I had mentioned here before that there is a series of lectures about to launch at Northwest Florida State College on the subject of evolution. Here is a story that gives a bit more detail about the first speaker and the subjects of subsequent lectures.
The first lecture [Aug 27], entitled “Evolution and Creation: conflicting or compatible?” will be led by Patricia Kelley, a professor of geology at the University of North Carolina Wilmington.
“Patricia is perfect. What I think she brings to the table, which is real important especially for this area … is a real strong scientific background, but she also brings a kind of unique background because her husband is a minister,” said Allison Beauregard, the director of the Mattie M. Kelly Cultural and Environmental Institute at the college. “She can speak to our community better than someone who speaks strictly in a scientific sense.”
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The other seminars will be held from 11 a.m. until noon and include: “Cellular Evolution: tracing our cellular lineage,” by Ritter on Sept. 18; “Evolution and the Extinction of the Fossil Record” with Jon Bryan on Oct. 16; and “Fossil Hominins: evidence for human evolution” by Beth Ritter on Nov. 20.
I attended this presentation. She seems a decent lady, deep knowledge of the “controversy” in our education system, with a gentle message to the fundies: you can’t logically sustain your objections without denigrating your concept of God, and look, I’ve done it without regret. I’ll later post a longer description, but I had to post this great joust with one of the questioners. (Fundies all until I got so disgusted I left.)
The gentleman was upset his child’s biology textbook mentioned gill slits in human embryos, when he stopped and said words to effect of “Do you know who Steven Gould was?” and “Did you know Gould stated thirty years ago that this wasn’t true?”. She replied frostily “Steven J Gould was my thesis adviser.” He then changed subject and went on to blather about the treatment of peppered moths (apparently he had read Jonathan Wells’ “Icons of Evolution”, at least, and was now expert on all things). At that point I left in disgust at her treatment by my neighbors of this person who had been brought in as a voice of reason to the religious dissenters of the theory of evolution. It didn’t seem they were reached in the slightest. Sigh!
Alan, thank you very much for reporting back to us about this. If you do write up a full report, let me know and I’ll use it as a guest blog post, OK?
OK, Brandon, I’ll give it a shot. To give me an idea of the level of detail you’d like, what would be a good ballpark word count for a guest post?
Honestly, whatever floats your boat, Alan. You can do a thorough, long writeup, or just a quick, hit the highlights post. I just think it’s important we have some record of what happened there is all. Thanks!