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The UK Centre for Intelligent Design Announces Its 2011 Conference

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The Centre for Intelligent Design (C4ID) UK recently announced its 2011 conference on intelligent design. This may be just the right opportunity to increase your understanding of the fast moving centre-stage debate about Darwinism and Intelligent Design and at the same time enjoy a fabulous conference centre, all en-suite, in the Malvern Hills, Worcestershire.

You’ll be engaging with world-class speakers for up to five sessions over the Friday evening and Saturday as they bring the scientific evidence that is making ID an unstoppable movement, world-wide.

  • Dr. Geoff Barnard
  • Prof. Chris Shaw
  • Dr. Jay Wesley Richards

Who Is It For?

This is for any who have a serious interest in understanding science and its wider implications today. The speakers are operating at the highest levels in their own academic work but they have a gift for making their subjects relevant, interesting, exciting and intelligible for non-specialists.

When?

September 9th and 10th – Come from Friday evening for dinner (7pm) through to Saturday tea-time or come for one of the days – a mix and match menu of options so none should be excluded.

Cost?

Full package Friday/Saturday all meals and accommodation is £90 twin, £100 single, all rooms en-suite. For Friday evening dinner and lecture/Q&A it’s £20 and for Saturday only it’s £60.

Concessions – for students a discount of up to 80% is available on application to conf2011[at]c4id.org.uk (replace “[at]” with “@”).

Details of the conference centre can be found at:

http://www.elim.org.uk/Groups/121077/Elim_Conference_Centre.aspx

Why this Conference?

This year’s Intelligent Design Conference follows on from last year’s hugely successful conference in Oxford. Due to increased demand for places and a desire to allow more time for both the talks and Q & A, this year’s conference will be held over two days (the evening of the 9th and all day 10th September) and at a larger venue.

Conference Options?

Delegates can choose from the full conference package, or day attendance on one or both of the days. The full conference package includes an evening meal on the Friday, overnight accommodation and breakfast and lunch on the Saturday, as well as the use of the facilities at the conference centre.

Speakers Biographies

Dr Geoff Barnard has been a professional biochemist for over 40 years, a Senior Lecturer in Biological Sciences at three UK Universities and a regular visiting scientist at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel. His last academic position in the UK was as a Senior Research Scientist in the Department of Veterinary Medicine, University of Cambridge, a position he held for over seven years. He now lives in Israel with his wife and is employed as a Senior Scientist in the Diagnostics Industry.

Professor Chris Shaw is Professor in Drug Discovery within the School of Pharmacy at Queens University, Belfast. Prof. Shaw’s exciting work involves the discovery and characterisation of biologically active agents within nature, most notably from amphibian venoms that are harvested worldwide. High-throughput molecular technologies involving de novo peptide sequencing, “shotgun” cDNA cloning and pharmacological screening is directed towards the functional genomic understanding of peptidomes, thus allowing rapid acquisition of structural data and the generation of peptide molecular libraries for novel drug leads.

Dr Jay W Richards is a Senior Fellow of the Discovery Institute and a Contributing Editor of The American at the American Enterprise Institute. In recent years he has been a Visiting Fellow at the Heritage Foundation, and a Research Fellow and Director of Acton Media at the Acton Institute. He has written many academic articles, books, and popular essays on a wide variety of subjects. Most recently he edited the new anthology, God & Evolution: Protestants, Catholics and Jews Explore Darwin’s Challenge to Faith . His previous book was Money, Greed, and God: Why Capitalism Is the Solution and Not the Problem (HarperOne, May 2009).

Richards is also executive producer of several documentaries, including The Call of the Entrepreneur, The Birth of Freedom, and Effective Stewardship (Acton Media and Zondervan, 2009). He has been featured in several television-broadcast documentaries, including The Call of the Entrepreneur, The Case for a Creator, The Wonder of Soil, and The Privileged Planet, based on his book, The Privileged Planet, with astronomer Guillermo Gonzalez. He has a B.A. with majors in Political Science and Religion, an M.Div. (Master of Divinity) and a Th.M. (Master of Theology), and a Ph.D. (with honours) in philosophy and theology from Princeton Theological Seminary.

Conference Rates

Full Conference Package: from 6pm on 9th to 5pm on 10th September, including food, accommodation and use of facilities £90 per person (based on twin room two sharing) or £100 per person for single room.

Day attendance on Saturday 10 September, including lunch and use of facilities £60 per person.

Evening attendance on Friday 9 September (admission to evening dinner 7pm and lecture only) £20 per person.

Booking a Place

Demand for tickets is expected to be high and with limited places tickets will be issued on a first come first served basis. To secure your place at this years conference click here and then follow the on screen instructions.

Conference Programme details

The following advance details of lectures to be given at the September ID Conference have been issued:

Dr Geoff Barnard — “The Survival of the Fertile”

The evolutionary concepts of Darwinism demand the total plasticity of chromosomal architecture. There can be random gene duplications, chromosomal inversions, deletions, fusions and fissions along with the addition of new biological information as one species transforms itself into another. This is the fantasy land of evolution which is now regarded as a fact in the scientific community. The cell, on the other hand, goes out of its way and expends vast amounts of biological energy to maintain the integrity of its chromosomal structures. There is a good reason for this.

Effective sexual reproduction requires the existence of a complimentary male and female reproductive system which is both physically and biochemically compatible as well as the successful formation of effective gametes. Furthermore, the production of sperm and egg involves the complex process of meiosis which is initiated by the total and accurate alignment of homologous chromosomes prior to cross-over and recombination. This is the very antithesis of chromosomal plasticity. It is the opinion of the speaker that the maintenance of fertility is the biggest biological challenge to Darwinism. The tautology is not the survival of the fittest but it is the survival of the fertile.

Prof Chris Shaw — “Good science or bad religion

Science makes some spectacular claims about the substance and origins of the Universe and of Life but how many of these are based upon a belief system and how many are based upon actual “so-called” scientific facts. As all science is effectively provisional, does science provide humanity with certainty or confusion?

Dr Jay Richards —

1:  “The Privileged Planet

The more scientists have learned about the needs for life, the more they have come to appreciate how many things must go right to have even one “habitable planet” where complex life must exist. The list of ingredients seems to grow every year. But does that mean that we earthlings are just the lucky recipients of a vast cosmic lottery? Or does this evidence point to purpose and intelligent design? In The Privileged Planet, Guillermo Gonzalez and Jay Richards have argued for “conspiracy” rather than mere coincidence. It turns out how that the rare places where life can exist in the universe are also the best places overall for doing science. This suggests that the universe is not only designed for life, but is designed for scientific discovery as well.

2:  “What is science? Can design be part of science?”

Comments
Hi Lizzie,
Effective sexual reproduction requires the existence of a complimentary male and female reproductive system which is both physically and biochemically compatible as well as the successful formation of effective gametes. Furthermore, the production of sperm and egg involves the complex process of meiosis which is initiated by the total and accurate alignment of homologous chromosomes prior to cross-over and recombination. This is the very antithesis of chromosomal plasticity. It is the opinion of the speaker that the maintenance of fertility is the biggest biological challenge to Darwinism.
Mung
July 15, 2011
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