
John Suarez
The Radical Religious Right
and Public Education
Sunday, April 4
11 a.m.
Jerry Falwell was
right on target more than 30 years ago when he
announced that public education would have to be rendered
impotent for our
society to follow a theocratic path. He subsequently toned down
his rhetoric,
but the religious right's efforts
continued. According to John M. Suarez, MD,
their many stratagems continue to pose a significant threat to
the viability of our secular democracy. Vouchers, religious
schools, home schooling, classes on religion, overt
proselytization, historical revisionism, suppression of science
and critical thinking, and direct efforts to reduce funding, are
all taking their toll.
Suarez is a
retired Professor of Psychiatry and Director of the Section on
Law and Psychiatry, UCLA. He serves on the Board of Trustees for
Americans United for the Separation of Church and State.
$8, or free
for Friends of the Center.
$4 for students.

John Nichols
This is the Age of Paine
Sunday,
April 18
11 a.m. in Hollywood;
3:30 p.m.
in
Costa Mesa
Tom Paine was 200 years ahead of his time, and he paid a steep
price for being a man of vision. Many of the public figures of
his day did not accept him, and he was written out of the
history of the republic for the better part of a century,
comments John Nichols, the political writer for The
Nation magazine who has written extensively on Thomas Paine
in particular and the founding of the American experiment in
general. Yet, it is clear now that Paine was the greatest of the
founders. And it is clearer still that his passion, his ideas,
and above all, his radicalism remain the most vital
characteristics for those who still believe that "we have it in
our power to begin the world over again."
Nichols has argued in his books and essays that the radicalism
of the American revolution needs to be renewed, along with our
understanding of this country as a rebel state founded in
opposition to empire and in embrace of the enlightenment. Of
Nichols, Gore Vidal says: "Of all the giant slayers now afoot in
the great American desert, John Nichols's sword is the
sharpest."
Nichols has worked as a daily newspaper journalist and magazine
writer for 25 years, reporting from more than 25 countries and
interviewing every U.S. president since Jimmy Carter. A
pioneering political blogger for The Nation, he is the
magazine's Washington correspondent. He is also the associate
editor of the Capital Times, the daily newspaper in
Madison, Wisconsin. A co-founder of Free Press, he appears
regularly on MSNBC, CNN, the BBC, and other broadcast and cable
networks. His current book written with Robert W. McChesney is
The Death and Life of American Journalism: The Media
Revolution That Will Begin the World Again.
Co-sponsored by the Thomas Paine Society of Pasadena.
$8, or free
for Friends of the Center.
$4 for students.

Rebecca Skloot
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks
Sunday, May 2
11 a.m.
Henrietta Lacks, known as HeLa, was a poor Southern tobacco
farmer who worked the same land as her slave ancestors, yet her
cells - taken without her knowledge - became one of the most
important tools in medicine. The first "immortal" human cells
grown in culture, they are still alive today, though she has
been dead for more than 60 years. Award-winning writer
Rebecca Skloot discovered this fascinating story and wrote a
book, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, that she will
discuss. In its first weeks of publication, it reached #2 on the
New York Times nonfiction Best Sellers list.
HeLa cells were vital for developing the polio vaccine;
uncovered secrets of cancer, viruses, the effects of the atom
bomb; helped lead to important advances like in vitro
fertilization, cloning, and gene mapping; and have been bought
and sold by the billions - yet Henrietta lacks remains virtually
unknown, buried in an unmarked grave. Her family did not learn
of her "immortality" until more than 20 years after her death
and never saw any of the profits. The Story of the Lacks
family - past and present - is inextricably connected to the
dark history of experimentation on African Americans, the birth
of bioethics, and the legal battles over whether we control the
stuff we are made of.
Skloot is a science writer whose articles have appeared in
The New York Times Magazine; O, The Oprah Magazine;
Discover, and Columbia Journalism Review. She also
is a contributing editor for Popular Science magazine and
a correspondent for NPR and PBS. Skloot has an undergraduate
degree in biomedical science from Colorado State University and
an MFA in nonfiction writing from the University of Pittsburgh.
She has taught in several creative writing programs. For more
information, visit www.RebeccaSkloot.com.
$8, or free
for Friends of the Center.
$4 for students.

John C. Avise
Inside the Human Genome:
The Case for Non-Intelligent Design
Sunday, May 16
11 a.m. in Hollywood;
4:30 p.m.
in
Costa Mesa
Proponents of
intelligent design focus on the many beauties of life,
claiming that smooth-working biological traits prove direct
creation by a supernatural deity. However, natural selection
combined with genetic processes also can produce complex
biological systems that usually function well. So both
natural selection and intelligent design are consistent with
the appearance of biological craftsmanship. Serious
biological imperfections, on the other hand, says Prof.
John C. Avise, a Distinguished Professor of Ecology and
Evolution at the University of California, Irvine, can be
expected of evolutionary processes but they are troublesome
to rationalize as overt mistakes by a fallible God.
How do believers reconcile a loving God with a world of evil and
flaws? Can evolution emancipate religion from the shackles of
the problem of evil? The blame for biological flaws falls
squarely on the shoulders of evolutionary processes, thus
relegating religion to its rightful realm - not as a secular
interpreter of the biological minutiae of our physical existence
but rather as a counselor on grander philosophical issues.
Avise, who received his Ph.D. in Genetics from the University of
California, Davis, studies animal behavior, ecology and
evolution primarily, as well as the relevance of evolutionary
and molecular genetics to human affairs, including religion. He
has received many academic honors and distinctions, including
being elected as Fellow of the American Association for the
Advancement of Science. In addition, he has published more than
300 refereed articles in scientific journals and 18 books,
including his new one, Inside the Human Genome: The Case for
Non-Intelligent Design.
$8, or free
for Friends of the Center.
$4 for students.
Naomi Oreskes
Erik M. Conway
Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the
Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming
Sunday,
June 6
11 a.m.
According to a recently released study from the Yale Project on
Climate Change, 40 percent of Americans believe there is major
scientific disagreement as to whether global warming is real.
Yet, you would be hard-pressed to find any working climate
scientist who didn't think global warming is happening and has
been for some time, explain science historians Naomi Oreskes
and Erik M. Conway. But ever since researchers first
began examining the evidence that our planet was heating up -
and that human activities were probably to blame - people have
been questioning the data, doubting the evidence, and attacking
the scientists who collect and explain it.
In their talk based on their new book, Merchants of Doubt,
the authors will explain how a loose-knit group of high-level
scientists and scientific advisers, with deep connections in
politics and industry, ran effective campaigns to mislead the
public and deny well-established scientific knowledge over four
decades in several areas. Remarkably, the same individuals
surface repeatedly; some of the same figures who claimed the
science of global warming is "not settled" denied the truth of
studies linking smoking to lung cancer, argued that acid rain
and the ozone hole was caused by volcanoes, and charged that the
EPA had rigged the science surrounding secondhand smoke. Oreskes
and Conway roll back the rug on this dark corner of the American
scientific community, and show how ideology and corporate
interest have skewed public understanding and spread confusion
on many of the most important issues of our time.
Oreskes is a professor of history and science studies at the
University of California, San Diego. Her study "Beyond the Ivory
Tower," published in Science, was a milestone in the
fight against global warming denial and was cited by Al Gore in
An Inconvenient Truth. Conway is the resident historian
at NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab at Caltech in Pasadena.
$8, or free
for Friends of the Center.
$4 for students.
Photo credits: Naomi
Oreskes by Charles Kazilek, Erik M. Conway by Paul Alers
EManagement Consultants
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