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.
For those of you who haven’t heard of the English Defence League (I hadn’t until today), they bill themselves as “peacefully protesting against militant Islam” so you can fill in the blanks. Anyway I was linked to their website via UAF’s website and had a quick browse around. They don’t have much content but they do have some interesting Google Adwords on their forum registration page 😀 .
As usual we headed down to Cuthbert Brodrick on Sunday for lunch. It saw a much overdue return of Sarann and Moz and a lengthly session of gossiping about a number of individuals. It also somewhat disturbed myself and George that we only left the pub a meer 36 hours before returning – does anyone know what the frequency of visiting a Wetherspoon’s is before you’re officially an alcoholic? Not that I was even drinking today but I’m not sure that cancels it out.
Do you ever consider how sinister the name Salvation Army actually is?
As I found out while recently clearing out my old bedroom I wrote quite a bit back in the day.
Some of my writings included outlines for loads of different TV shows. What I found interesting though is how many of them have manifested themselves as actual TV shows in the ten years since I wrote them. For example Just One Way was an outline which followed the fast-paced action of one man’s life over a 24 hour period, a plot similar to what we would now recognise as 24.
Other shows included The President’s Office which has striking similarities to The West Wing and 100 Deeds Before I Die which could easily be compared to My Name is Earl.
What this shows us it that the makers of today’s television programs have the same imagination, ideas and thought processes as a child. Where this is a good thing or a bad thing I will leave up to you.
Everyone knows that Barack Obama is an atheist.
“And non-believers” may be a small fish in the UK, but in the US even such a small mention is worth something. Not to mention his support of stem cell research and gay rights. So chances are he’s just Christian because you could never get elected president of the United States without being one. If this is the case, it is no suprise he hides his atheism so well – he is smart enough to get himself elected president of the US after all.
This got me thinking – what is George Bush is an atheist? I mean, he got himself elected as president of the United States. Which seemes to leave us with three possibilities:
All three of these I would consider valid possibilities.
It is possible for people to be both smart and a Christian. For them to be scientists and yet when it comes to spiritual matters for them to turn off the logical part of their brain.
It is possible to be president of the United States without being that clever, perhaps. The main reason for thinking this is that George Bush seems to be such an idiot. But also consider how many utter blondes attended your red brick university with you. You think to yourself, “these girls are just so ditzy and blonde, how did they get in here?” Yet they did, and go on to graduate most of the time as well! There are some people who are just naturally really good at something, even academics, or maybe politics, that aren’t overall that smart.
Finally, it could all be an act. This would seem unlikely in George Bush’s case because he on the whole did take a conservative Christian approach when it cames to policy which suggests he did actually want to push these policies through. After all, what would be the point of ataining office only to push the pretence so far as to actually push through all the things you didn’t believe in?
However, if it was anything short of this, I would probably ask the question as to whether George Bush could have been an atheist. It’s no great leap to think that someone could act dumb for his public image when they are actually very clever – take a look at the bumbling Boris Johnson who has now planted himself as mayor of London.
Mulling this over though, it will hopefully make you wonder who else could have potentially been simply religious for political reasons – much like it was suspected that many of the founding fathers of the US were deists because this is as far as they could push it at the time.
Of course, Tony Blair’s secret raging Catholicism adds a whole new dimension to the debate…
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.
