link didn’t work. The correct one is here.
It is scheduled for October 27 - 30 at Amherst, N. Y.
This looks like fun. Here is what it is expected to be about:
CSH's 25th Anniversary
The Council for Secular Humanism celebrates 25 years with a world congress at the world headquarters of CSH.
The conference will include special sessions convening members of the International Academy of Humanism, the Committee for the Scientific Examination of Religion, and the Institute for the Secularization of Islamic Societies.
Congress Sessions
· Threat of Fundamentalism to Secular Democracy
· Moral Values based on Reason
· Education and Science in the Formulation of Public Policy
· Media Misinformation
· Can Islam enter the Elightenment?
· Strategies for Reviving Enlightenment Values
Thousands of years of human history and the ravages of world wars and religious resentments, has brought much of the world to the brink of peace and the eve of enlightenment. The last century in particular has seen the emergence of international treaties and institutions which have been steps forward in ensuring that a truly international civilization develops, casting off the mistakes and prejudices inherent in religious fundamentalist cultures. New methods of national and international governance have been devised, and international codes recognizing fundamental human rights acknowledged. The values of the European Enlightenment have been largely achieved via these new institutions and codes, even while setbacks occur in both the Middle East and the Western democracies.
Religious fundamentalism throughout the world threatens our progress as the Cold War never did. Two competing eschatological views now face each other down, where mutual victory is ensured in the end of the world, whereas to the competing economic systems of the Cold War, mutual defeat was the inevitable result of a failure of the peace. Fundamentalism also threatens scientific and cultural progress and individual liberties as misguided religious codes battle for ideological supremacy, without regard for the truths uncovered by science or the battles for individual liberties that were fought for and won over authoritarianism and fear. To date, The U.S. and Western Europe have been guiding lights in the march of progress and Enlightenment values, but the tide appears to be receding. While the forces of fundamentalism are girding their followers for battle against the values we have embraced, we must unite in a cause to defend those values more vehemently than ever before.
Immanuel Kant described the Enlightenment as follows:
“Enlightenment is man’s leaving his self-caused immaturity. Immaturity is the incapacity to use one’s own understanding without the guidance of another. Such immaturity is self-caused if its case is not lack of intelligence, but by lack of determination and courage to use one’s own intelligence without being guided by another. The motto of enlightenment is therefore: Sapere aude! Have courage to use one’s own intelligence!”
The values of the Enlightenment are being threatened worldwide. The fundamentalist agenda in both the east and the west rejects those values outright. We are facing a new dark ages. Can we learn from the lessons of the British and French Enlightenment and help to bring about a New Enlightenment? This has yet to be seen.
This is why the Council for Secular Humanism is ushering in its next 25 years with a conference which will explore the foundations of the Enlightenment that created western liberalism and look to a roadmap for a New Enlightenment. We hope you join us in this exciting project.
[I underlined the items above for emphasis. - RB]
Speakers
Shulamit Aloni – Professor at Tel Aviv University. Served as Israel’s Minister of Communications and the Arts, Science, and Technology. Lawyer, human rights activist.
Ruben Ardila – Professor, Department of Psychology, National University of Columbia. Author.
Etienne Baulieu, M.D., Ph.d – Professor, Le College de France. Former President of the French Academy of Science. Research Director at the National Institute for Medical Research and Health in France. Creator of RU 486 and joint discoverer of DHEA.
Sir Hermann Bondi, Ph.d – Professor of theoretical astrophysics and cosmology at the University of Cambridge. He is best known as one of the originators of the steady-state theory of the universe.
Vern Bullough, Ph.d. – Professor emeritus, History Department, and founding director of The Center for Sex Research at California State University, Northridge. Currently a visiting professor at the University of Southern California.
Antony Flew, Ph.d – Professor emeritus, Philosophy Department, University of Reading, England, 1973–1982. Awarded the University Prize in Philosophy and the John Locke Scholarship in Mental Philosophy. Legendary British philosopher and author of many works.
Herbert Hauptman, Ph.d – Nobel Laureate. Co-recipient of the Nobel Prize for Chemistry with Jerome Karle for direct methods of X-ray crystallography. Head of Hauptman - Woodard Institute.
R. Joseph Hoffmann – Campbell Professor of Religion and Human Values at Wells College, New York and chair of the Committee for the Scientific Examination of Religion at the Center for Inquiry. Hoffman is the author of Jesus Outside the Gospels, co-editor of Biblical versus Secular Ethics, Jesus in Myth and History, Modern Spiritualities, The Origins of Christianity, The Secret Gospels, and What the Bible Really Says.
Tariq Ismail – Noted Islamic author and scholar. He taught for nearly ten years at the University of Toulouse in France and is now a researcher at the Center for Inquiry.
