Best Lunch In A Long Time!

Today I had the great honour of sitting with two very fascinating people. One was Charles Ramcharon, a Professor of Biology at Laurentian University, and Greg Stott, a Professor of Geology also at Laurentian University. With company like that do you think that creationism had a chance? In fact, it didn't have a prayer.

What transpired was a most enjoyable lunch that hopefully will be the begining of a cooperative venture between the Sudbury Humanists Association and the Laurentian Free Thinkers. Our shared experiences brought to mind a passage from the Demon Haunted World by Carl Sagan. Unfortunately Carl appears to have been prophetic.

Science is more than a body of knowledge; it is a way of thinking. I have a foreboding of an America in my children's or grandchildren's time -- when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the key manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what's true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness.

Hopefully together we can beat back the darkness of ignorance if only in our little corner of the world.