Posts Tagged ‘Humanism’

This morning we held out “Easter Sunday” event at the Humanist Community of Leeds. The day started with Chris talking to BBC Radio Leeds about the event though given so many people were spending time with their family this weekend we were expecting a fairly low turn out.

It was quite a shock then when we got such a turnout, though certainly a pleasant one! The discussions were great, the feedback was positive and Sunday lunch was as enjoyable as ever. Roll on our May meeting!

Last Sunday we saw the second Humanist Community meeting. It was a great success, things ran a lot smoother than last time (which I’m taking as a big victory and things ran very smoothly the first time to be honest), we matched our initial attendance which is always a challenge at a second meeting and the meal in the restaurant afterwards as excellent too. Roll on April!

The Humanist Community of Leeds now has it’s own blog.

The new blog will cover some of the topics that we cover in meetings so if you miss a meeting you will be able to catch up on the topics that we covered. As the material grows we are also hopeful that it will become a usual resource for other humanists to look to for inspiration.

Today saw the first meeting of the Humanist Community of Leeds. I would like to take this opportunity to personally thank everyone who came down to the event and made it a big success. Everyone I spoke to said they enjoyed themselves and was looking forward to the next one.

If you haven’t heard about the Humanist Community of Leeds, it’s a new group which aims to bring humanists together for a relaxed social occasion each month as a secular alternative to church. After all, you don’t need to be religious to enjoy the company of others.

The next event is taking place on Sunday 7 March and I hope you can join us for it. It will follow a similar format of news and videos, a short talk and Sunday lunch following the event. See you there!

Back in November, we announced our plan to create humanist communities that would act as a hub to bring secular humanists together in the community. This will begin with a pilot programme in Leeds and hopefully expand outwards from there.

As a consequence, today we are officially announcing the Humanist Community of Leeds. Our first community and hopefully first of many which will hold it’s first meeting next month. I hope you will be able to join us at 10:30am (for an 11am start) on February 14th at the Cosmopolitan Hotel in Leeds.

A Humanist Community is described as a secular alternative to church. You won’t find any worship or praying in our events but you will find a friendly welcoming atmosphere where you can get to know other secular humanists in the local community.

For the first event will feature a short talk from Richard, humanisted related news and some funny videos from Gijsbert, a chance to get to know each other and plenty of tea and coffee. The event will last around an hour and will be followed by everyone going for Sunday lunch together. We hope you can join us!

You can read more about the group on the website and if it sounds interesting you can sign up for the mailing list there too. You can also find out more and subscribe for event invites on our Facebook group. As usual, we will be continuing to post updates on our Twitter feed so you can follow us there too.

Yesterday’s homeless action saw the best attendance for a Humanist Action Group of Leeds event in the history of the group.

As you’ll probably be aware the weather in the UK has been rather cold over the past month with several heavy snowfalls and as a result the group has made a special effort to make sure volunteers were on hand when needed.

Luckily everyone living on the city centre’s streets managed to make it into a shelter during the snowfall – it’s actually a really good feeling when you go out in the snow and find nobody because it means chances are they are somewhere warmer. Now people are back on the streets however we really need people to continue to sign up and volunteer their time.

If you are interested in volunteering you can register your details on the website or find out more about the group on their Facebook page.

A few days ago we tweeted that we had a big announcement coming in the next few days. Well, here it is – so prepare to be slightly excited or every disappointed having had your hopes up since Wednesday!

In early 2010 the Chris Worfolk Foundation will be launching our humanist community pilot project. To supplement the current range of humanist and atheist events we are launching a new community group running on Sunday mornings. We’re going head to head launching a secular alternative to church.

The project is still in the early stages of development but we’re hoping to have the first event in February next year. Currently we’re in the process of recruiting people who are interested in getting involved and preparing the format. So if you are interested in being involved, get in touch.

Last Friday saw our GIAG event of the semester, an interfaith panel. There was a good turn out of religious speakers though notably lacking a Humanist one and so just before we got started I was asked to speak for the side of Humanism and so stepped in.

We got some really good questions in the end and ones which generally everyone could answer on. The Humanist view seemed fairly in line with the Pagan view (Pagans, much like Sikhs, are basically just Humanists) though the Islamic view isn’t quite as in line.

I tried to answer a lot of the questions with the best bits of Humanism – for example the large amounts of pre-martial sex and I caught the Islamic speaker (who ironically was sat right next to me) turn away in digust a few times. Still I’m sure I would have done the same if he was as frank about the Islamic teachings as he could have been.

Rich having become increasingly flustrated with the lack of action in Humanist communities suggested that we should really be getting out there and doing good work and leading by example. As such, last Thursday (the 12th) we headed out to feed the homeless.

It was an interesting experience. We took soup and coffee which went down reasonably well although most of them weren’t overly interested in the soup, they just wanted the coffee. It’s also suprising how few of them there actually are on the streets.

Interestingly enough though there isn’t that much support in Leeds. There is one shelter, St. George’s Crypt but that is basically all there is. Maybe it’s just not that much of a problem but it was certainly nice to be able to provide those that were out with a hot drink.

Tuesday evening started off with the usual A-Soc committee meeting which brought up some interesting discussions, followed by the usual A-Soc meeting which this week was Michael’s talk which by all accounts was excellent.

Unfortunately I missed the talk as I was down at the Humanist Society of West Yorkshire attending their event on Ashley Montagu as a critic of Darwin which was also very interesting. Too many choices on Tuesday!

This was followed by hitting The Terrace for a few drinks at which we bashed out some great ideas (or as a titled the sheet at the time, ideas that seemed great when we were in the pub 😉 ) for Rationalist Week so hopefully some of them will actually be useful!