The Lab, day 3

While looking around town in West Covina, CA yesterday, I saw this:

Hope you're not in a rush!

Anyway, today was the third and final day of Reasons To Believe's "The Lab" conference. Before arriving at the RTB office, my father and I went to Flappy Jack's Pancake House on Route 66. The plates of pancakes have an absolutely massive amount of food; I had to box more than half of my banana nut pancakes. Those, and their Hawaiian ones, are delicious.

A street sign for Route 66

The conference's day opened with advice on college life: being intentional about time. After that, we got into some more interactive apologetics training. We considered challenges from headlines/excerpts of scientific news, developing responses from both science and theology.

There was then an amazing talk about how environment affects cell behavior, i.e. how genes don't determine everything. It also covered some ways that the raw base pairs are controlled and interpreted, like packing and separators.

One of the conference's most impactful talks was on a four-part argument for design. That argument first needs to critique the evolutionary model, which is most effectively done by considering whether the model's predictions are fulfilled. Three positive arguments for design can then be applied. There are the "watchmaker" argument (design requires a designer), the empirical argument (humans built some life, but only with great intelligence and modern tooling), and the bio-inspiration argument (humans are making technological gains by examining nature's mechanisms).

After the conference ended with commissioning, we said our goodbyes to all the other attendees and speakers. My father and I will be flying back home tomorrow morning.

The Lab, day 2

Today was the second day of Reasons To Believe's "The Lab" conference in West Covina, California.

Me with the RTB sign

In the morning, the presenters reviewed the three major destinations on the science-faith landscape: young-earth creationism, old-earth creationism, and evolutionism. It lined up the six "days" of creation with biological events, noting how impressive it is that the author of Genesis managed to get the order right despite how a human living in that time might expect the world to be built.

We then all loaded up the vans and went to the Griffith Observatory for their "Center of the Universe" planetarium show. The observatory has a lovely campus. It's up on a hill with trails leading up to the actual building. From there, the Hollywood sign is visible.

With the Hollywood sign in the background

Outside the building, there was a noon detector:

"It's high noon..."

Inside, there was (among many other interesting exhibits) one of those devices that prove that the Earth rotates:

A swinging pendulum that knocks over pins as the day progresses

During the show itself, I was impressed by the quality of the animation. The narration was soothing yet interesting. The show covered humanity's exploration of the universe and how our understanding of the cosmos developed.

Once we arrived back, there was a session about the relationships between the numerous species of life. The presentation contrasted common design with common descent. It showed the difficulties involved in building a tree of genetic development that links all life.

We ended the day hearing about how to effectively engage in dialogue with those who may not be entirely receptive. This presentation was also notable for its use of webcomics (especially XKCD and Ph.D. Comics, which are both amazing).

The silhouette of the mountains at night

The Lab, day 1

Today was the first day of The Lab conference. Before my father and I went to the Reasons To Believe office, we looked around for a breakfast restaurant and found Marie Callender's, which I only knew from the soup. Their pancakes were very good, and the waffles were also fine.

When we arrived at RTB, we got a brief but impressive tour of the facility, which is very clean and modern.

A humorous caption for the restroom

The first hour or so of the actual conference established the basics of apologetics. The first session after lunch went into epistemology and the philosophy/axioms of science. Following that, there were small-group discussions about apologetics and personal experiences therewith.

The most detailed section was near the end. AJ Roberts gave a presentation de-equivocating "evolution", covering the five kinds: chemical evolution (abiogenesis), microevolution, microbial evolution (gene transfer among single-cell organisms), speciation, and macroevolution (introduction of completely new features). Of those, she found that only the middle three had sufficient scientific support.

After the day's events, the whole group went to dinner together at In-N-Out, which I hear is important to go to if one is visiting California.

The burger, prior to its being eaten

We finished the day off with laser tag in a park. Since I had never played before, I was not very adept, but I did have a great time.

The RTB office sign at night

Visiting California

Reasons To Believe's "The Lab" conference is happening this week, and I am attending with my father, so I am currently in California. I also am taking the opportunity to visit Caltech, since it's fairly close by.

This morning, we rode two flights to get to the Ontario airport after a stop in Dallas (Fort Worth). DFW has a really neat tram-like system to move people to the various gates very quickly. After landing in ONT, we picked up a rental car, which turned out to be a completely new Nissan because they didn't have the economy car that we ordered.

Following that, we attempted to visit the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, but since we had not signed up for any public tour, we couldn't get in.

Found the way to space!

At the JPL sign

Since we hadn't eaten for a while, we went to look for food. I Googled "caltech cafe" and found mentions of a Red Door Café, so I had Google give me walking directions, but when we arrived at the destination, no café was in sight. So instead, we hurriedly bought burgers from a Jack-in-the-Box before checking in for the Caltech tour.

I am most struck by Caltech's academic rigor and the freedom/responsibility it gives students. The amount of resources it makes available is also exceptionally impressive. I'll definitely be applying there. (The tour included a stop outside the Red Door Café, and it was nowhere near where we had previously been led to.)

With the admissions counselor

Following the Caltech visit, I searched for attractions near Pasadena. Google mentioned a Strawberry Peak, so we put that in the Google Maps app and started going. It turns out that Strawberry Peak is a few miles into the Angeles National Forest, which covers a swath of mountains. The only way through is Highway 2, which winds up and down in elevation and around numerous mountains, which are breathtaking:

 

When Google Maps informed us that we had arrived, we saw nothing special - the actual peak point is not accessible from a road, so it took us to the closest place. Though I couldn't get cell service 3,000 feet above sea level, we continued on Highway 2, planning to travel the entire length of the Forest. It took us several hours, but we did it. The elevation reached almost 8,000 feet at some points.

At Cloud Burst Summit, >7K feet

The Forest is almost entirely devoid of civilization; we only ran across two places that might have running water, and both were closed at the time. Therefore, we were very pleased to run across the Grizzly Café in Wrightwood to the east of the Forest.

After a good meal there, we arrived at the hotel near RTB, where I have typed this post. The convention begins tomorrow morning.