EDIT! We are meeting March 20 at 2pm at Joe and David’s Farm to celebrate the Spring Equinox with a Potluck dinner. We will also finish up The God Virus.
Potluck Dinner
BYO Beverages
We’ll talk and vote on our Secular Service endeavor
We’ll finish up The God Virus
Merriment will ensue!
NOTE: This is INSTEAD OF meeting March 21. We are now meeting the day before. Any questions, email Neece.
I forgot to bring up the subject of our Secular Service in our regular meeting! So we’ll spend a few minutes when we get together for this meeting, gathering ideas and then getting a tally on which service we’re all most interested in. So bring your ideas or comment here with suggestions if you can’t make the meeting.
Directions Below.
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We had so much discussion for The God Virus that we only go through chapter 5. So we’re going to finish the book next month, chapter 6 to the end.
It’s time to choose a worthy cause to donate our efforts in the name of Secular Service! We are going to share our ideas at our next meeting then tally up which is most popular. But in the meantime, you can start the conversation here. Leave a comment with your suggested charity and why we might enjoy helping them.
It would be nice to pick a charity that we can help in more than one way, such as time, money or goods. That way we can all contribute in whatever way suits us best.
Morgantown Atheists is hosting this endeavor, but we will donate our Service in the name of Morgantown Coalition of Reason. So if you are a Morgantown Bright, a UU member, or a member of any of the other Morgantown CoR groups, please consider throwing in your two cents and your help for this worthwhile ongoing project.
We will talk about this at the beginning of our next meeting so if you want to just participate but not stay for the book club, it will be easy. Also, if you can’t make the meeting, feel free to comment below with suggestions and your choice.
This is what is suggested so far:
Bartlett House (note: it’s moving out of town) Mission Statement: Bartlett House addresses homeless issues by providing for emergency food, shelter and medical referrals first, then one-to-one comprehensive case management to break the cycle of homelessness. We are committed to providing shelter that meets a persons basic needs in an atmosphere where people are treated with dignity and respect.
West Virginia Botanic Garden: Mission Statement: The West Virginia Botanic Garden (WVBG), in harmony with nature, seeks to enhance the quality of life through public enjoyment and education involving inspirational landscapes and displays of a rich variety of ornamental plants appropriate to the region.
West Virginia Raptor Rehabilitation Center: To rehabilitate and release injured and orphaned birds of prey and to provide environmental education programs to the public for the benefit of all living things.
Caritas House: North-Central West Virginia’s only AIDS service organization, is a United Way agency, and a member of the West Virginia Coalition for People with HIV/AIDS.
The United Way: Mission Statement: The United Way of Monongalia and Preston Counties enhances the quality of life in our community by helping those in need.
Last night Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) filed a D.C. voucher amendment to the second jobs bill under consideration by the Senate. The D.C. voucher program uses taxpayer funds to pay for parents to send their children to private religious schools. The program is called the “D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program,” but a 2007 government report found that these vouchers do not give D.C. students seeking a private school education sufficient secular choices, forcing them to attend religious schools or remain in the failing public school system.
By design, voucher programs aid struggling Christian schools. A July 2009 report by Rutgers University on the D.C. voucher program concluded that the way the voucher program is structured “essentially push[es] students into Christian Association and Catholic schools, pricing out independent (non-religious) schools and Hebrew schools.”
By continuing this program, those of us who do not wish to subsidize someone else’s church will continue to be forced to do so through our federal tax dollars.
The vote will occur sometime today. Please take five minutes and email your Senators below and tell them to vote against this amendment that would re-authorize this program.
The Secular Coalition for America opposes the use of government funds for religious purposes, including vouchers for religious schools. We agree with the founders of the United States that no individual taxpayer should be required to pay for someone else’s religion. We agree with James Madison. Senator Lieberman wants us to go in a different direction.
The D.C. Opportunity Scholarship, with your tax money, funds and enables proselytizing and religious discrimination. Recipients of the vouchers who attend religious schools are not even allowed to opt out of religious activities at their school—a direct affront to religious freedom.
It is critical that you write your Senators today and ask them to oppose Sen. Lieberman’s amendment that would re-authorize this program and spend your taxes to fund the religious education of children in D.C.
Gerald found this interesting chart chock full of information. Of course, remember correlation does not necessitate causation, but it is striking how the numbers fall.
Brent sent me a brochure from last year about Darwin-fest, for his 200th anniversary. This was when Morgantown Atheists was just forming and a lot of the members of that time went to a lot of these events. So this is a cyber-souvenir from 2009.
West Virginia University is celebrating the 200th birthday of Charles Darwin with DarwinFest, a series of talks and presentations examining the naturalist’s work – from his travels to his influential theory on evolution.
“Darwin: Evolutionary Science and Its Impacts on Society”; an interdisciplinary celebration involving colleges and schools across the University – will be held from February through early April. The events, which are free and open to the public, will feature leading scholars and scientists from around the world.
Darwin, who was born Feb. 12, 1809, is known as the father of evolution for his theory that all life develops through a process he called natural selection. 2009 also marks the 150th anniversary of the publication of “On the Origin of Species,” Darwin’s seminal work on the subject.
“These speakers and presenters will explain Darwin’s complex work in terms the average person will understand,” interim Provost E. Jane Martin said. “They will also show Darwin’s influence on modern life, from science and medicine to human relationships and religion.” Continue reading From the Early Days of Morgantown Atheists →
Brian Dunning offers this 4o minute video to introduce critical thinking. From his site he says, “Most people fully accept paranormal and pseudoscientific claims without critique as they are promoted by the mass media. Here Be Dragons offers a toolbox for recognizing and understanding the dangers of pseudoscience, and appreciation for the reality-based benefits offered by real science.”
