Archive for the ‘Foundation’ Category

For the seventh session of Perspective Citywide, we were joined by Malcolm Deboo who traveled up from London to talk to us about Zoroastrianism. London boasts Europe’s only Zoroastrianism centre and Malcolm presented a fascinating look at a religion which very few people are familiar with.

Having announced the Humanist Library Project in December, we have slowly been building up quite a collection of books for it which have until now just been sat around in piles of the office, waiting to be dealt with.

Thankfully, our volunteer David (or Fonze as he is better known) was finally able to spare some time and do a little construction work for us. So after a few cryptic texts about “building a library”, he turned up hammer in hand to start building some book shelving for us.

If you haven’t heard about the project yet, the idea is to build a Humanist Library, right here in Leeds. We’re currently building our collection so if you have any appropriate items you are willing to donate to the project, do get in touch!

For the Paganism session of Perspective Citywide, we welcomed Rhiannon Grant to the group. I had already seen the talk at the Atheist Society the previous Friday but it was never the less entertaining and the discussions were great.

On Wednesday, we welcomed Hull & East Riding Humanists secretary Tim Stephenson over to Leeds to present the Perspective Citywide session on Humanism. Tim’s talk was excellent, looking at both the philosophical side behind Humanism and also why it is important to stand up and be counted as a Humanist.

For the forth session of Perspective Citywide, we welcomed Joel Baker to talk about Christianity.

Joel is currently serving as the interfaith secretary for the Christian Union at Leeds and discussions were very forthcoming – I had to call an end to them in the end because we ran out of time. A big thanks to Joel for coming down and very much looking forward to Tim tonight.

For the third session of Perspective Citywide, Sam Butler joined us from the Church of Scientology in Manchester. Scientology is a great religion for us to cover because it’s one where the popular conception and the church’s official line on what they believe are very different so it’s fantastic that Sam can come over and talk to us. Things got a little heated during some of the session, but Sam handled it well and the feedback after the session was on the whole positive.

Last Tuesday, 15 February, saw the third annual Galileo Day celebration.

In Leeds, Michael Braham delivered this year’s Galileo Day Lecture on the life and work of Galileo and the traditional Galileo Day Feast was held afterward at Red Hot World Buffet.

Following on from last week’s first session, on the Quaker movement, this week Perspective Citywide was joined by Aarik Subramanyam to talk about Hinduism. This was the first time a Perspective course has never covered Hinduism so we were very excited to learn about a religion which many people in the West know little about. The session was interesting and very informative, and not one to miss!

After the success of the Enquiry 2010 Conference in Birmingham last year, we’re pleased to announce that Enquiry will be returning for a second year!

Enquiry 2011 will be taking place April 16th-17th and this year will be taking place in the beautiful city in Edinburgh, during the Science Festival. The event is being run in association with Edinburgh Skeptics and speakers already confirmed include Professor Richard Wiseman, Professor Paul Braterman, Jon Ronson and others.

Registration will open shortly, you can find out more details on the Enquiry Conference website.

With only ten days to go until Galileo Day, we’ve finally launched the new Galileo Day website along with a new downloadable pack for local groups and societies – this includes a whole host of resources including handouts, posters, a talk and more. You can download it from the website.