Third Annual Darwin Day Lecture!

Join the MFA and the Halton-Peel Humanist Community this Monday, February 22, 2010 for our third annual Darwin Day lecture, celebrating the 201st birthday of Charles Darwin!

Dr. Jason Head will be giving a lecture on “Natural selection and adaptations as logical theories in studying evolution”.

Details of the event:

Monday, February 22, 2010
6:30 pm
Room 2080, South Building, UTM
FREE ADMISSION

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Jason Head is a vertebrate paleontologist and biologist who studies the evolutionary histories of reptiles, primarily from 66.5 million years ago to the present. He received a B.S. in biology from the University of Michigan in 1995, a Ph.D. in geology from Southern Methodist University in 2002, and has conducted field research in Pakistan, Tanzania, Mali, India, Jordan, and North America. While collecting Miocene reptile fossils in Pakistan, Jason developed an interest in the relationship of reptile diversity and body size to climate change, especially in snakes. His subsequent research includes quantitative analysis of skeletal morphology in modern and fossil lizards and snakes in order to reconstruct historical patterns of genetic control and development of the reptile axial skeleton, as well as continuing studies of paleoecology and paleoclimate, inferred from the fossil record. In 2009, Jason described the Worlds largest snake, Titanoboa cerrejonensis, and developed a method for estimating paleotemperature from body size in fossil reptiles. He is currently an Assistant Professor in the Department of Biology at the University of Toronto, Mississauga, a research associate and the Royal Ontario Museum, and an Adjunct Assistant Curator at the Florida Museum of Natural History.

UofT Study: Brain differences between believers and non-believers

A recent study led by UofT’s own Assistant Psychology Professor Michael Inzlicht has shown brain activity differences between believers and non-believers.

Results indicate that believers show markedly less activity in the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), a portion of the brain that helps modify behavior by signaling when attention and control are needed. For instance, a believer will show less stress and anxiety (and brain activity) when making a mistake or error, as compared to a non-believer. An increase in the belief of God was shown to correlate to decreased ACC activity.

Although this calming effect is considered to be beneficial to some, it is a “double edged sword” says Inzlicht. “Obviously, anxiety can be negative because if you have too much, you’re paralyzed with fear. However, it also serves a very useful function in that it alerts us when we’re making mistakes. If you don’t experience anxiety when you make an error, what impetus do you have to change or improve your behaviour so you don’t make the same mistakes again and again?”

Read the full article at Physorg.com.
The study will be published in Psychological Science.

Darwin Day at UTM - February 12

We are pleased to announce another lecture to celebrate Charles Darwin’s 200th birthday!

Thursday, February 12, 2009
5:30 pm
SE 2072 - South Building, UTM
FREE ADMISSION

We are celebrating the bicentenary of Charles Darwin’s birth in 1809, a man who is on any account one of greatest scientists since Newton. The aim of the talk will be to celebrate Darwin by describing his wide-ranging mind, his extraordinarily observant and meticulous work in geology, botany, and biology. Darwin is deservedly renown for his epochal achievement in developing the revolutionary notion of the origin and evolution of species through natural selection. Less well known, however, is his equally innovative and revolutionary, if largely unacknowledged, view of the intimate relations between the ‘social instinct’ and the ‘moral sense’ both in humans and in animals, as his words above indicate. Dr. Di Norcia will communicate the grandeur and beauty of Darwin’s view of social ethics as well as of evolution. In both the matters of natural history and social ethics, he suggests that Charles Darwin’s scientific work to this day represents a ground-breaking intellectual and scientific achievement. And, unfortunately, still largely ignored or ignorantly opposed.

Darwin Day Lecture - February 10, 2008

In celebration of Charles Darwin’s 200th birthday, the Halton-Peel Humanist Community with the Mississauga Freethought Association, will be hosting a talk by Dr. Jason R Wiles on the state of evolution education in Canada and the United States.

The event will be held at the Central Library in Mississauga, ON on Tuesday, February 10, 2009, starting at 6:30 pm.

This event is open to anyone and everyone - so bring your friends, family, school mates and co-workers, and come celebrate the birth of one of the greatest minds in science!

Upcoming Event: A talk by George Dvorsky

Thursday, January 31, 2008
Public Talk - George Dvorsky
Cyborgs of the Past, Present and Future

CCT Building, Room 1080
6:30 pm
FREE ADMISSION

Download Press Release here

Read the article in Oakville Today 

Upcoming Event: Enemies of Reason (Part 2)

Wednesday, November 21 - 7:00 pm

Richard Dawkins - Enemies of Reason (Part 2)

Student Centre - Board Room

Free Admission

Upcoming Event: Enemies of Reason (Part 1)

Tuesday, November 6 - 7:00 pm

Richard Dawkins - Enemies of Reason (Part 1)

Student Centre - Board Room

Free Admission

Teachers ‘fear evolution lessons’ - BBC

The teaching of evolution is becoming increasingly difficult in UK schools because of the rise of creationism, a leading scientist is warning.

Head of science at London’s Institute of Education Professor Michael Reiss says some teachers, fearful of entering the debate, avoid the subject totally.

This could leave pupils with gaps in their scientific knowledge, he says. Prof Reiss says the rise of creationism is partly down to the large increase in Muslim pupils in UK schools.

The days have long gone when science teachers could ignore creationism when teaching about origins Professor Reiss

He said: “The number of Muslim students has grown considerably in the last 10 to 20 years and a higher proportion of Muslim families do not accept evolutionary theory compared with Christian families.

The BBC.co.uk website has more on this story.

Read more on why creationism shoud not be taught in schools.

US Scientists creates artifical life form

Controversial celebrity US scientist Craig Venter has announced he is on the verge of creating the first ever artificial life form which he hails as a potential remedy to illness and global warming. Venter told Britain’s The Guardian newspaper Saturday that he has built a synthetic chromosome using chemicals made in a laboratory, and is set to announce the discovery within weeks, possibly as early as Monday.

The breakthrough, which Venter hopes could help develop new energy sources to combat the negative effects of climate change, would be “a very important philosophical step in the history of our species,” he told the newspaper.

However the prospect of engineering artificial life forms is highly controversial and likely to arouse heated debate over the ethics and potential ramifications of such an advance.

Read more on this

Physorg.com

Gizmodo.com

What do you think on this issue? Leave a comment below

Upcoming Event: Public Lecture on “Science and Religion in Islam”

Taner Edis on Science and Religion and Islam

Friday September 28, 2007 @ 7:30

Kaneff 137, UTM

FREE ADMISSION

Taner Edis, born and raised in Turkey, is associate professor of physics at Truman State University and the author of The Ghost in the Universe: God in Light of Modern Science and Science and Non-belief, among other publications. His latest book is An Illusion of Harmony: Science and Religion in Islam.

During his visit to UTM, Taner Edis will explore whether the Koran anticipates the modern scientific understanding of the world, the intelligent design creationist movement within Islam, and whether science is even compatible with the Muslim faith. He also shares his views about the future of Islam, especially in relation to the secular, more scientific West.