Lawrence M. Krauss, Ph.d. – Ambrose Swasey Professor of Physics, Professor of Astronomy, and Chair of the Physics Department, Case Western Reserve University, Ohio. Author of the international bestseller, The Physics of Star Trek. Dr. Krauss is also an anti-creationist campaigner.
Sir H.W. Kroto Ph.d. - Nobel Laureate, Professor, School of Chemistry, Physics and Environmental Science, University of Sussex, United Kingdom. Knighted in 1996, received the Nobel Prize for Chemistry.
Paul Kurtz , Ph.d. – Professor emeritus of philosopy at the State University of New York at Buffalo. Chairman of the Center for Inquiry and President of the International Academy of Humanism.
Valerii Kuvakin, Ph.d. – Professor of Philosophy, Moscow State University, Russia. Member of the Committee against Anti-Science and Falsification of Scientific Data. Founder of the Russian Humanist Society and quarterly magazine, Zdravyj Smysl (Common Sense).
Professor Jean-Claude Pecker – Professor emeritus, Collège de France, 1964-1988. Director of Institute of Astrophysics, 1972–1979. Former General Secretary of International Astronomical Union.
Dennis V. Razis, M.D. – President of the Delphi Society in Athens, Greece. Author and medical oncologist.
Barbara Stanosz – Professor emeritus, philosophy department, Warsaw University, Poland. Leading Polish humanist.
Thomas Stephen Szasz, M.D. - Professor emeritus, School of Psychiatry, State University of New York Health Science Center in Syracuse, New York, 1956–1990. Author of The Myth of Mental Illness (1961) and other works.
Lionel Tiger, Ph.d. – Charles Darwin professor of Anthropology, Rutgers University, New Jersey. Co-Research Director of the Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation. Widely published author of many books and articles including the book, The Decline of Males.
George Klein, M.D., D.SC. or M.D. Ph.d. – Professor and Head of the Department of Tumor Biology, Karolinska Institutet, Sweden, 1957–1993; Research Group Leader, Microbiology and Tumor Biology Center, Karolinska Institutet, Sweden, since 1993.
Alberto Hidalgo Tuánón, – Professor of philosophy, Universidad de Oviedo, Spain.
Svetozar Stojanovic, Ph.d. – Founder and President of the Serbian-American Center, Belgrade. Professor and Director emeritus of the Institute for Philosophy and Social Theory, University of Belgrade.
Nat Hentoff – Nat Hentoff is a prominent civil libertarian, columnist, and author of many books including Free Speech for Me But Not for Thee. In addition to his weekly Village Voice column, Hentoff writes on music for the Wall Street Journal.
Mourad Wahba, Ph.d. – Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at the University of Ain Shams in Cairo, Egypt, President of the Averroës and Enlightenment Association, and founder and honorary president of the Afro-Asian Philosophy Association, Cairo.
Mona Abousenna, Ph.d. – Professor of English and Head of the English Department Faculty of Education, and Director of the Center of Developing English Language Teaching, Ain Shams University, Cairo, Egypt. Co-head of the Center for Inquiry–Cairo,with Mourad Uahba.
Ionna Kucuradi, Ph.d. – Professor of Philosophy at Hacettepe University, Turkey. Chair of the National Committee of Supreme Coordination Council of Human Rights in Turkey. Presented with the ‘’Freedom of Press Award’’ by the Turkish Journalists’ Society.
Gerald Larue, Ph.d. – Professor emeritus of Biblical History and Archaeology at the University of Southern California, Adjunct Professor of Gerontology at U.S.C., Chairman of the Committee for the Scientific Examination of Religion, and faculty member of the Institute for Inquiry. His recent book, Freethought Across the Centuries, is creating a sensation. Larue is also the author of Sex and the Bible, Ancient Myth and Modern Life, The Way of Positive Humanism and The Way of Ethical Humanism.
Richard Dawkins, FRS, Ph.d. – An evolutionary biologist and the Charles Simonyi Professor For The Understanding Of Science at Oxford University; Fellow of New College. A British ethologist and popular science writer. He is best known for popularizing the Williams Revolution in his 1976 book The Selfish Gene. Elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society in May 2001.
Margaret Downey, – founded the Freethought Society of Greater Philadelphia (FSGP) and the Anti-Discrimination Support Network (ADSN) in 1993. In 1994 Margaret founded the Thomas Paine Memorial Committee. She is a current board member of the Freedom From Religion Foundation, The Humanist Institute, the Thomas Paine National Historical Association, Advisory Board Member of the Robert Green Ingersoll Museum, and the Atheist Alliance.
Registration
By Phone: have credit card information on hand and phone toll-free 1-800-634-1610
By Fax: fax the form available online in PDF here with credit card information to 1-716-636-1733
By Postal Mail: mail the form available online in PDF here with check, money order, or credit card information to CSH, PO Box 664, Amherst, NY, 14226-0664
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