 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…
 We met February 21 at 5pm at the Blue Moose.
~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.
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The book we are reading (in its entirety) is The God Virus: How religion infects our lives and culture by Darrel W. Ray
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
…
 Brent found another treat for those of us reading The God Virus. Darrel Ray, the author of the book, was interviewed by D.J Grothe on Point of Inquiry a few months ago. You can listen to the podcast either on the page here, or through iTunes.
Here’s what the site says about the interview:
Dr. Darrel W. Ray is author of three books, two on organizational psychology. He has been a psychologist for over 30 years. After practicing counseling and clinical psychology for 10 years, his focus shifted to organizational psychology and consulting. A longtime student of religion, his latest book is The God Virus: How Religion Infects Our Lives and Culture.
In this conversation with D.J. Grothe, Darrel Ray talks about religion being like a virus, elaborating on Richard Dawkins’ concept of the meme. He explains why the metaphor of God belief…
 We are meeting at 5pm on January 17 for the Freethinker’s Morgantown Book Club. We’ll meet at the Blue Moose, but check back to make sure.
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January 17 Update:
We had a nice meeting. We talked about the book, current events, the evolution of language, and much more.
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We are reading a funny fiction book for this meeting. (Read the entire book for Jan 17)
The Stupidest Angel: A Heartwarming Tale of Christmas Terror by Christopher Moore
From Publishers Weekly
Hilarity abounds in Moore’s latest satirical gem. Sleepy Pine Cove, Calif., is abuzz with Christmas spirit, but Lena Marquez is fed up with her despicable ex-husband, Dale Pearson. On his way home from playing Santa Claus at the local lodge, Dale spies sneaky Lena uprooting his Monterey pines; he pulls a gun on her, she lashes out with a shovel and—oops!—kills him. Seven-year-old Josh Barker, thinking he’s just…
 We met December 13 at the Blue Moose at 5pm.
~ Update:
Everyone brought in a wide range of books. Here’s the list:
Next month’s book: The Stupidest Angel: A Heartwarming Tale of Christmas Terror by Christopher Moore
…
 Yesterday the Freethinkers Morgantown Book Club was in the Dominion Post. Here’s the article:
Sharing Stories: Clubs allow friends to bond over books
By Kaitlin Bushinski for the Dominion Post, Life and Leisure section, 1-E, Sunday November 8, 2009
For those seeking more active engagement with literature, starting a book club can be a fun and rewarding way to do just that, while meeting new people and challenging oneself intellectually, say lit lovers.
According to club veterans, book clubs are also low-cost and easy to organize. All it takes is one person, a plan and a little advertising to get it off the ground.
Amber Johns, the director of community relations for the Morgantown Library System, is starting a Jane Austen-themed book club that will have its first meeting in February.
“We were trying to figure out a new approach to book clubs, and Jane Austen
…
 We met at the Blue Moose at 5pm on November 15. Note: this was one week earlier to accommodate Thanksgiving.
Chapters 12-17, pages 153-222
We each took a chapter and presented it to everyone.
- Chapter 12: Neece
- Chapter 13: Tim
- Chapter 14: Gerald
- Chapter 15: General discussion
- Chapter 16: Brent
- Chapter 17: Neece
This book was quite helpful and I would recommend it. Feel free to comment with how you liked the book and what you got out of it.
This will be our third meeting for Nonsense: Red Herrings, Straw Men and Sacred Cows: How We Abuse Logic in Our Everyday Language by Robert J. Gula. This should be great for helping us to think and converse more logically.
We had some good discussions and a lot of people showed up.
Here are some general principles and some great advice by Robert…
 We met at the Blue Moose at 5 pm on October 25.
Chapters 6-11, pages 55-151
We each took a chapter to share with everyone. This was a good format which we’ll use again.
- Chapter 6: Brent
- Chapter 7: Neece
- Chapter 8: Gerald
- Chapter 9: Butch
- Chapter 10: Tim
- Chapter 11: Butch
This book should be easy to catch up with if you want to join us.
This will be our second meeting for Nonsense: Red Herrings, Straw Men and Sacred Cows: How We Abuse Logic in Our Everyday Language by Robert J. Gula. This should be great for helping us to think and converse more logically. (The link goes to Amazon where you can get the book either new or used.)
We’ll divide the book into three sections to span 3 meetings.
- Meeting 1 (September 27): Chapters 1-5, pages 1-53
- Meeting 2 (October 25): Chapters
…
 We met at the Blue Moose at 5:08pm on September 27.
Chapters 1-5, pages 1-53
This was our first meeting for Nonsense: Red Herrings, Straw Men and Sacred Cows: How We Abuse Logic in Our Everyday Language by Robert J. Gula. This should be great for helping us to think and converse more logically.
We’ll divide the book into three sections to span 3 meetings.
- Meeting 1 (September 27): Chapters 1-5, pages 1-53
- Meeting 2 (October 25): Chapters 6-11, pages 55-151
- Meeting 3 (November TBA) Chapters 12-17, pages 153-222
We had a great meeting. We are all enjoying the book. We went through the ways language can be misused with emotional appeals, propaganda and mannerisms.
Here is a bit from chapter 1 that I want to share with you:
First, some general principles. Let’s not call them laws; and since they’re not particularly original, I won’t attach
…
This was our final meeting on Atheist Universe:
We had a small turnout for the book club meeting, but the discussion was lively and interesting. We went off topic a bit to discuss all kinds of ideas and concepts.
One recurring theme of the evening was the definition/meaning of different words. I’ll list them here:
- Consciousness: subjective experience or awareness or wakefulness or the executive control system of the mind. Consciousness is the subject of much research in philosophy of mind, psychology, neuroscience, cognitive science, cognitive neuroscience and artificial intelligence. Issues of practical concern include how the presence of consciousness can be assessed in severely ill or comatose people; whether non-human consciousness exists and if so how it can be measured; at what point in fetal development consciousness begins; and whether computers can achieve a conscious state.
- Self-awareness: consciousness of one’s self. It is related to but not identical
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EDIT! 
