Posts Tagged ‘Leeds Atheist Soc’

With the long awaited conference for atheist, Humanist, secular and generally free thinking student societies finally having arrived, myself and Norm headed up to Edinburgh for the conference that would form the foundation of our national federation for such societies.

I feel I was lied to. I was told Scotland had a road network. It really doesn’t. It’s barely motorway up to Newcastle due to roadworks currently going on and after that it just runs out entirely – some of the A1, the legendary A1, is basically just a country lane.

Still we made it up there in one piece and kicked off the Friday night with introductions, a meal and some late night drinking. It was nice to have some fun as basically what followed was two days of talks, debates and lots of Humanism.

Never the less we have all come away from the event with a new national oranisation – the national federation of atheist, Humanist and secular student studies or A.H.S. for short. So all in all a rather successful weekend.

The Computing Ball having been cancelled due to lack of ticket sales and general apathy on the part of the organisers it was down to Atheist Society to provide an end of year ball in some form or another. While we didn’t have the grandeur of some of the larger events we never the less enjoyed all the basic trappings of a good ball – dining, drinking, dancing and good company.

The food was excellent as always (and half price too!) and it being Tiger Tiger’s student night we decided to stay to take advantage of the ridiculously cheap double vodka and mixer offers.

While some of new committee bailed like the old age pensioners they are rather early (jokes on them as they were kept up all night by Sarann having sex rather loudly in the room above) myself, Nicola, Danny and Rosie danced the night away until it ended at 3.

All in all it was actually the best night I’ve had in quite a while and a fantastic credit to all those involved at A-Soc in organising it. It just goes to show that atheists really do have it larger :D.

I was sending out the weekly Atheist Society mail-out today and arrived at the bottom of the message to sign my name. Traditionally this would be signed Chris, Society president.

But I didn’t. Because I’m not.

Having spent the last two years as A-Soc president, it’s a weird, weird feeling.

Well guys, we did it again :D.

Rationalist Week 2008 was not only another fantastic success for the society but also by far the biggest event we have ever pulled off. With a total of 22 events, 13 talks, 12 speakers, 7 days, 6 screenings, 5 guest speakers, 4 socials, 3 debates and 2 round table discussions as the back of my hoodie conveniently tells me it was another week that I will never, ever forget.

Thank you so much to everyone who helped out with the week. I was really worried in the planning stages that my presidency was going to end on a low note but with the traditional A-Soc nothing is going to beat us, nothing is going to get us down attitude we pulled off a week which I don’t think disappointed anybody.

I want to do a full post on Rationalist Week 2008 and no doubt will when I need to prevent my brain from exploding. But for now I just want to mention that the week was fantastic, we talked to hundreds of people throughout it and signed up loads of new members as well. Oh, and I’m far more alive than my lack of blogging would indicate.

I haven’t blogged in a while, mainly because I’ve been so busy with Rationalist Week. If you are around LUU any time this week drop in for a drink, we have events going at 12 noon, 2pm, 4pm and 7pm every day as well as all night debate on Friday and live entertainment at certain points too.

It’s been a busy few days.

Friday: 15
Thursday: 14
Wednesday: 13

I couldn’t say before this date as my call log doesn’t go back that far (I only knew Wednesday’s because I already knew the figure, half the calls have already moved off the list).

Yeah, organising things is fun.

So A-Soc still has no money. We’ve spent a lot of it but we don’t have any. Any chance of getting sponsorship is all but gone we’re in a deep financial mess.

Meanwhile I found out yesterday that Michelle has stolen Norm on the Tuesday night. So he will miss Mike Lake, not that Mike Lake has a confirmed topic to speak on yet.

Oh and the marquee hire company got back to us this morning to say they couldn’t get a crew to put the tent up on Sunday so they are doing it Monday morning. Despite the fact we are all meeting on Sunday to decorate the tent. Indeed I booked the weekend off work (at considerable cost to myself) to do just that.

I could go on. I could talk about how we don’t even have a generator booked yet because the hire company haven’t got back to me and a list of hundreds of people who have failed to return my emails. But I’ll save that for a later blog post.

I passed through Chrismukkah without much of a stir, not really engaging in the spirit of the holiday if there were such a thing as it were. Much to Michelle’s disappointment no doubt.

However, I have recently concluded that it isn’t due to the fact that I am cold and empty inside. Notably because, while Chrismukkah isn’t my celebration of choice, equally such Christmas lovers as Michelle do not feel the same affinity to such events as Rationalist Week.

The reason I bring it up is because it’s two months till Rationalist Week which while in the planning terms isn’t too far away, from an outside perspective it is quite a while away, and yet I am beginning to get madly excited about it. It was when I found myself jumping up and down in the shower shouting “it’s nearly Rationalist Week” that I realised how much my actions echoed those of Michelle’s when she began talking about Christmas in October.

While this is an interesting point to meditate on, I also want to talk about something else – namely, that Rationalist Week is coming! We’re already in the planning stages putting together provisional events timetables, getting quotes for the various stuff we need to hire, fund raising, etc.

It’s all so exciting!

A few people recently raised the question “why is A-Soc celebrating Darwin Day? It is just an excuse to have a go at religion?”

Of course, it isn’t. But it could seem to many people that were are advocating the link between Darwinism and atheism which Dawkins seems to suggest.

This I believe is probably a misconception. Dawkins does talk a lot about evolution and atheism for two reasons. Firstly, learning about evolution was the thing that pushed Dawkins into atheism. It was the turning point that he renounced his Anglican upbringing and joined the ranks of the infidels. Secondly he believes that Darwinism allows you construct a coherent world view without a god (which was difficult to do before evolution). This does not mean however that he advocated an inherant link between the two.

But I’m getting off the point. The reason we celebrate Darwin Day is not because of any inherent link between Darwinism and atheism (for which I believe there is none, as I demonstraited in my speech evolution – it’s a fact showing how evolution could be reconciled with modern theology so it seems silly for us to argue over it).

The real reason is that Darwin represents somewhat of an ideal, at least in legend if not in reality, of an open minded free thinker. Despite the fact his work and research was leading him away from his beliefs he remained true to the principles of science and reason and kept his mind open to new possibilities. That, is what being a free thinker is all about.