We met at 5pm at the Blue Moose on Sunday, March 7.
Our topic was:
Who We Admire in Science, Philosophy or Atheism and Why.
Update:
Ivy: Victor Frankl, author of Man’s Search For Meaning. His Logotherapy was about searching for a new and increased awareness in the present and enabling a new freedom and responsibility to act. The patient can then accept they they are not special and that their existence is simply coincidental, without destiny or fate. By accepting this, they can overcome their anxieties, and instead view life as moments, in which they are fundamentally free.
Daniel: Thomas Jefferson, the third president and a founding father. A freethinker and a great leader, he worked very hard to give America the separation of church and state. He was also opposed to a central bank, he was very insightful, and wanted to keep the power of the federal government in check.
Butch: Frank Zappa and George Carlin, both men who were proponents of free speech and not letting yourself get crushed under the boot heel of religion or the government. Zappa was a part of the PMRC trials in the 80’s and Carlin was an outspoken critic of the church back in the 60’s before it was fashionable.
Chad: Neil deGrasse Tyson is an astrophysicist who brings passion to science and scientific literacy. This video of a talk by Tyson from 2006 is about 38 minutes long. He talks about the god of the gaps throughout scientific history, intelligent design and then about Stupid Design. Highly recommended watching. Tyson has written several books.
Joe: Pearl S. Buck and the Freedom From Religion Foundation (FFRF). Pearl S. Buck took Joe out of his Ozzie and Harriet life and showed him other ways of life and different ways of thinking. Buck wrote many books. Here’s a quote from her about religion: “I feel no need for any other faith than my faith in the kindness of human beings. Like Confucius of old, I am so absorbed in the wonder of earth and the life upon it that I cannot think of heaven and angels.” The FFRF is a group that fights for the separation of church and state.
We are meeting at the Blue Moose at 5 pm on Sunday, March 28.
We are spending the first 15 minutes or so on a Vietnamese religion called the Cao Dai. Jim will be sharing that with us as he spent a bit of time there recently.
After that, we’ll talk about Irish Folklore. So bring along some information on that.
Over the past several weeks I’ve accumulated links and information from several of our members. If you have information you want to share with us, just email it to Neece or leave a comment below. I’ll do a regular roundup of links and information in the future. If it’s about science, critical thinking, books or other media, or religion and atheism, share it with us whenever you come across it.
The first is from RadioLab. Here’s the description from the page:
Parasites: What’s gotten into you? In this hour we explore nature’s moochers – the good, the bad, and the hideous. We have stories of lethargic farmers, zombie cockroaches, and even mind-controlled humans (kinda, maybe). Could parasites be the shadowy hands that pull the strings of life? Carl Zimmer plays defense lawyer, trying to exonerate parasites for their wrongs, while Jad and Robert argue in defense of the victims. Our producer Lulu Miller comes in to moderate a lightning round of: “Parasites: are they evil, or are they awesome?” The parasites in question are the zombie wasp, the nematode, and the lovey-dovey blood fluke.
From NPR he sends a story about throwing out the Primordial Soup theory:
Is the “primordial soup” theory — the idea that life emerged from a prebiotic broth — past its expiration date?
Biochemist Nick Lane thinks so. The University College London writer and his colleagues argue that the 81-year-old notion just doesn’t hold water.
Lane tells NPR’s Guy Raz there’s another possible explanation for the emergence of life. But before we get to that, why toss out the soup theory?
Lane says the idea of a primordial soup goes back to 1929, and great biologists like J.B.S. Haldane.
~Update: We had so much discussion, both about the book and off-topic, that we only got through chapter 5. So we’ll finish the book at our next meeting.
We’ll each take a chapter or two to share with everyone. There are 12 in all. Leave a comment below or email Neece with which chapters you’d like to cover:
1. Religion is a Virus: Joe
2. How Religions Survive and Dominate: Joe
3. American Civil Religion: Gerald
4. God Loves You – The Guilt that Binds: David
5. Sex and the God Virus: Brent
6. The Myth of Unchanging Morality: Daniel
7. Jesus My Personal Savior: The Roots of American Evangelism: Gerald
8. Intelligence, Personality and the God Virus: Neece
9. Understanding and Living With The God Virus: Neece
10. The Journey: Living a Virus-Free Life: Neece
11. The God Virus and Science
12. The Future of an Illusion: Daniel
Here are some reviews:
Darrel Ray has made a marvelous contribution to our understanding of ourselves. The description of religion as a cultural virus is not new, Darrel is the first to put the virus on a slide and pull out the microscope. The God Virus goes beyond analogy, offering a fascinating and detailed look at the wiggling, maddening virus itself how it moves, how it survives, and how and why it continues to thrive. –Dale McGowan, Author/editor, Parenting Beyond Belief and Raising Freethinkers, Harvard Humanist of the Year (2008)
For those hungering for more after reading the books written by Dawkins, Harris, Hitchens and Dennett, Dr. Darrel Ray’s The God Virus is a logical and thought-provoking follow-up. By extending the metaphor of religion as a virus, the reader gets a better understanding of the incredible power religion can have on anyone’s way of thinking (Dr. Ray shows that even your IQ is negatively affected!). Lest anyone think this is just a putdown of religion, it also gives excellent advice on how to live life without a God, from marriage to raising children. It’s a book that non-believers will enjoy and religious readers can only dare to read. –Hemant Mehta author of I Sold My Soul On Ebay (Waterbrook Press, 2007) Continue reading February Book Club Meeting →
EDIT! 
We are meeting March 20 at 2pm at Joe and David’s Farm to celebrate the Spring Equinox with a Potluck dinner. We will also finish up The God Virus.
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