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