Posts Tagged ‘debating’

As part of their Give It A Go, the Atheist Society finally got a session of speed debating organised. The concept is similar to speed dating, but instead of finding out about each other, you just basically argue.

The turn out was quite good, though unfortunately the implementation was disappointingly poor in all honestly. The sessions were also 10-12 minutes long, and so you only got four topics – I would have much preferred to be on each topic for five minutes and got through many more topics.

Still, an enjoyable evening none the less.

On Monday I was thinking about the talk I was giving to Leeds Atheist Society the next day was probably a little too similar to talks I have given to them previously.

Therefore I decided to try and re-write the entire talk in one evening. The result was what I’m calling “The Atheist Responses.” It’s basically the same as my Debating the Theists talk but as well as giving some general answers it also gives quotations from what famous atheists have said previously. The result seems to have been positive.

On Thursday I went up to Durham to speak to the Durham University Humanist and Secularist Society based there.

I delivered a talk on “Debating the Theists”, going through the common arguments and counter arguments that you often encounter when talking to believers. It was a talk I had given a few times to LAS in the past, though having lost all the notes and slides it was essentially a fresh talk with a similar theme running through it.

After a few technical problems at the start we finally got up and running and the talk went reasonably smoothly, though I missed out quite a few points I ended up kicking myself for during the question and answers afterward. Nether the less it was an enjoyable evening and I would like to thank DUHSS for inviting me up to speak.

Last night saw us hold a fairly informal debate prep meeting ahead of the upcoming debate with the Islamic soiciety later this month. They are bringing in an external speaker so we thought it best if we gathered our heads together a bit.

Despite our actual speaker for the debate not turning up we got a few good ideas down though a lot of it just needs a bit more research really. Never the less it should be a debate that is going to be very interesting indeed.

I delivered my first proper talk of the academic year last night, the ever popular debating the theists. It went down very well from the people I spoke to in the pub afterwards though I did end the question with “none of this constructive criticism BS, just positive adjectives please” so who can really say.

We got around 25-30 people to the meeting and most stayed for the social afterwards which continued on until about 11:30, just in time for us to get to The D afterwards which worked out well. London is now sold out too so that is going to be an amazing weekend. As ever, things are looking up.