New York City Atheists July Meetup

JULY 21, 2009(TUESDAY) 7:00 PM
NYC Atheists Meetup
FLASH!

NYCA Meetup Leader Wants to Know:
‘How Do Atheists Know If We’re Being Good?’

Ex-Catholic Ivy League Prof to Lead Talk

Meetup mavens, do we have a treat for you! Didn’t go to Ivy League schools? Never mind, we’re bringing the Ivy League to you. This month’s NYC Atheists discussion leader, Dr. John A. Wagner, comes to us via Princeton by way of Harvard and Cornell. But don’t be intimidated: John Wagner is a laid-back Iowan who likes basketball, wears a baseball cap to street tabling and likes to barbecue in his backyard.

Actually, Wagner is a tenured full professor of Neurology and Neuroscience at Weill Cornell Medical College. But in a way, he never left behind the cornfields of Dubuque, Iowa, if his Jimmy-Stewart, just one-of-the-guys demeanor is any indication.

Wagner got his Ph.D. from Princeton, then was awarded a postdoctoral fellowship to study at the University of California in San Francisco because, he explains, “I was interested in visual function and nerve terminals,” (OK, we don’t understand what that is, either). That led him to Boston’s Dana Farber Cancer Institute (named in honor of the first doctor who put cancer into remission) where Wagner enjoyed a joint position there and at Harvard Medical School.

After 11 years in Boston, where he supervised his own lab and developed an interest in growth factors and how gene expression regulates our nervous system, Wagner moved to New York and is currently teaching at one of New York’s most prestigious medical schools, Weill-Cornell. Here, he has developed an interest in how the brain responds to stroke and how the nervous system regulates the immune function.

Goodbye to Catholicism

Is your head spinning yet? But wait. You can take the boy out of Dubuque but, like they say, you can’t take Dubuque out of the boy. Brought up strictly Catholic but immersed in science in the ivory towers of the most elite schools, Wagner has had to come to terms with the conflict between the two. Throughout the years, he has become engrossed in philosophy and atheism. “I’m an amateur philosopher and amateur atheist,” he says with typical modesty.

He wants to discuss things like, do atheists live by commandments? Do atheists live by moral principles? And if so, what are they? How does an atheist know if he or she is being “good?”

Where Do We Get Our Morals?

He also wants to know: if we don’t get our principles from god, then what is the source of our moral values? Whose ethical principles do we see as ideal?

We are lucky to be able to have so modest, so open, so sharing a guy in our atheist movement. Come, enjoy this down-home discussion leader whose self-effacing, unassuming and unpretentious manner cloaks the depth of his thinking and his concerns for our planet.

Come, speak your mind and your heart to this congenial teacher who is willing to share with us his belief in a planet without god in it. Welcome John and show him we’re just as friendly as Iowans!

EVENT SUMMARY

WHAT: “How Do Atheists Know If We’re Being Good?”—a Meetup discussion led
by Dr. John Wagner, professor at Weill Cornell Medical College.

WHEN: Tuesday, July 21, at 7 p.m.

WHERE: Stone Creek Bar & Lounge
140 East 27th St. (Bet. 3rd & Lex.) Back Room

COST: Free, but we hope you will purchase food and/or drink to compensate
Stone Creek for letting us use their space. The knoshies are good and
reasonably priced, and there is a broad spectrum of interesting beers.