Posts Tagged ‘Leeds Atheist Soc’

Last night saw the first of the end of year planning meetings for Atheist Society. It has been a while since we have had a real hardcore planning meeting but last night we bashed out ideas for next year for a solid three hours and will no doubt be doing something similar next week too.

We got plenty of good ideas down and the vision for next year is starting to take shape so it should be another great year for the society (as if we have anything else :p ).

Afterwards we headed down to The Old Bar for the usual Tuesday night social which was well attended given so many people have gone home. Plus George was there so it was basically win win.

Tuesday saw the End of Year Ball which this year saw several of the freethinking societies in and around Leeds unite. While it was mostly an A-Soc affair we got people from Skeptics, York Brights, the Humanist Society of West Yorkshire and HAG there, even if this is mostly the same crowd lol.

We kicked things off at Spice Quarter where I managed to get through a reasonably respectable five plates though I believe I was significantly trailing Zoltan who was on a mission to eat everything they owned.

The made in front of you stir fry had to be the winning dish as you literally can just pile everything on your plate and get them to stir fry it. Interesting, despite what sause I asked for it all seemed to come out of the same pot but it actually tasted like what I asked for so I’m not going to complain.

Afterwards we headed to Bourbon for their Mix Tape Project night which was really good if people did start disappearing – the last people to leave the place where myself and Paul! That’ll show those kids who can really party… :D.

In the end we had 34 people turn up which I think is quite respectable.

Tuesday night saw us screen Dogma for another relaxed night of de-stressing between revision periods. This was of course followed by the usual social at The Terrace though I think the best attended all evening was actually the committee meeting.

With the exam period underway this Tuesday’s Atheist Society meeting was designed to let people switch off and relax from the constrant headache of revision. As such we screened Monty Python’s Life of Brian.

Every time I watch the film I remember just how much of an amazing film it is. Even the one liners are complex, brilliant dialog that makes you laugh. What a film.

On Tuesday we had a debate with the Islamic apologist Adam Deen. The man is a fantastic public speaker and even though I think most of us from A-Soc have heard all the arguments before, they were very eloquently put. Norm did a good job of speaking for outside, as did Sophie chairing a debate for the first time – not an easy one to start on!

Thursday saw an interfaith social supposedly organsed by the interfaith assembly. They didn’t really do anything other than delegate all the work to Nicola though. The event featured a quiz and a buffet which was nice though Nicola did all the food so it soon ran out. Of course the real socialising took place in The Old Bar afterwards but that is to be expected 😀 .

Congratulations to Paul, who along with others including myself, who was one of the first set of people to be awared honorary life membership to Leeds Atheist Society. It just shows you if you that if you really put time and effort in you can come out with a nicely designed certificate ;). And much more besides of course!

On Tuesday I delivered a short series of talks to Atheist Society on evolution. It focused on some of the fun facts of evolution and strange twists which don’t seem to make sense at first but then, when you actually find out the answer, it makes perfect sense. The enemy of the god of gaps if you will.

On Saturday myself, Tom and Norm were down at Conway Hall for an AHS meeting. Unfortunately given that it was sandwiched in between two shifts at work I wasn’t able to spend any extra time in London, which is very disappointing especially given it was a bank holiday and so otherwise I didn’t have to be back in Leeds until Tuesday. Still, probably for the best given I don’t have any money at the moment.

The meeting itself was resonably productive, at least given the baseline of not productive in any way which was what I expected. It has certainly given some food for thought although I think as well as moving things forward we’ve still come away with conflicting visions of what we think the AHS is as this issue never really got raised in the meeting.

At the end of the day though that is probably always going to be the case in a free thinking organisation. And all the better for it.

After the AGM on Tuesday we headed down to The Victoria for a few drinks before going over to D-Fusion for a bit of karaoke. The usual suspects opened the set and Jonni also did a few numbers plus twenty minutes after I commented to Jonni “I’m just waiting for Rich to get drunk before he opens his set with It’s a Sin” it kicked off with a rendition of a certain Pet Shop Boys number which I’m sure you can guess 😉 .