Archive for the ‘Events’ Category

On Thursday evening I headed round to Rich’s along with George and Jonni for a Question Time pizza party. Between us we got through about five pizzas, as well as several bottles of win and half of Rich’s carton 😀 . This was of course to watch British National Party leader Nick Griffin appear on the programme.

It was at least an entertaining show if nothing else though was mostly just BNP bashing. Not that we should have expected any less of course but I’m not sure it was the most productive thing to do. As Bill points out, it was half way though the show before someone managed to fit an intelligent comment in – that perhaps the failure of the major parties had led to a rise in BNP support.

In the end though it was essentially a witch hunt which didn’t produce the desired result. If a better course of action as Rich pointed out would have been to ask the panel what their policies on health, education and the economy were so they could be compared side by side.

This would have likely done far more damage than the constant barrage of insults that were thrown at Nick and his party which no doubt made us Guardian readers feel good but actually won him a lot of sympathy and support in other social groups. Will the appearance be a good or bad thing for the BNP? I guess we’ll find out soon.

I delivered an updated version of my talk Debating the Theists to Atheist Society on Tuesday. It went rather well despite forgetting to plug my laptop in and having it try to hybernate half way through the talk but the audience seemed to enjoy it and the feedback I got was fairly positive. Maybe could have done with a bit more substance but it’s always a tricky balance.

Interestly, the BHA picked up on it and put it in their weekly e-bulletin which was great and made more amusing by the fact that with no background information, many BHA members around the country may be wondering why exactly I am a reverend and whether I’m religious 😀 .

Today I delivered a talk which sounded ominously like a Channel 4 documentary to Leeds Skeptics in the Pub. It went reasonably well and discussions went on well into the afternoon so over all a good event. From now on we’re back to proper guest speakers too so things are looking quite good for Skeptics at the moment.

Friday saw us kick things off with One Life, this week’s session being about ethics. As John was running late I started the session as chair for the first half an hour or so raising a few topic discussions before the real content matter was entered when John arrived. Unfortunately we didn’t have enough plates and cutlery for the committee ended up eating out of a cup with a spoon!

Afterwards we headed up to City Church on Headingley road who were running re:fresh, a free BBQ and hot drinks session to catch drunk people Otley running it. We would have had a few drinks in the old bar first but as they were Christians they had to go to bed at 11 so we had to go there first 😀 .

Having come direct from One Life we were of course in our Atheist Society hoodies which made for a fun time – of course they were very welcoming though the hoodies did get described as inappropriate by a girl on a fancy dress Otley run dressas as a Roman which we didn’t find at all ironic. After all, what have the Romans ever done to Christians? 😉

Wednesday saw the first official meeting of the trustees since formation.

It was most productive with us talking long into the night over possible ideas and strategies for the organisation and out of it has come some really productive action points. I can’t talk about what these are yet but hopefully we’ll have more news on these soon!

We have also established regular trustee meetings now also so things should start moving forward at quite a pace.

This evening A-Soc held a fundraiser for Amnesty International. It was reasonably successful – we got around 30 people there and raised over £100, the winning idea of the night being the raffle to which Jonni had secured us some amazing prizes – including tickets to the Four Nations final which I walked away with! I understand it is some kind of sporting event, I will ask the guys at work to explain more tomorrow.

Yesterday saw the third run of our One Life course begin with the traditional first topic, the meaning of life.

The session saw a very good turn out of about 20-25 people which is great for a One Life and something I hope we can sustain throughout the course. The food was also excellent so it was an all round winner of an evening. The post-event social was a bit shakey but we eventually ended up settling down at the Cuthbert Brodrick for the evening and didn’t leave until kick out.

On Thursday, The Gijs delivered his talk “Intelligence and Scepticism” to the Humanist Society of West Yorkshire.

The thrust of the talk was that there was an inherent contradiction in Humanism and a rational approach to life because Humanism is something that is very positive and the world on the whole isn’t positive with all the crime, senseless violence, falling out with the people you care about, etc. Although admittedly a lot of this revolves around the Humanist manifesto.

It was never the less a very interesting talk and even though it turned into a bit of a socialist preaching ground at the end (from the audience, not The Gijs) it was a good evening. We finished off at The Well, the rebranded Joseph’s Well which had actually locked their doors because nobody was in there until we came hanging on the door.

Tuesday night saw A-Soc hold it’s Introduction to Atheism talk. This year is was presented by three different speakers – Money Bags did a philosophical look at atheism, Norm did a look at the various terms atheists use to describe themselves and I did applied atheism – atheism in the real world or as I like to put it…

Taking your bucket of atheism and throwing it at the wall of life.

The talk overran a little but was overall very warmly received. We finished off with a social at The Old Bar which featured a surprise visit from Brett who is up in Leeds for a few days!

All in all it was a good night, although attendance was sorely lacking. This is something we can hopefully sort out in the coming weeks.

I finally made it over to the A-Soc picnic on Woodhouse Moor to find a rather nice turnout and, amusingly, A-Soc members trying to participate in sporting activities 😉 . We spent a while longer in the park chatting before heading over to The Old Bar for what we expected would be a few drinks – 10:30 in the evening, several drinks and a jazz band later and I finally left. Crazy times.