#QEDcon – Day1 (Part1 – Daytime)

Here is a quick reminder of yesterday at #QEDcon during the day… nope sorry, no detailed notes, I was way too busy having a blast, but fret not because it was all filmed and so will be up on YouTube at some point.

There were parallel tracks and a few really hard choices for me to make, so as you can see I stayed in the main room.

Room fills up and the excitement builds …

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To preside over things as the MC we have the wonderful Mitch Benn (yea…) … and and yes, the opening movie was a blast …

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Marcel Dicke ()

Why Not? A Six-Legged Solution to Food Security, and yes he meant it … when done, we got the opportunity to had a sample (seen below), and yes I went for it (had a but of a nutty taste, and a tad dry, needs a bit of liquid, can anybody recommend a wine to goes with bugs?)

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Next up was Harriet Hall who proceeded to poke holes in the Acupuncture Myth.

This was a great talk, I learned a lot of new stuff.

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Then we had Rosie Waterhouse talking about Satanic Abuse, False Memories, and Multiple Personalities: Anatomy of a 25-year Investigation

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LUNCH

We restarted with …

Natalie Haynes  – Stands Up for the Classics

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Ryan Bell – The Slow Death of God: Lessons from a Year Without God

  • Lee Symes ‏@Lee_Symes   speaks about his year without god & subsequently loss of faith
  • Matt J ‏@mattjaywhy Ex-pastor Ryan Bell: ‘Rock bottom is living in your step mother’s hot pink doll-filled spare room’ Harrowing real life events  
  • Kat ‏@ladyscience  “I went to a Catholic church, and it was just… so Catholic!” Ryan Bell, an ex-7th Day Adventist pastor.
  • Godless Spellchecker ‏@GSpellchecker  Hearing talk is great. Always fascinating to hear the ‘once inside, now out’ perspective. @YWG_Film

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Bruce Hood (@profbrucehood) – Why We Fail to Reason & How to Speak Easily

  • ElizabethD ‏@_ElizabethD  Apparently atheists and scientists are more likely to fuck dead chickens than the general public, says survey of US citizens
  •  I’m going to sign my Bruce Hood books myself, in protest of veneration of the essence of people.

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Matt Dillahunty – Peddling Reason: Thoughts on a Decade of Debating with Theists

  • Katy ‏@SkeptiKat  “It all works. Just not on everyone, every time.”
  •  ‘No one has a monopoly on reason or stupidity’
  • ‘If God’s not a humanist, fuck him. I don’t want anything to do with him.’ – Matt Dillahunty
  • Chris Malburn ‏@chrismalburn  The Tower of Babel: a parable of the dichotomy between God and humanist values. -Matt Dilahunty
  •  “Be yourself” when you’re in a debate – Advice from @Matt_Dillahunty
  • András G. Pintér ‏@skepman  Take-home message from @Matt_Dillahunty: Do not adopt the burden of proof through making hyperbolic claims & be yourself! Agreed

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Tweets

  • QEDcon Bookshop ‏@QEDconBookshop  Book fact 3:If you cut out all the individual words from each book on sale today and laid them end to end you’d be wasting your time
  •  Drawing a dot-to-dot of Mohammed is the best loophole ever. EVER.
  • Simon Singh ‏@SLSingh  Highlights so far are @_JosephineJones on the cancer panel and Natalie Haynes on classics – hsa got it all.
  •  PowerPoint can be useful but Ryan Bell & Natalie Haynes show quite conclusively that it’s not necessary for an entertaining talk.  [DG … and later after this tweet, Matt as well]
  • Trending Topics UK ‏@trendingtopicuk  qedcon is nr.7 trending hashtag in UK in last 4 hours. trending-uk.com/h/qedcon

… more picks to come later for the evening event.

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