Posts Tagged ‘Leeds Atheist Soc’

On Friday, the new season of Perspective kicked off in Leeds with representatives from the Mormon faith coming down to talk to us. I was actually surprised how interesting and informative it is, there is actually quite a lot of deviation from traditional Christianity that is not immediately apparent.

We weren’t best prepared for the course not having things like plates but the food was never the less good and with Essentials now open until 10pm we even managed to source some coffee (Extras stocked it but they only had decaff so I just walked out).

On Tuesday Simon Singh came to the University of Leeds to talk about liable reform. Obviously as a free thinking group the Atheist Society was particularly concerned with such lawsuits for speaking out against obvious nonsense we asked Liberty@Leeds to be involved and had Sophie and Norm deliver a quick introduction on why it was important to us.

The talk itself was very good, it was both amusing and very informative. It is hard to believe how biased the legal system is (actually have studied law I don’t find it that unbelievable but that certainly isn’t a good thing) and how easy it is to bring a liable suit forward – makes me wonder what would happen if the thousands of people who have seen Simon speak and are behind him brought a frivolous suit against the BCA.

Yesterday we screened Ben Stein’s Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed documentary which looks at the reaction of the scientific community to intelligent design proponents. It was of course pretty rubbish and didn’t really present much evidence but has plenty of emotional pleas about the future of freedom and of course the obligatory appearance of Godwin’s law in.

Attendance was good for an exam period, at least for those who managed to find us tucked away in the Baines Wing, in the three years I spent running around that campus I think I have only been up there once.

On Tuesday we headed down to Cuthbert Brodrick for the usual Atheist Society Tuesday night social. Wetherspoon’s are currently running a January sale which includes meals for £1.99 and a pint or a glass of wine for 99p!

Tuesday night saw the annual Atheist Society Winter Solstice meal. It was reasonably well attended being hosted by LS6 which is like a hobbit hole with little caverns that just keep burying deeper into what looks quite small from the outside but is actually massive.

Afterwards we headed into Headingley for some drinks at the Skyrack.

Last Tuesday saw the last proper meeting of term one at Atheist Society.

Having screened Morgan Spurlock’s Where in the World is Osama Bin Laden which was a very interesting watch but non-surprisingly very pandering towards the left we headed down to D-Fusion for a night of karaoke.

We recently held the One Life wrap meal to see out the end of the One Life course. I’m not so sure how successful it is, it’s nice to go for meal but nothing is really wrapped up. Even if not I would like to think it brings course participants together but then most people are in A-Soc already. Maybe we just need to change our advertising strategy.

We ended up down at Wagamama which I wasn’t overly impressed with. Their bench seating and place holders that were simply McDonald’s tray liners but without the trays isn’t exactly the hallmark of a good quality restaurant. Food was good, I think, but not really being a fan of it and their refusal to do my chicken in a bun to simulate the idea of a chicken burger didn’t held matters.

Still afterwards we got a long night’s drinking at ‘Spoons so all ended well. Even if it was a bit of a couples fest with Jonni+Kat and John+Lil.

In November we hosted an interfaith panel inviting speakers from all major faiths to come down and field questions from an open audience. We had speakers from Buddhism, Baha’i, Humanism, Sikhism, Christianity and Judaism.

On Tuesday we had our second Movie Goer’s Guide to Life & Death at A-Soc. It was basically a load of clips from American Beauty and while I found some of the analysis dubious I certainly enjoyed seeing the clips again very much enjoyable. Smile – you’re at Mr Smiley’s!

Last weekend the AHS ran it’s first region social. It was somewhat less than a success with only Leeds actually turning up to it but it still remains the most success regional social the AHS has ever run. Good times.