Archive for the ‘Humanism’ Category

Yesterday saw us repeat a debate we ran at Atheist Society last year, “do the benefits of religion outweigh the negatives.” Initially we had five people volunteer to speak but three of them having pulled out at the last minute, myself and Nicola ended up arguing for the oppisition.

We won, and while this is to be expected I thought it would have been a closer debate given we were just winging it. Perhaps it is just too much of an easy argument to win? Though I did have an idea of what I wanted to say, having argued for the opposition last year.

Afterwards we headed down to OK Karaoke were it was indeed free entry – but there wasn’t any karaoke. I mean seriously, what karaoke bar doesn’t offer karaoke? At least, you would think that is the kind of thing they would have mentioned to Sophie when she spoke to them on the phone. They did however mention drinks offers, to which there weren’t any.

So we prompted stormed out and headed to Courtyard for a drink or two. Unfortunately Courtyard being dead as normal, decided to close at ten so we were only there for less than an hour. So all in all a bit of bust, but we’re still smiling so it’s all good.

Finally finally got the resources from across the country, the corporate image guidelines and all the documents and other required materials, the website for the National Federation of Atheist, Humanist and Secular Student Societies, better known as the AHS has now gone live.

Over the coming months there will be lots more content added to the site as we get it, but for the moment it will serve it’s purpose as giving us an official web presence and make available the important information.

Looking forward to the press launch now, it’s only a few weeks away!

Adding a bit of culture (and retracting a bit of sleep 🙁 ) we were up bright and early on Saturday morning to head down to the Royal Armouries to take a look round as well as watching some of the interpretations being put on and generally have some fun.

Friday saw the launch of Perspective, a course I developed and by developed I mean came up with the name and handed the work on to Nicola to do. Good times. The basic idea is that each week a different religion comes down to tell us about what they actually believe and everyone can ask questions, over a free dinner of course. Nothing original but highly successful, we got 20 people down on a Friday night for the Baha’i session.

Continuing our exam time film screenings, yesterday’s Atheist Society meeting saw us show the documentary film Baby Bible Bashers, charting the activities of three young preachers as they attempt to spread the word of the Bible despite their small stature.

Afterwards we headed down to The Terrace for some much needed refreshments especially given the union still have a sale on which means pints of coke are currently going for £0.60! May the good times roll.

Saturday saw the first Leeds Skeptics in the Pub which went rather well at least for an initial meeting. We got around twenty people turning up in total with a mix of ages and backgrounds which is exactly what we were aiming for really.

I kept my actual talk fairly short as I wasn’t too sure what people were expecting for a first meeting, in future they will be a bit more well-rounded talks but for the moment I was more interested in people getting to know each other and having a good drink and a chat.

Hopefully we can build on the success of Saturday and build attenance even more in the future. We’ve booked up speakers as far as May so there is plenty going on.

Last night I headed down to the Humanist Society of West Yorkshire for Moz’s talk on religion in Pre Christian Britain. While it was mostly an excuse for Moz to show off the quality of pictures his very expensive camera can take, the talk was never the less etertaining and brought up some up some very interesting facts about the suprisingly rich heritage of Britain before the Romans arrived.

As I had suggested, Paul invited everyone to Joseph’s Well for a drink and the uptaking was very impressive, by Humanist Society standards anyway, we must have had a good fifteen of us stay for a drink compared to the usual quick evaporation of meeting attendees that traditionally takes place.

Having had a drink there I headed up to the union to meet the usual A-Soc crowd which had somewhat increased since the meeting first began, clearly people were in need of a good pint to calm their pre-exam nerves.

Tuesday night saw the first A-Soc social of 2009 and quite a well attended one at that. Given a lot of people are not back in Leeds yet, many have exams next week and it been freezing cold outside (literally, it’s well below 0), we still managed to get probably 15 people to come down.

Our plans to meet in The Terrace had been somewhat thwarted by the union not opening The Terrace we switched things to The Old Bar (which weren’t serving food either), people kindly being directed down by union staff who asked Norm “are you looking for the long haired guy and his dad” referring to Paul 😀 .

The Old Bar was being rubbish as well though and closed the bar at 9. Interestingly Izzy turned up soon after to find us all getting our stuff together to leave. She immediately then made an exit stating that “well, Norm’s not here” – charming. The night ended with Kate trading in some shifts at Rationalist Week for a lift home which is fair enough really.

Yesterday was the usual Tuesday night A-Soc social once again at The Library as the union is closed until next week. They finally had food back on this week so I took the chance to order one of Scream’s rather tasty mixed grills to which they didn’t have any steak for :o. I mean, what is a mixed grill without the steak? They ended up doing me double chicken and double gammon though so I’m not complaining.

Attendance was good, Nicola is back in civilization if only for a few days and The Gijs put in a guest appearance too. As ever, a successful night in the end.

Last night saw the first A-Soc social of the holidays, regular meetings having been suspended until everyone gets back to Leeds in January. Given it was holidays, and indeed the 23rd of December, we did alright for attendance, I think we had a total of eight of us in the end.

I was a good night as I got to chat to Paul about some of my suggestions regarding the Humanist Society of West Yorkshire and we also battled with Facebook to try and sort it out as his new phone is geared towards Facebook but won’t actually let you register or anything.

In a highly amusing situation also, Norm got ID’d. Clearly the big beard is taking years of his look 😀 .