Sunday, December 10, 2006
11 a.m.

     R. Joseph Hoffmann, Academic Vice President of CFI Transnational and Chair of the Committee for the Scientific Examination of Religion (CSER) in Amherst, New York since 2003, will examine the truth behind the gospel fictions at this special event.

     Hoffmann is an historian specializing in the social and intellectual development of early Christianity. He is best known for his early controversial thesis regarding the role of heretics in the history of the New Testament canon and reconstructions of the writings of the pagan opponents of Christianity - Celsus (1987), Porphyry (1994) and Julian the Apostate (2004).

     Trained at Harvard, Oxford, and Heidelberg, Hoffmann was Senior Scholar of St Cross College, Oxford, from 1980-1983 and taught at the University of Michigan, Oxford, The American University of Beirut and, most recently, Wells College, where he was the Campbell Professor.

     Hoffmann also is the director of the Center for Inquiry Institute, the educational arm of CFI Transnational.

     A selection of his books will be available for sale.

$8, or free for Friends of the Center.

Ronald Hamburger

Conspiracy or Science:
Why Did the Towers Fall?

Sunday, December 3, 2006
11 a.m.

     Ronald Hamburger, a structural engineer and Senior Principal at Simpson Gumpertz and Heger consulting engineers in San Francisco, will discuss why those buildings collapsed and illustrate his talk with graphics. He was a principal author of FEMA's initial report on the collapse of the twin towers and later a key participant in the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) study.

$6, or free for Friends of the Center.
 

Tom Flynn

Is There Really a War
on Christmas?

Sunday, November 19, 2006
11 a.m. in Hollywood
4:30 p.m. in Costa Mesa

     Flynn will relate Christmas conflicts to the way American majorities have responded to growing religious diversity since the 1840s. To him, today's right-wing defenders of Christmas have much in common with southern whites whose way of life disappeared during the Civil Rights years. Flynn is also the author of The Trouble with Christmas and editor of the forthcoming New Encyclopedia of Unbelief.

$6, or free for Friends of the Center.

CFI-West's FEED YOUR BRAIN Lecture Series presents

Jonathan Kirsch

A History of the
End of the World

Sunday, November 5, 2006
11 a.m.

     Now, author Jonathan Kirsch looks at the repercussions of Revelation in his new book, A History of the End of the World: How the Most Controversial Book in the Bible Changed the Course of Western Civilization.

     Kirsch is the author of 10 books, a book columnist for the Los Angeles Times, an Adjunct professor on the faculty at New York University, and an attorney in Los Angeles. He spoke at the Center last year on his book titled God Against the Gods: The History of the War Between Monotheism and Polytheism.

$6, or free for Friends of the Center.

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CFI-West's FEED YOUR BRAIN Lecture Series presents

Monique El-Faizy

God and Country:
How Evangelicals Have Become Mainstream

Sunday, Oct. 15, 2006
11 a.m. in Hollywood
4:30 p.m. in Costa Mesa

     In a sweeping investigation of the evolution and influence of evangelical Christianity in America, journalist and former Christian fundamentalist Monique El-Faizy will discuss this development from the intimate perspective of a former insider as recounted in her new book, God and Country: How Evangelicals Have Become America's New Mainstream.

     El-Faizy, who is on tour with her book, currently works at the New York Daily News. Her work has appeared in The Guardian, the Washington Post, the New York Times, and GQ.

     Her new book will be available for sale and signing by the author.

$6, or free for Friends of the Center.

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Planetary Humanism:
A New Paradigm

     The Planetary Community is facing religious wars that may engulf the world for decades. Some have even declared that the Third World War has begun. Compound this with the ecological disasters facing the planet and the crisis is urgent!

     Paul Kurtz, who is known as the father of secular humanism and founder of the modern skeptics' movement, proposes a new agenda for the future. We need to overcome the ancient religious, ethnic, and nationalistic dogmas of the past, he says, and to enunciate a bold new Planetary Humanism appropriate for the 21st century and beyond.

     Paul Kurtz is the founder and chairman of the Center for Inquiry, CSICOP, and the Council for Secular Humanism. Kurtz is the editor-in-chief of Free Inquiry and is on the editorial board of Skeptical Inquirer. He is professor emeritus of philosophy at the State University of New York at Buffalo and has taught and/or lectured at many of the leading universities and colleges of the world. He is the author of more than 800 articles and 45 books.

$6, or free for Friends of the Center.

     Stanford is Chair of Anthropology and Co-Director of the Jane Goodall Research Center at the University of Southern California. Best known for his groundbreaking work on the meat-eating behavior of wild chimpanzees, he has conducted field studies of primates in India, Bangladesh, Peru, Tanzania and Uganda, in collaboration with Jane Goodall. Stanford is the author of over 100 scholarly publications, and eleven books, all based on his research in the areas of primary behavior and human evolution.

$6, or free for Friends of the Center.

Trey Stokes
 
Alien Autopsy:
Case Closed!

Sunday, August 20, 2006
11 a.m. in Hollywood
4:30 p.m. in Costa Mesa

     A few years ago, Fox Television aired a show discussing the tantalizing possibility that an Alien Autopsy was performed in the late 1940s after an extraterrestrial spaceship crashed in the American Southwest. This alleged government autopsy film created quite a stir among UFO enthusiasts, many of whom still believe it to be genuine.

     New information is in! Hollywood special effects wizard and paranormal investigator Trey Stokes will drive the final nail in the alien coffin on August 20 when he reviews the history of this report and discusses the late-breaking information that should put this hoax to bed once and for all.

$6, or free for Friends of the Center.

The Ethics of Dropping the Bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki

Sunday, August 6
11 a.m.

$6, or free for Friends of the Center.
 

     Many do not know that the great comedian, songwriter, pianist, writer and skeptic Steve Allen also invented late night TV, hosting the Tonight Show from 1954-57. Author and DePaul University law professor Ben Alba will celebrate the brilliance of Steve Allen with a talk in the very theater named after Allen.

     Alba, who wrote Inventing Late Night: Steve Allen and the Original Tonight Show, will discuss how Allen developed most of the show's elements in place today, including the opening monologue, celebrity chats, comedy sketches, exotic animals, and even the fake mind reader. Alba, who will sign copies of his book, interviewed 35 entertainment legends who worked with Allen, including Sid Caesar, Jonathan Winters, the Smothers Brothers, Louis Nye, Tom Poston, and Allen's wife, Jayne Meadows. Enjoy an afternoon filled with history, memories, comedy, and music.

$6, or free for Friends of the Center.
 

     Delaney, an assistant professor of sociology at the State University of New York at Oswego, uses excerpts from many of the now-classic episodes to illustrate key facets of social interaction and to review what its characters teach us about ourselves and our complex society.

     The author of seven books, Delaney has traveled extensively and presented papers in Moscow, Buenos Aires, London, Dublin, and throughout North America.

$6, or free for Friends of the Center.

What is literary nonfiction? Is it literature? Journalism? Or some nebulous territory in between? The scandal over James Frey's memoir A Million Little Pieces brought the issue to public consciousness, but unfortunately framed it in ethical, rather than aesthetic, terms. Yet what if we are witnessing the birth of a new genre, in which ethics are mitigated by more creative questions?

David L. Ulin, editor of the Los Angeles Times Book Review and author of The Myth of Solid Ground: Earthquakes, Prediction, and the Fault Line Between Reason and Faith, will look at the curious case of contemporary nonfiction, considering the line between truth and creativity, actual and emotional truth.

$6, or free for Friends of the Center.