Center for Inquiry DC Seventh Anniversary Celebration & Fundraiser

The Center for Inquiry DC is celebrating the achievements of its seventh year in our nation's capital! We are very pleased to host this year's event in the Langston Room of Busboys and Poets, one of DC's premier cultural venues. Registration includes a full dinner and open bar.

SEPARATE REGISTRATION REQUIRED
Register: http://action.centerforinquiry.net/site/Calendar?id=103981&view=Detail

Program will include:

• Philosopher and novelist Rebecca Goldstein in a talk titled "Religion, Humanism and Moral Progress"
• CFI President and CEO Ronald Lindsay
• Melody Hensley, Executive Director, Center for Inquiry-DC will discuss the year's accomplishments and plans for next year
• CFI's Senior Policy Analyst Ed Beck
• 2012-2013 Volunteer Recognition
• 2013 Freethinker of the Year Award
• Door Prizes
• Socializing with fellow freethinkers!

Registration: $55; Premier Seating: $100

$55 Registration includes a full dinner with:

• Choice of four entrees (including vegetarian and vegan option)
• Open bar
• Appetizer and Dessert
• Unlimited fountain drinks and coffee
• Gratuity

$100 Premier Seating includes full dinner as per above plus:

• Reserved seating
• $45 Tax Deductible Contribution

There is one step between the entrance and the Langston Room. People with disabilities who anticipate needing accommodations or who have questions about physical access may email sdavis [at] centerforinquiry [dot] net in advance of the event.

About the talk: "Religion, Humanism and Moral Progress"

The religious traditions that still command allegiance from millions all have their roots in roughly the same time period, the span that has been called the "Axial Age", because its spokes radiate out into our own age. It was during this time that Greek philosophy and Greek tragedy were also born. All this normative ferment circled round the question of what makes a human life matter. The Greeks were as obsessed with this question as other peoples of the Axial Age, and their culture was as saturated with religious rites as any other.But when it came to the question of human mattering they approached it in strictly secular terms. Instead of doctrines, they proposed a methodology for submitting such questions to self-critical reason. This is why, of all the approaches that emerged during that period, only one has made progress in correcting false beliefs and enlarging our moral vision.

About Rebecca Goldstein

Rebecca Goldstein is a novelist and philosopher. She received her Ph.D. in philosophy from Princeton University, after which she taught at Barnard College, Columbia University. The recipient of many prizes for both fiction and scholarship, in 1996 she was awarded a MacArthur “Genius” Prize. Her first novel was the critically acclaimed bestseller The Mind-Body Problem, and there have been six more works of fiction, including her latest novel, 36 Arguments for The Existence of God: A Work of Fiction. She is also the author of Incompleteness: The Proof and Paradox of Kurt Gödel, named one of the top science books of 2005 by Discover Magazine, and of Betraying Spinoza: The Renegade Jew Who Gave Us Modernity, which received the Koret International Prize for Jewish Scholarship. She has been awarded several honorary doctorates, Guggenheim and Radcliffe fellowships, and is a Humanist Laureate. Her upcoming book entitled Plato at the Googleplex is scheduled for release in March 2014.

Rebecca Goldstein