John Solum

As I was walking around campus today I noticed a poster advertising a series of lectures on The Religion of Science by Randy Skeete (former
"Director of Academic Enrichment" of the U of M Medical School). The event is sponsored by Campus HOPE (http://www.fast.st/campus.html), which I found out is an organization of Seventh Day Adventist students. You can see a copy of the poster at this URL:
<a href="http://www.the-evidence.com" target="_blank">http://www.the-evidence.com</a>


Here are a couple of descriptions I found on the web:


<a href="http://www.umich.edu/~asforc/asc.htm" target="_blank">http://www.umich.edu/~asforc/asc.htm</a>
"1/22/02 - The Evidence is here! Prepare to be challenged as Randy Skeete gives a series of lectures on the Bible and science! The meetings will start on February 8th, twice a day, in Angell Hall Auditorium A. Be there at either 12 pm or 8 pm to here the Word!!"


<a href="http://www.umich.edu/~asforc/evidence.htm" target="_blank">http://www.umich.edu/~asforc/evidence.htm</a>
"THE EVIDENCE is here, all you have to do is come get it! For three weekends, and the entire week of spring break, Randy Skeete will be lecturing on science and the Bible, and how it applies to our lives. Held in Angell Hall Auditorium A, starting February 8th, the series will be
compelling to faculty, staff, students, academics, atheists, non-Christians, and Christians alike. The dates will be February 8-10, 15-17, and 23-25. There will be two lectures a day, which will be identical in content, at 12 pm and 8 pm. Lectures will run for exactly 1 hour and 15 minutes. So prepare to receive the evidence! "


With topics like "Science: Honest search or blind faith", I'm expecting a creationist-friendly presentation, but I don't know for sure. Have any of you ever heard of Randy Skeete? A search on the web didn't turn up much. I'll be in town, and since I think I can "prepare to be challenged" I'll go to the talks. If any of you'd like to join me, you'd be more than
welcome. If anyone's interested I'll post a summary of the lectures once they're over.

Since he's presenting the same lecture several times (an unusual move for a creationist - it counteracts the dopeler effect ) I'm going to sit in on the first lecture and just take notes, and I'll ask my questions at one of the later lectures.

liquid

I haven't heard of him, nor would I be able to attend a lecture (the small matter of an ocean in the way), but I would appreciate if you post a summary here so we can help refine your questions into razor sharp barbs.

jhallum

Hey, pretty neat. I'll be there. Thanks for the heads up.

John Solum

Here's my notes from lecture #1 (to be repeated tonight at 8:00PM for those of you who are in Ann Arbor and are looking for something to do on a Friday night)

The lecture was titled "Who would you trust, St. Paul or Socrates?"

Since the speaker, Randy Skeete, didn't say anything about evolution, I'm going to sum up his talk in a sentence or two, if you'd like to know more, feel free to ask.

He said historians accept the works of Socrates, Herodotus, etc. and the earliest examples of their writings date to ~1,000 years after their death (and he said he wasn't trying to cast doubt on the writings of the ancient Greeks and Romans). Therefore, he said, it is reasonable to trust the New Testament (he specifically mentioned Luke), since the earliest documents associated with the New Testament date to within a few hundred years of the events they record.

He's giving a lot more talks over the next couple of weeks, and hopefully one will be about evolution.

They asked audience members to fill out cards with some personal information (religion, education level, etc.) and also what they were interested in hearing about (creation/evolution was one of the choices, and I selected that). There was also a box to mark if you want a free cassette recording of the talk, and I marked that too.

After the talk, one of the organizers came up to me and intorduced himself and thanked me for attending, and I asked what the topics of the lectures in the coming weeks were going to be. He said they were going to decide that based on the feedback they got from earlier talks.

They didn't provide the opportunity to ask questions at the end of the talk, but they did have a box at the back of the room for people to put their questions in (I assume they'd respond via email, but I don't know).

I'll go to a few more of the lectures, and if anything related to evolution comes up, I'll post it here.

John

jhallum

I showed up and pretty much bolted afterward (I had to get back to the office to fix a sick computer). I thought his logic was pretty poor, myself. He oversimplified his examples to prove a fallacious point. I do hope that he does a evo talk, just to see how bad he can mangle that logic, too. He's definitely got the charm and the politeness of a Christian Speaker. Very polite....he only reminded us 15 times during the talk that he would have us out by 1:00, and thanked us for coming at least 6 times. After that, I was suprised he managed to fit any content at all in the talk in 25 minutes.

bluefugue

When did Christian groups obtain a monopoly on words like "hope," "life" and "family"?

I think it's time to form a new Atheist society. Here are some possible names:

Generation Despair
Operation Death
Focus on Nihilistic Smartass Bachelors

Whaddya think?

bluefugue

This argument is ridiculously specious. First, historians don't accept the writings of Herodotus (or any other writer of antiquity) uncritically. It is well known that his troop numbers (i.e. in the Persian conflict) are sometimes absurdly inflated, for instance. Hans Delbruck thoroughly debunked such numbers, showing they were logistically impossible.

Second, this analysis makes no allowance for the extraordinariness of the claims. If Herodotus were writing about resurrections and flying horses and seas parting, I suspect historians would not believe him.

Third, if we are to accept documents simply based on their proximity to the events they record, then that opens up an enormous floodgate. Superstitious, supernatural, and otherwise bogus events have been "recorded" throughout history. Are we to treat all such accounts uncritically?

It's simply a matter of weighing improbabilities. Thomas Paine nailed it 200 years ago: We have never seen a miracle in our time, yet we have seen millions of lies told. Therefore, it is at least millions to one, that a reporter of a miracle tells a lie. The fact that the Resurrection is corroborated by 3 or 4 sources, and that the Gospels were written relatively recently after the fact, makes it perhaps unlikely that these reports are a lie or inaccurate. Far *more* unlikely, however, is a human actually rising from the dead. And I suspect any Christian would reject *any* other account of resurrection, throughout history, no matter how well documented. In the end, Jesus still gets a special dispensation.

It's the same bogus argument used when Christians claim that "according to the laws of legal testimony," the Resurrection is well established. Never mind the fact that any witness testimony (as opposed to hard physical evidence, which the Gospels do not provide) of a Resurrection, in a modern court, would be laughed out of the room -- and rightly so.

This baloney is too weak to persuade unbelievers. I think it's just designed to make people who are already Christians feel more secure in their faith.

[ February 09, 2002: Message edited by: IesusDomini ]</p>

Koyaanisqatsi

It only take one pen to create a myth no matter when it's written.

John Solum

I hope your computer got fixed, I do battle with mine almost every day (I haven't had a functioning floppy drive in a few months).

I thought he oversimplified things as well, and IesusDomini pointed that out better than I could have done, the age of a document should not be the sole criterion to assess its validity.

Are you going to any of the other talks? I'm planning on it, since I hope he'll still talk about creaitonism.