Celebrate!

I had been hoping to organize some kind of group event for my birthday tomorrow (24! whoa!) with my classmates... but instead, we have a big class assignment and a midterm this week. So, my celebrations will consist of a class debate and attending a talk by scientist and author Jared Diamond on the evolution of world religions. Dr. Diamond gave a really good talk at Kenyon after his book Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed came out, and I'm pretty pumped about the topic as well.

From the on-campus advertisments:

How can religion be defined in such a way as to encompass all of the customarily recognized religions, while excluding other things not normally considered religions? Does religion require belief in God, the supernatural, or eternal moral principles not of our own invention? What do traditional Catholics, atheists professing themselves to be members of organized liberal religions, and tribespeople believing in spirits share with each other that they don’t share with believers in ghosts, astrology, and non-religious moral codes? Dr. Diamond shall argue that religion has encompassed at least four independent components that have arisen or disappeared at different stages of development of human societies over the last 10,000 years.

I'm anticipating a pretty cool evening. Happy birthday to me!