^{Date
August
08
Aug
12
12
2022

Time
18:00:00

Locale
Tacoma, WA

Venue
Marriott Tacoma Downtown}

18th Annual Insiders Briefing on Intelligent Design: Uniquely Human

_{Private event for members of the Discovery Society}

We are not some casual and meaningless product of evolution. Each of us is the result of a thought of God. Each of us is willed, each of us is loved, each of us is necessary.
Pope Benedict

Discovery Society members should make plans now to attend the 18th Annual Insiders Briefing on Intelligent Design, to be held on August 12-13, 2022, in Tacoma, WA.

At this year’s Insiders Briefing, you will get to explore how science is revealing the amazing design of human beings as never before. Topics will include how nature was prepared beforehand for the flourishing of humans, how the human body displays exquisite intelligent design, why the human mind can’t be duplicated by a computer, and much more. We’ll also examine what happens when some people wrongly promote dehumanization in the name of science. Plus, we will preview upcoming film and video projects, and learn more about the Center for Science and Culture’s initiatives. The event will conclude with a banquet at the Tacoma Art Museum, where we will get a private viewing of glassworks by renowned artist Dale Chihuly and paintings representing innovations in American art from 1900-1950.

This event features an all-star cast of some of our top scientists and scholars, including Center Director Stephen Meyer, author of Return of the God Hypothesis; geneticist Michael Denton, author of The Miracle of Man; engineer Steve Laufmann and physician Howard Glicksman, authors of Your Designed Body; chemist Marcos Eberlin, author of Foresight (appearing via video); computer engineer Robert Marks, author of Non-Computable You; Richard Weikart, author of Darwinian Racism; Center Managing Director John West; and bioethicist Wesley J. Smith.

When

Friday, August 12, 2022 6:00 PM to Saturday, August 13, 2022 10:00 PM

Where

Marriott Tacoma Downtown
1538 Commerce Street
Tacoma, WA 98402
253-294-9200

As of July 28, 2022, the conference hotel is booked up and no more rooms are available.

While our conference hotel is fully booked, there are some nearby hotels that might have availability. See the hotel information section below for more information.

Note: we do not have a contract with these hotels and cannot guarantee availability or pricing.

Registration

Cost will be $450 per person, with special discounts provided for Director’s and President’s Circle members.

Registration deadline is Friday, August 5.

Contact

Andrea Waggoner
awaggoner@discovery.org
206-826-5539

Hotel Information

Marriott Tacoma Downtown

1538 Commerce Street
Tacoma, WA 98402

PHONE: 253-294-9200

We will be meeting at the stylish Marriott Tacoma Downtown, opened late in 2020. Twenty-two stories tall, the hotel is in Tacoma’s Museum District and features many rooms with breathtaking views. Hotel amenities include mini-fridges, room service, in-room coffee/tea makers, robes, parking with in-and-out privileges, a state-of-the-art fitness center, and an outdoor heated pool and whirlpool on a deck offering stunning views of the Tacoma waterfront and Mt. Rainier.

Directions

Holiday Inn Express & Suites Tacoma Downtown

2101 South C Street
Tacoma, WA 98241

PHONE: 888-480-0427

This hotel is close to the light rail that runs from the Tacoma Dome to Downtown Tacoma.

Directions

Book Now

Comfort Inn & Suites Downtown Tacoma

2611 East E Street
Tacoma, WA 98421

PHONE: 253-272-7737

This hotel is close to the light rail that runs from the Tacoma Dome to Downtown Tacoma.

Directions

Book Now

Silver Cloud Inn & Hotels

2317 Ruston Way
Tacoma, WA 98402

PHONE: 253-272-1300

This hotel is about 6 miles away and you would need a car or other transportation to reach our hotel.

Directions

Book Now

Speakers

Michael Denton

_{Senior Fellow, the Center for Science & Culture and the Center on Human Exceptionalism}

Michael Denton holds an M.D. from Bristol University, as well as a Ph.D. in biochemistry from King’s College in London. A Senior Fellow at Discovery Institute's Center for Science and Culture, Denton has had a critical impact on the debate over Darwinian evolution.

Daniel Andrés Díaz-Pachón

_{Contributor, the Bradley Center's Mind Matters}

Daniel Andrés Díaz-Pachón is Research Assistant Professor at the Division of Biostatistics at the University of Miami, where he also was a postdoc. He has a PhD in Probability from the University of São Paulo, Brazil, and a bachelor's in Mathematical Statistics from Universidad Nacional de Colombia, in Bogotá. His research is focused on some kind of intersection between probability, statistics, information theory, and machine learning. He has a deep interest in Christian apologetics and Christian life, and frequently lectures and writes on the relation of faith and science.

Marcos Nogueira Eberlin

_{Senior Fellow, Center for Science and Culture}

A member of the Brazilian Academy of Sciences, Marcos Eberlin received his PhD in chemistry from the University of Campinas (UNICAMP) and served as a postdoc at Purdue University. Back at UNICAMP, he founded and coordinated for 25 years the ThoMSon Mass Spectrometry (MS) Laboratory, making it an internationally recognized research center, one of the best-equipped and innovative MS laboratories worldwide. Eberlin has published nearly 1,000 scientific articles and is a recipient of many awards and honors, including the title of Commander of the National Order of Scientific Merit (2005) from Brazil’s President, the Zeferino Vaz Award (2002) for excellence in teaching and research.

Howard Glicksman

Dr. Howard Glicksman is a general practitioner with more than forty years of medical experience in office and hospital settings, who now serves as a hospice physician seeing terminally ill patients in their homes. He received his MD from the University of Toronto and is the author of “The Designed Body” series for Evolution News. Glicksman further develops the arguments from this series in a book co-authored with systems engineer Steve Laufmann, Your Designed Body (2022).

