About the conference

• Dr. David Domke, author of "The God Strategy" and "God Willing? Political Fundamentalism in the White House" will be sharing ideas from his books and current events.
• Dr. Bob Park, author of "Superstition: Belief in the Age of Science" and "Voodoo Science: The Road from foolishness to Fraud", will share ideas from his research.
• Roy Speckhardt is the Executive Director of the American Humanist Association, and a board member of The Humanist Institute. He's also an advisory board member of the Secular Student Alliance and the Women's Law & Public Policy Fellowship Program.
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• Chapter Activities: A round-robin discussion. Bring some of your ideas, and take away others. We are hoping to have at least one person from each organization attend this session, as it's designed to allow people to share what their organizations are doing, and to learn what other organizations are doing. We expect that every little presentation will last about five minutes.
• Meetups: A panel on using the technology and tactics of meet-ups to collect local free thinkers for shared social events, and sometimes to further organize those people into a formal organization.
• CFI Leadership Training: The Center for Inquiry hosts training every summer; there are student leader and community organizer tracks. The students (and the local adult attendees) will report on their individual programs.
• Acting on Beliefs: Bruce Adams, the local Americans United president, will share what his group has been doing to combat Intelligent Design in public schools and to directly confront a town which posted on its official website that its employees value their "belief in God."
• Stepping up to the Green: A workshop from Oregon Environmental Council, a local Portland expert on living as lightly on the planet as possible, reducing the burden we place on the earth and our communities.
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• Debating Darwin deniers: Jim Corbett, of the Humanists of North Puget Sound and Humanists of Washington, will show how to counter non-scientific statements/arguments, based on debates he's had with evolution deniers.
• Reform at Victory: Michele Ulriksen, author of "Reform at Victory: A Survivor's Story," will share her experiences of being shipped off to a fundamentalist Baptist reform school (boot camp) when she was 16.
• Darwin's Black Box: PSU professor Mitch Cruzan will talk about teaching Biology to non-Science majors and what beliefs about evolution college students bring to school with them.
• Hope for Skeptics: Jim Corbett presents his second workshop, one he's also giving at the AHA conference in Phoenix in June. This one is about creating hope in a life that agnostics believe stops at death.
• Ten Myths about Evolution: The co-authors of "Top 10 Myths About Evolution," Cameron McPherson Smith and Charles Sullivan, will share the core ideas of their book and reactions to it from a wide spectrum of readers.
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• Natural Medicines/ Snake Oil Science: Dr. Harriett Hall (the Skepdoc columnist from Skeptic magazine) will present two different programs on extending reason and science to our daily lives, mostly in the areas of OTC medicines and supplements.
• Current AU Court Cases: Steve Green, Professor of Law at Willamette University, who has often spoken at Americans United for the Separation of Church and State meetings, will review legal issues in current church/state cases.
• The Neuro-physiology of Peak Experiences: Dr. Josh Fost, author of "If Not God, Then What? Neuroscience, Aesthetics, and the Origins of the Transcendent", will share some of his research in the neurophysiology of religious (and other peak) experiences.
• Invest the Change you Wish to Create in the World: Mike Katcher, of Microcredit Enterprises, will talk about using very small loans, micro-credits, primarily to women entrepreneurs in the Third World to launch them on the road to economic self-sufficiency.
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• There are many hotels in downtown Portland. We have arranged for a conference rate ($89 a night, rather than the normal $129) at University Place, the hotel nearest to the conference site. Let them know you are attending the Northwest Free-thought Conference. The phone number is (503) 221-0140. There is also the possibility of staying in or near Portland with a local freethought host. E-mail to notify us. We'll want to know how many people and when you'll be arriving.
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