Archive for the ‘Humanism’ Category

Last Sunday saw the June meeting of the Humanist Community of Leeds. This month’s meeting saw a very elaborate array of discussions with topics ranging from The moral landscape and global politics to exactly how you should cook extra thick steak. Big thanks to Gijsbert for his excellent news round up as usual.

Last Friday saw the Secular Ball 2011. Re-named from the End of Year Ball which has run annually for the past three years, the Ball brought together groups from across Yorkshire for one amazing night.

The evening started with a three course meal at the beautifully furnished Brook Merrion hotel in the city centre, which provided a great setting for the evening. Before dinner, Leo Dragon set about wowing attendees with some great magic.

After much merriment at the hotel, the party moved onto Bar Risa for the after party at which we enjoyed a champagne reception and partied long into the night. A great night, enjoyed by all who attended.

Last week, Atheist Society were taking it easy during the exam period, with a screening of the film Saved. It has an important moral message – that we need to book Michael into Mercy House. He didn’t seem to keen on the idea though.

Afterward, we headed down to Stick or Twist, where I enjoyed a free mixed grill after having filled out all the required stamps on my loyalty card 😀 .

Last week, we welcomed Dan Dewsnap to Skeptics in the Pub, to talk about the Zeitgeist Movement.

This was a movement launched off the bank of a film called Zeitgeist Addendum which claims that the major world problems are inherent to the capitalist money based system which our society currently runs on. It then goes on to propose a solution to these problems by putting forward the idea of a resource based economy. This is one without money or ownership, where people are provided with access instead and everything would be in abundance.

While the movement seems to suffer from many of the problems of utopian visions do (how do you motivate people to work, what do you do about things we can’t reduce scarcity, how do you stop people ceasing power, how do you coordinate everything), it was certainly interesting to hear about a movement which was expelling the virtues of technology and science and it was great to have a strong debate going at the meeting with people speaking for both sides.

If you’re looking for something to do the first weekend of August, then the National Federation of Atheist, Humanist & Secular Student Society’s Questival is an excellent event to attend.

The annual weekend camping trip allows non-religious students from across the UK to come together for a weekend of fun, drinking, the outdoors and if it is anything like previous years – starting little fires in the middle of wooded, but very soggy, areas at 2am in the morning. Not that that ever happened of course ;).

Their speaker this year is stand up mathematician Matt Parker, who brings together two great passions – maths and stage performance. Now if only they could be combined into musical theatre… Having seen Matt at Uncaged Monkeys, as well as having him booked for Enquiry 2011, he is a fun and entertaining speaker, not to be missed.

The event was first run by the Atheist Society in 2008, but due to unfortunate circumstances, we ended up having to cancel the actual camping part of it and so it was more of a dinner party in the end. It was only in 2009 that we finally made it out into the wild green yonder for what proved to be an exciting weekend of partying including walking half way up Ingleborough – by accident!

We had always designed summer camping to be a national event, inviting fellow non-believers from across the country in both 2008 and 2009, so we were more than pleased when, now up and running, the AHS co-opted the event in 2010, alongside Camp Quest, to truly turn it into a national event.

EDITOR’S NOTE
Links have been removed from this post due to third-party content being removed:

1: http://forums.secularportal.com/showthread.php?t=60&highlight=camping
2: http://forums.secularportal.com/showthread.php?t=238&highlight=camping

The May meeting of the Humanist Society of West Yorkshire was a talk by a representative from the animal rights group Uncaged on the subject of animal experimentation. Unfortunately the speaker didn’t actually show up, but we had a fantastic debate on the subject anyway, with opinions being very much divided.

I’m not sure what side of the line I fall, though on the strength of the arguments I think Gijsbert delivered a powerful argument in favour of animal experimentation. It could have been different if someone as eloquent had been there to argue against it, unfortunately most of the arguments but forward by that side were just rubbish.

The biggest problem was that the anti-animal experimentation side used an endless amount of bad arguments and logical fallacies, of which Gijsbert quickly called them on. These included:

• The slippery slope argument and constantly envoking Godwin’s Law.
• Claims that we shouldn’t care if humans die, “so what,” which is fine, but you then can’t argue that we should care about animals. If you say it’s just natural for humans to die, you can also argue that it’s natural for one species to use another for it’s own ends.
• Some people abuse animals and do horrible things to them, so all animal experimentation is bad. It’s true that some animals are treated horrifically, but of course, it doesn’t follow that this makes all animal treatment inherently bad.
• “We’re against ALL animal experimentation. Except humans.”
• Uninformed opinions about the regulations surrounding the issues.
• “You shouldn’t take into consideration how intelligent an animal is. Pain is pain, no matter how intelligent a creature is. Except for insects, it’s fine to kill them.”
• “I saw this on a video many years ago.”
• “If you carry out Kosher slaughter correctly the animal feels no pain, whereas if you don’t pre-stun the animal correctly it suffers horribly.”

There are some great arguments against animal experimentation and it’s a shame that certain voices making comments such as those above, drowned out the few logical arguments that were put forward against animal experimentation.

At Atheist Society last week, they screened a Dan Dennett lecture given at Conway Hall. During the talk he made some excellent points including a new quote to go on my favourite quotes list: fairies are invisible – so how come everyone knows what they look like?

In the lecture he also answers the question often asked – if religion was just total rubbish, why is it still around? Surely it must be good for something? Dennett’s response was to give an analogy – think of the common cold. What is it good for? It’s good for itself. Similarly, what keeps religion alive is not because it’s good for society, or humanity – it’s just good at keeping itself around.

I headed up to York last week to the North Yorkshire Humanist Group’s meeting as they had a talk on the role of faith based representatives in nursing. The talk was interesting and proved some great debate afterward. It’s interesting to see the variance of opinions on the subject, though most humanists seem overall in favour of the idea of humanist chaplaincy.

After the meeting we headed to a local pub which got a very impressive attendance – probably over 50% of people who went to the meeting joined us at the pub, a retention rate which I’m sure West Yorkshire would love to emulate.

Earlier this month, the Atheist Society held it’s 2011 AGM. This was an important event, as it marked the end of my involvement with the group. This year has very much been consultative anyway, as fresh blood takes over, and it’s great to see the society is returning to its great shape.

This December will mark five years since the society was founded, though it seems like forever ago that we were first starting things up. As such, I would like to say a big thank you to everyone who helped make the society what it is.

Without a doubt Norm is due the biggest amount of credit, having signed up on day one and being easily the most influential person also to be involved in the society. I would also like to say a big thank you to Matt and Claire for helping the society to get started and Nicola and Paul for their tireless work over the years. And of course, all of those who have served on the committee and helped out at events have all made valuable contributions which I’m grateful for.

The recent elections saw James, Elettra, Will and Michael form the new committee and I’m sure with such excellent leadership, the society will continue to prosper and grow.

Despite many people taking advantage of the four day weekend around May Day and going away, we decided to go ahead with May’s meeting of Humanist Community.

Turn out turned out to be higher than expected and interestingly, we even had a predominantly young audience with over half the people attending being under 30! Discussions were enjoyable, though not particularly heated – when we discussed the royal wedding, everyone just agreed. Great minds and all that I guess 😀 .