Special Speaking Event: CFI United Nations Representative
In Fall of 2005 the Center for Inquiry was granted special consultative status as a non-governmental organization, or NGO, under the United Nations Economic and Social Council.
This entitles the Center for Inquiry to designate official representatives to UN headquarters in New York and UN offices in Geneva and Vienna. The Center for Inquiry can participate in conferences and briefings open to NGOs, and generally present the scientific, skeptical, and secular humanist perspective to the international community.
Austin Dacey, PhD, serves as the Center for Inquiry's United Nations representative and is a contributing editor at Skeptical Inquirer and Free Inquiry magazines. He teaches philosophy, ethics, and science education at Polytechnic University and State University of New York. He is the author of articles in numerous publications including the New York Times.
The Secular Conscience: Why Belief Belongs in Public Life
In this incisive talk, philosopher Austin Dacey calls for a bold rethinking of the nature of conscience and its role in public life. Inspired by an earlier liberal tradition he traces to Spinoza and John Stuart Mill, Dacey urges liberals to lift their self-imposed gag order and defend a renewed secularism based on the objective moral value of conscience.
General Admission: $10, Friends of the Center: FREE