Steve Laufmann

Steve Laufmann is a speaker, author, computer scientist, and consultant in the design of enterprise-class systems, with expertise in the difficulties of changing complex systems to perform new tasks. He leads the Engineering Research Group at Discovery Institute and chaired the program committee for the 2021 Conference on Engineering in Living Systems. He is co-author, with Howard Glicksman, of Your Designed Body (2022). When he can’t think of anything else to do, he enjoys landscape photography, pizza, and old movies.

Robert J. Marks II

_{Director, Senior Fellow, Walter Bradley Center for Natural & Artificial Intelligence}

Robert J. Marks Ph.D. is Senior Fellow and Director of the Bradley Center and is Distinguished Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Baylor University. Marks is a Fellow of both the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE) and Optica (formerly the Optical Society of America). He was the former Editor-in-Chief of the IEEE Transactions on Neural Networks and is the current Editor-in-Chief of BIO-Complexity. Marks is author of the books Non-Computable You: What You Do That Artificial Intelligence Never Will Never Do and The Case For Killer Robots. He is co-author of the books For a Greater Purpose: The Life and Legacy of Walter Bradley, Neural Smithing: Supervised Learning in Feedforward Artificial Neural Networks and Introduction to Evolutionary Informatics. For more information, see Dr. Marks’s expanded bio.

Stephen C. Meyer

_{Director, Center for Science and Culture}

Dr. Stephen C. Meyer received his Ph.D. from the University of Cambridge in the philosophy of science. A former geophysicist and college professor, he now directs the Center for Science and Culture at the Discovery Institute in Seattle. He is author of the New York Times-bestseller Darwin’s Doubt (2013) as well as the book Signature in the Cell (2009) and Return of the God Hypothesis (2021). In 2004, Meyer ignited a firestorm of media and scientific controversy when a biology journal at the Smithsonian Institution published his peer-reviewed scientific article advancing intelligent design. Meyer has been featured on national television and radio programs, including The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, CBS's Sunday Morning, NBC's Nightly News, ABC's World News, Good Morning America, Nightline, FOX News Live, and the Tavis Smiley show on PBS. He has also been featured in two New York Times front-page stories and has garnered attention in other top-national media.

Brian Miller

_{Research Coordinator, Center for Science and Culture}

Dr. Brian Miller is Research Coordinator for the Center for Science and Culture at Discovery Institute. He holds a B.S. in physics with a minor in engineering from MIT and a Ph.D. in physics from Duke University. He speaks internationally on the topics of intelligent design and the impact of worldviews on society. He also has consulted on organizational development and strategic planning, and he is a technical consultant for Ideashares, a virtual incubator dedicated to bringing innovation to the marketplace.

Emily Reeves

Emily Reeves is a biochemist, metabolic nutritionist, and aspiring systems biologist. Her doctoral studies were completed at Texas A&M University in Biochemistry and Biophysics. Emily is currently an active clinician for metabolic nutrition and nutritional genomics at Nutriplexity. She enjoys identifying and designing nutritional intervention for subtle inborn errors of metabolism. She is also working with fellows of Discovery Institute and the greater scientific community to promote integration of engineering and biology. She spends her weekends adventuring with her husband, brewing kombucha, and running near Puget Sound.

Wesley J. Smith

_{Chair and Senior Fellow, Center on Human Exceptionalism}

Wesley J. Smith is Chair and Senior Fellow at the Discovery Institute’s Center on Human Exceptionalism. Wesley is a contributor to National Review and is the author of 14 books, in recent years focusing on human dignity, liberty, and equality. Wesley has been recognized as one of America’s premier public intellectuals on bioethics by National Journal and has been honored by the Human Life Foundation as a “Great Defender of Life” for his work against suicide and euthanasia. Wesley’s most recent book is Culture of Death: The Age of “Do Harm” Medicine, a warning about the dangers to patients of the modern bioethics movement.

Richard Weikart

_{Senior Fellow, Center for Science and Culture}

Richard Weikart is Emeritus Professor of History, California State University, Stanislaus, and author of seven books, including From Darwin to Hitler, Hitler’s Ethic, The Death of Humanity, and Hitler’s Religion. His most recent book is Darwinian Racism: How Darwinism Influenced Hitler, Nazism, and White Nationalism (2022). His PhD dissertation, Socialist Darwinism, earned the biennial prize of the Forum for History of Human Sciences as best dissertation in that field. He has lectured at many universities and other venues in the US and Europe. He also has been interviewed on dozens of radio shows, podcasts, and TV, and appeared in seven documentaries, including Expelled. Some of his lectures and interviews are available on YouTube.

John G. West

_{Senior Fellow, Managing Director, and Vice President of Discovery Institute}

Dr. John G. West is Vice President of the Seattle-based Discovery Institute and Managing Director of the Institute’s Center for Science and Culture. Formerly the Chair of the Department of Political Science and Geography at Seattle Pacific University, West is an award-winning author and documentary filmmaker who has written or edited 12 books, including Darwin Day in America: How Our Politics and Culture Have Been Dehumanized in the Name of Science, The Magician’s Twin: C. S. Lewis on Science, Scientism, and Society, and Walt Disney and Live Action: The Disney Studio’s Live-Action Features of the 1950s and 60s. His documentary films include Fire-Maker, Revolutionary, The War on Humans, and (most recently) Human Zoos. West holds a PhD in Government from Claremont Graduate University, and he has been interviewed by media outlets such as CNN, Fox News, Reuters, Time magazine, The New York Times, USA Today, and The Washington Post.