Archive for the ‘Humanism’ Category

Last Saturday saw the April meeting of Leeds Skeptics in the Pub. There was no speaker this month but never the less it was a very involved meeting with an hour of news and discussion kicking things off.

Indeed, it was almost a feature length meeting given the in depth discussion we had about the future energy needs of the world and whether nuclear was a safe option or not.

Interestingly, one of the points brought up was that one of the most dangerous ways in which power can be generated is actually hydroelectricity. While it’s a very green way of generating power, a dam failure can lead to 100,000’s of people dying¹.

On April 3rd, Humanist Community returned due to popular demand. Back in February we had announced that the pilot project was coming to an end and while we had enjoyed our time, we did not intend to continue the project. But after the number of people who announced that they were deeply disappointed in this we decided to extend it’s life to see it’s continued development over the coming months.

At the April meeting, much of the discussion focused around an article featured in The Guardian, written by Deborah Orr claiming that the Census Campaign (the campaign to get those with no religion to actually tick no religion rather than CoE) was militant secularism in action. Surprisingly enough, most of the attendees didn’t agree.

Atheist Society recently welcomed Leo Dragon for a magic show and talk on illusions.

Leo describes himself as an honest liar in that he is tricking us but it’s ok because we all know it’s an illusion and we accept it – basically, it’s like democracy in cabaret format. Interestingly, along these lines, Derren Brown writes, in his book Tricks of the Mind, that all magicians are inherently bad people because their life is to trick people. Luckily, at A-Soc we don’t tend to subscribe to the idea of inherent evil.

Leo wowed the audience with a range of tricks, even after having appointed Michael to make sure there was no funny business going on – this means that either Leo is genuinely magic, or Michael should be permanently banned from working for the Child Protection Agency.

It could almost be Transhumanist Week between my talk the day before and Michael and John’s talk on Transhumanism and The Singularity at Atheist Society on Tuesday.

I recently headed over to Hull to present a talk to Hull & East Riding Humanists.

The journey was reasonable, I was pretty starving by the time I got there but the only place I could find to eat was a Little Chef so I ended up going hungry 😉 . Having arrived with an hour to spare, I decided to have a look round Hull. Turns out some parts of it are quite nice.

The talk was fairly well received, there was a good mix of skeptics and believers though I perhaps didn’t answer the critics well enough – there was nothing suggested that wasn’t pre-answered by Kurzweil or De Gray and that perhaps prevented us from discussing the criticisms which actually do stand up in more depth. Still I found it a very much enjoyable talk to give.

The venue was the Plotting Room of Ye Olde White Hearte which is apparently where the English Civil War was started. It’s a hard act to follow to be honest, I feel a bit of a let down after I found that out.

For the March meeting of Leeds Skeptics in the Pub we welcomed Pauline Neale, who is a speaker for Oxfam, to talk about climate change. The talk was enjoyable though I think I should be made it clearer to Pauline before the event that we all accept climate change as I think she was initially expecting a far less friendly reception!

Thanks to Rob for the photos.

Recently, Atheist Society has really taken to fusing it’s events with steak nights. It’s a winning combination.

So recently we all headed down to Stick or Twist for a pub quiz created by the defacto quiz master Michael who did an excellent job of coming up with a quiz, despite the usual Italian bias. Craziest of all as people’s spirits began to run high, I even heard Elina shouting at one point – turns out she does have a volume other than quiet 😉 .

Despite only packing up from All Night Debate at 3am, we were all up bright and early the next morning to head down to Conway Hall in London for the AHS 2011 convention.

The day started with stalls from various related organisations and then moved into speakers starting with Lord Warner who is chair of the All Party Parliamentary Humanist Group talking about his experiences as a humanist, in politics.

Second up was Gerard Phillips, vice president of the National Secular Society. His talk was disappointing, it seemed to be an hour talk compressed into twenty minutes, I’ve literally never heard someone speak so fast when delivering a talk. It was also pointed at the wrong audience a little I think – given we’re all at the AHS conference, we don’t need to be told what secularism is and why we should advocate it – you’re preaching to the converted. Never the less, Gerald is clearly a passionate secularist and having had a chat with him later in the day, he seems like a great guy who really wants the best for the freethought movement.

He was followed by BHA chief executive Andrew Copson who, despite a lack of organisation with getting the slides ready, delivered a concise, informative and educational talk which made for one of the best of the day.

After a break, we welcomed Robin Ince to the stage. Jonni was hugely impressed with his talk and although it was evident he had, as he admitted, written it on a series of postcards in the hour, I really enjoyed it. Robin is also forming part of the line-up of the Enquiry 2011 Conference.

He was followed by Johann Hari, who, for my mind, gave the best talk of the day, reminding us all that despite we have all this nonsense such as faith schools often overly vocal religious people, when it comes down to it – we’re winning; more and more people every year declare themselves as non-religious.

The day was closed off by a speech by Professor AC Grayling and a performance by the BHA Choir. I have to say I was somewhat disappointed by Grayling’s speech – it was good, but then it was good when I heard it two years ago at the AHS press launch and it hasn’t really changed since then.

Afterwards, we all headed to a local pub for some well-deserved relaxation.

I had some more photos from Reason Week on my iPhone, some of which are actually better than the ones I took on my DSLR lol, so I thought I would share them as well.

Having announced the Humanist Library Project in December, we have slowly been building up quite a collection of books for it which have until now just been sat around in piles of the office, waiting to be dealt with.

Thankfully, our volunteer David (or Fonze as he is better known) was finally able to spare some time and do a little construction work for us. So after a few cryptic texts about “building a library”, he turned up hammer in hand to start building some book shelving for us.

If you haven’t heard about the project yet, the idea is to build a Humanist Library, right here in Leeds. We’re currently building our collection so if you have any appropriate items you are willing to donate to the project, do get in touch!