Archive for the ‘Humanism’ Category

Last night with HAG we, for the first time ever, ran out of coffee. I’m not sure whether this is a good thing or a bad thing as it means there are plenty of people to once again receive said coffee but this can be put down to the fact that our Thursday night excursions have been a bit patchy recently and so the issue has managed to gain a foothold again.

It can also be attributed to the fact that I only made half as much coffee as normal because we only get through half of it at best usually. Luckily we didn’t have to turn anyone down though, we just cut the night short. This resulted in us being back in time to watch Question Time so it all worked out in the end 😉 .

Tuesday night saw us screen Dogma for another relaxed night of de-stressing between revision periods. This was of course followed by the usual social at The Terrace though I think the best attended all evening was actually the committee meeting.

As usual myself, Nicola and Rich headed out last night for our traditional wander round even given there are so few people out these days (what can I say, we’ve just too good at solving problems).

Annoyingly we ended up walking past the appartment I got beaten to bringing up some bad memories (it was so perfect, I’m trying hard to move on but I’m not sure I can) but otherwise it was a good night, we kept the focus on it being a good mix between helping and gossiping about people which was always the dream really.

With the exam period underway this Tuesday’s Atheist Society meeting was designed to let people switch off and relax from the constrant headache of revision. As such we screened Monty Python’s Life of Brian.

Every time I watch the film I remember just how much of an amazing film it is. Even the one liners are complex, brilliant dialog that makes you laugh. What a film.

Yesterday at Skeptics in the Pub, Gijsbert delivered a talk regarding whether Dawkins and Darwin could truely replace the holy Bible – and the conclusion was no.

The theme of it was that as well as the “religious” stuff shall we say, religion also does a great job of catering for people’s emotional needs such as self esteem and gaining respect from your peers. Therefore is the non-beliver movement is going to grow as I’m sure many of us hope it will, we are going to have to have to find some what that people’s basic emotional needs can be catered for rather than just rubbishing their belief system.

On Tuesday we had a debate with the Islamic apologist Adam Deen. The man is a fantastic public speaker and even though I think most of us from A-Soc have heard all the arguments before, they were very eloquently put. Norm did a good job of speaking for outside, as did Sophie chairing a debate for the first time – not an easy one to start on!

Thursday saw an interfaith social supposedly organsed by the interfaith assembly. They didn’t really do anything other than delegate all the work to Nicola though. The event featured a quiz and a buffet which was nice though Nicola did all the food so it soon ran out. Of course the real socialising took place in The Old Bar afterwards but that is to be expected 😀 .

Congratulations to Paul, who along with others including myself, who was one of the first set of people to be awared honorary life membership to Leeds Atheist Society. It just shows you if you that if you really put time and effort in you can come out with a nicely designed certificate ;). And much more besides of course!

On Tuesday I delivered a short series of talks to Atheist Society on evolution. It focused on some of the fun facts of evolution and strange twists which don’t seem to make sense at first but then, when you actually find out the answer, it makes perfect sense. The enemy of the god of gaps if you will.

On Saturday myself, Tom and Norm were down at Conway Hall for an AHS meeting. Unfortunately given that it was sandwiched in between two shifts at work I wasn’t able to spend any extra time in London, which is very disappointing especially given it was a bank holiday and so otherwise I didn’t have to be back in Leeds until Tuesday. Still, probably for the best given I don’t have any money at the moment.

The meeting itself was resonably productive, at least given the baseline of not productive in any way which was what I expected. It has certainly given some food for thought although I think as well as moving things forward we’ve still come away with conflicting visions of what we think the AHS is as this issue never really got raised in the meeting.

At the end of the day though that is probably always going to be the case in a free thinking organisation. And all the better for it.