Creative Rationalism THIRD INTERNATIONAL RATIONALIST CONFERENCE New Delhi 8-12 February 2002 Rationalist International invites you for an extra-ordinary event: The Third International Rationalist Conference. Join Rationalists -- Atheists, Freethinkers, Humanists, Skeptics and Secular Humanists -- from around the world. Meet rationalist thinkers and fighters who influence social change. Exchange ideas, views, experiences and visions. Identify the creative dimension of Rationalism. Discuss the potential of transforming societies. Set the course for the future of enlightenment and humanism. Witness history. Creative Rationalism THIRD INTERNATIONAL RATIONALIST CONFERENCE At New Delhi from 8 to 12 February 2002 We need to keep setting high goals and achieving them. An interesting, thought-provoking conference. If you are interested to participate in the Third International Rationalist Conference, please send your full postal address to the email address given below to receive further details and a registration form. And if you are interested to be considered for presenting a paper in the conference, please send a biographical note together with the title and abstract of the proposed paper. All correspondence to the Third International Rationalist Conference are to be addressed to: Conference@rationalistinternational.net For photo album of the First and Second International Rationalist Conferences, please visit our web site: www.rationalistinternational.net
MALAYSIA VOWS TO DEFEND SECULARISM In a statement in the Malaysian Parliament, Prime Minister Mahathir bin Mohamad vowed to defend secularism and to resist the pressure of the fundamentalist opposition to declare Malaysia an Islamic state. He denied that his party, the United Malays National Organization Party (UMNO), which is in power since Malaysia's independence from Britain in 1957, was loosing ground to the Pan Malaysian Islamic Party (PAS). He warned the members of Parliament not to allow that Islamic law was imposed on all Malaysians, since this would upset the ethnic balance in the country. Islamic hudud law is already being applied to Malaysia's Muslims, who comprise about 53 per cent of the population. The country has an Islamic court as well. Malaysia's population of 23 million is multi ethnic and multi religious. About 60 per cent of the people are Malays, 30 per cent ethnic Chinese and 8 per cent ethnic Indians. Religious affiliations in Malaysia (as per Britannica Book of the Year 1999) are as follows: Muslims 52.9%, Buddhists 17.3%, Chinese folk religionists 11.6%, Hindus 7%, Christians 6.4%, Others 4.8%. In the past, these different ethnic and religious groups have been living together without great conflicts. In 1990, the Islamic fundamentalist PAS gained control over the Malay heartland. In the state Kelantan, religious decrees of its leaders changed life drastically. Women had to cover their heads, supermarkets had to provide different pay counters for men and women, entertainments like singing and dancing and all public performances were banned. Still the federal government blocked the official implementation of Islamic law. In the 1999 elections, the PAS scored a big victory. It tripled the number of its parliamentary seats and formed two out of the 13 state governments. Since then its influence among the Muslim Malays is steadily growing. As an outcome, Islamic law is now officially applicable to the entire Muslim population. In February, forty-four couples had to appear in the country's Islamic court after religious police found them getting too close on Valentine's Day. "Close proximity" or "khalwat" is a crime for non-married couples under Malaysia's Islamic law. Now the fundamentalists are urging to extend the rule of Islamic law on all citizens and to declare Malaysia a true Islamic state.
EVOLUTION OF MAN -- NEW ANCESTOR DISCOVERED In the seventies, the path breaking discoveries of the palaeontologist Mary Leakey have fundamentally influenced the understanding of human evolution. Now, a quarter century later, Mary Leakey's grand daughter Louise has opened a new chapter of evolutionary thinking by declaring the discovery of a new ancestor of man, completely different from all hominid species known so far: the flat-faced man of Kenya (Kenyanthropus Platyops). "The discovery has raised more questions than it answered", said Louise Leakey, "it does not simplify the picture at all, but it does confirm that the evolutionary tree was far more bushy earlier on than we had appreciated". Louise and her mother Meave Leakey led together an expedition of the National Geographic Society in north Kenya in 1998-1999. On the western shore of lake Turkana, the expedition team found more than 30 individuals, among them the a battered but nearly complete face and skull. The Kenyanthropus is believed to be 3.6 million years old. His main characteristics - which distinguish him clearly from "Lucy" - are his very flat face and the small molar teeth, telling about his likely diet of fruits, grubs, small mammals and birds. The fossils show some similarity to the "Turkana boy", discovered by Louises' father Richard Leakey on the eastern shore of the lake in the 1970s. After two years of hard work of analyzing and classifying the fossils, there seems to be enough evidence to declare the discovery not only of a new species but a new genus as well. A report appeared in the latest issue of the magazine "Nature". With Louise, the third generation of the Leakey family made a path-breaking contribution in the field of palaeontology. (See also the introduction of Richard Leakey as Honorary Associate of Rationalist International in Bulletin # 68).
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