New SHIFT Website

This blog is no longer regularly active. Please visit our new website or our page on facebook to keep up-to-date with the latest from SHIFT! We also now have a YouTube channel with most of our guest speaker presentations since February 2010, including Dr. Victor Stenger and Nobel Prize winning geneticist Dr. Mario Capecchi.

Send an Atheist to Church Fundraiser!!!

Everyday, from April 4th through the 8th, during the lunch hours, SHIFT will be putting on a Send an Atheist to Church charity fundraiser. All proceeds will go to the Salt Lake City Homeless Youth Resource Center. 


There will be several jars, each representing a different local church of a different religion and one that represents humanism/nontheism/freethought. The jar containing the highest amount of money at the end of the fundraiser will represent the church where a group of SHIFT members will attend a church service. If the humanism jar contains the most money at the end, then a group of SHIFT members will volunteer several hours at the Homeless Youth Resource Center, rather than spending that time attending a church service. 


Given the disproportionate representation of religion in this area, the donations will be weighted based on publicly available statewide percentages of various religions, so as to be fair. The event will be held on the first floor of the Union near the pool tables, in the event of inclement weather. Please contact SHIFT with any questions, at shiftuofu@gmail.com. For information about the Homeless Youth Resource Center, go to 
http://www.voaut.org/Default.aspx?tabid=2373.


Where: University of Utah, Union Building, by the pool tables


When: April 4th to the 8th


Time: Lunch Hours (11am-2pm)

Darwin Week!

SHIFT has been busy working on a lecture series for the week of Feb. 7th through the 11th. The lecture series is titled The Importance of Evolutionary Theory in Modern Science, where the main focus is to show how evolutionary theory applies to various fields.


Feb. 7
Dr. Henry Harpending



Dr. Harpending will be talking about rapid human evolution and the effects it has had on humanity. Dr. Harpending is a distinguished Professor of Anthropology and Thomas Chair at the University of Utah. He has also co-authored a book on human evolution called " the 10,000 year explosion" 


Feb. 8
Dr. Mario R. Capecchi


We are honored to have Dr. Mario R. Capecchi, the 2007 Nobel Laureate in Physiology or Medicine, to come present his research and how evolutionary science plays an important role in it.


Feb. 9
Dr. Matt Haber


Dr. Haber's talk will focus on how evolutionary theory has shaped our history. 


Feb. 10
Dr. Mark A. Loewen


Dr. Mark Loewen will talk about talk about how evolution (natural, sexual and possibly clade selection) played an important role in the diversification of horned dinosaurs and tyrannosaurs over the last 30 million years of the Cretaceous, in honor of Charles Darwin.


Feb. 11
Dr. Anya Plutynski


Dr. Anya Plutynski is a philosopher of science at the University of Utah. She will be talking about evolutionary modeling and whether Intelligent Design is a legitimate challenge to evolution, in honor of Charles Darwin.


All lectures will be held at the University of Utah, in the Aline Wilmot Skaggs Biology Building, from 6:30pm to 7:45pm. Seats are limited so please make sure you are there on time.
Parking is free after 6pm in the Stadium parking lot.