Posts Tagged ‘Leeds Atheist Soc’

Last Tuesday, Atheist Society showed the documentary film, Jesus Camp.

We showed it back when I was involved in the society back in 2008 and it contains some amazing quotes. With a fresh set of faces watching it, people were once again shocked and appalled, with some Christians who attended voicing their shock to James at the end.

Luckily, of course, it isn’t representative of a lot of Christians, but it’s worrying to think many evangelicals across the United States could share similar views.

Last week, myself and Elina headed down to One Life for their session on Ethics, to explain to all the young people why they are wrong. As expected, most people there argued that morals were subjective, so I put forward the case from Sam Harris’ excellent book, The Moral Landscape, which I will be blogging about shortly.

Last Friday, another series of the One Life course kicked off with a session on the meaning of life which Will had asked me to chair.

I tried to expand the discussion a little further than previously, where it has often stuck to its philosophical roots, to go beyond that and get into questions like, what would be a wasted life and what tenants do you live your life by. All in all, it seemed to go very well.

The biggest problem, however, is that for the first time ever, they didn’t provide a hot meal. I’ll be filing an expense claim for my McDonald’s shortly…

Last Tuesday, Simon Wellings spoke to the Atheist Society on why he isn’t a Christian. He had given a debate speech for the society a number of years ago, facing off against the always delightful Anna Brown and the talk was essentially a re-work of that, with plenty of new material.

Simon had also given a talk on money reform to Leeds Skeptics recently, which was also entertaining.

As I seem to get shouted at every time I take photos now, the photos were taken by Elettra.

As part of Atheist Society’s intro meeting activities, Will had organised a bowling trip. Well, organised is probably granting too much credit, but after a significant amount of faffing, we eventually hit the lanes.

I probably haven’t bowled since hitting up Xscape with the McCrew three years ago. As such I was very rusty and only bowled a 98 in my first game, allowing James to smash his way to victory.

I recovered a little in the second game, bowling a 124, but that’s still not exactly an impressive score and I failed to make any strikes in the second game. Still, for the £3 that the evening cost us each, you can’t really go wrong.

On Tuesday, Atheist Society held their 2011/2012 intro meeting. It was great to see a lot of new faces there and James is looking to take the society in an exciting direction, so I’m sure they’re in for a great year.

I accidentally squashed the photos in processing, but it doesn’t matter too much because they were rubbish photos anyway.

Because a certain group of people who wine a lot about Atheist Society always going to Stick or Twist, el preisdente James decided that the weekly summer socials should start rotating around venues.

So the final summer social before freshers’ week was scheduled to take place at the Slug & Lettuce, which the A-Soc oldies will remember as the venue for the first ever A-Soc Winter Solstice meal.

Unfortunately, the people who whine about it don’t actually bother to turn up – the week saw a total of four of us there, myself, James, Elettra and Will – whereas those of us that actually do just want to go to steak night at ‘Spoons every week, bravely stick by the society! Oh, the irony… :D.

As it happens, Slug & Lettuce was pretty rubbish. We waited an hour for service, which despite asking for never actually arrived, so in the end we walked out and headed over the road to Beckett’s Bank for a proper steak night. Good times.

On Tuesday, Atheist Society headed down to Las Iguanas for some dinner as part of their weekly social. It’s a great place to eat and best of all, they do 2 for 1 cocktails before 7:30. So by the time we sat down at our table we had to get a tray to take all the drinks over that we had lined up.

Unfortunately the food didn’t entirely agree with me and I ended up losing half a night’s sleep with stomach problems. First bad experience I’ve had there, and I eat there quite a lot. I think I’ll steer clear of the chicken next time :S.

For some reason, James had accidentally scheduled the A-Soc weekly social at The Library pub again.

However, when we got there, it turns out they had closed the kitchen. I’m not sure whether this was a blessing or a curse, but we made everyone down their drinks and headed out to find some food. We made it to The Eldon – who had also closed their kitchen! In the end, we found ourselves at Nation of Shopkeepers. Bad times.

Recently, Bradford Atheists headed over to Leeds to join us at Nation of Shopkeepers.