ABC News has a detailed review by mathematician John Allen Paulos of this year’s “Beyond Belief 2.0” conference, at which he was an invited speaker.
Last year’s wildly popular Beyond Belief 1.0 scientific conference primarily focused upon and championed irreligion. The Beyond Belief 2.0 conference held at the Salk Institute in La Jolla, Calif., this past November was wider in scope. Rather than aiming to be another undiluted atheist lovefest, it attempted to consider changes in the ideas of the Enlightenment that are necessary given advances in various disciplines since the 18th century.
At least that was the stated aim, but any gathering that included the diverse luminaries in attendance would be guaranteed to roam all over the intellectual landscape. Despite the roaming and the diversity, however, the conference remained — pardon the adolescent alliteration — an unbeliever’s utopia, a heathen’s heaven, a pagan’s paradise.
Speakers at the conference included philosopher Daniel Dennett, cognitive scientists V.S. Ramachandran and David Sloan Wilson, writer David Brin and various ‘skeptical stars’ such as Sam Harris, P.Z. Myers and Michael Shermer. The conference organizers are to be congratulated for offering video of each speaker’s presentation on the BB website.
I posted ‘quantum consciousness’ researcher Stuart Hameroff’s presentation from 2006 here on TDG last year. Seems they didn’t make the mistake of inviting Stuart for a follow-up this year…for a good laugh, check out his blog post “Being the Skunk At An Atheist Convention“.
Isn’t the intarweb cool?
