By Neece
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:
Over the next day or so I will post everyone’s choices.
Ivy: Victor Frankl
Daniel: Thomas Jefferson
Tim: John Shelby Spong
Brent: August Weisman, Leondard Hayflick and Aubrey DeGrey
David: Richard and Mary Leaky, the author of African Genesis and Paul Monette
Neece: Carl Sagan and Richard Dawkins
Butch: Frank Zappa and George Carlin
Gerald: Martin Gardner and James Randi
Chad: Neil deGrasse Tyson
Joe: Pearl S. Buck and the Freedom From Religion Foundation (FFRF)
By Neece
Brent sent me a link to a page on the web. It’s a conversation with Robert Sapolsky, a quiet, funny, apparently brilliant professor of biological sciences at Stanford University and of neurology at Stanford’s School of Medicine. Professor Sapolsky has written several books such as:
The link Brent sent me was called TOXO and he suggested it to me, to share with you, because we’re reading The God Virus: How religion infects our lives and culture, by Daniel W Ray. Now the video on that page was Robert Sapolsky talking about a most interesting parasite called Toxoplasma. This is what pregnant…
By Neece
“Who Are These Doubters, Anyway? The Demography of Unbelief”
presented by Tom Flynn, Executive Director of the Council for Secular Humanism and Editor of Free Inquiry magazine
Thursday, October 29, 7:00 p.m.
Carnegie Science Center
1 Allegheny Avenue, Pittsburgh
You’ve seen the various religion polls and the reported percentages of unbelievers – and the polls vary widely. How do you know which polls are more reliable? Join Tom Flynn as he explores how sociologists and pollsters measure religious belief and unbelief. He will also cover the controversies and scandals in the polling field, and what the polling data on religion really mean (for example, how many of those “no religious preference” people are really atheists?).
Tom Flynn is Executive Director of the Council for Secular Humanism and the Editor of Free Inquiry magazine. A journalist, novelist, entertainer, and folklorist, Flynn is the author of numerous…
By Neece
(Morgantown, WV, September 29, 2009.) Atheists and agnostics in Morgantown, West Virginia, have organized around an electronic billboard on Mileground Road. The billboard reads, “Don’t believe in God? You are not alone.” These words are superimposed over an image of blue sky and clouds.
Four groups of freethinkers and humanists have pooled their efforts to launch the new Morgantown Coalition of Reason, sponsor of the billboard. Their aim is to educate the public about their worldview and what their groups do. The billboard invites like-minded people to visit the coalition’s website at www.MorgantownCoR.org. Motorists traveling west on Mileground Road into Morgantown will see it.
Under the co-sponsorship of the United Coalition of Reason, a national coordinating body, this billboard is part of a larger nationwide campaign aimed at raising the public profile of nontheists and organizing nontheistic groups in major cities. The United Coalition of Reason plans to fund…
By Neece
We talked about Atheist Universe by David Mills
Chapters 5-7 (page 105-170)
A few notes from the meeting:
- Anything that can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence. Christopher Hitchens
- We talked about the shared symbology of the Fertile Crescent civilizations and how other cultures farther away do not share that symbology, such as Nordic, Asian or Australian cultures. Shared contact = shared symbology.
- This is an interesting idea: Does enslavement/oppression of a people encourage and promote religiosity? Do oppressed and enslaved people have less desire/need for reality? Is it less important to them? Are they forced to be more ignorant and without hope? Have any studies been done on this?
- Does stress link to religiosity? I wrote about a study that showed that it does: Superstitious? It Could Be Your Lack of Control: This new study shows that when you lack control, you are
…
By Neece
This is somewhat late notice, but there is still plenty of time. Some members of Freethinkers Morgantown are planning a field trip to the creation museum (I think it’s outside of Cincinnati). Here is the notice that I received from Michael Pipkin on Monday (they will be going with PZ Myers):
Claire and I are thinking about attending the Creation Museum field trip with the Secular Student Alliance on August 7th. The event is on a Friday, so it would require taking a day off of work. I want to see if anyone else might be interested in going so we could carpool and share expenses.
PZ Myers will be acting as a “guide” and there will even be a special presentation that day, with one of the AIG “researchers” (I use that term very loosely) giving a lecture in which he will present the “Ultimate Proof of
…
By Neece
Written by Katrina Vanden Heuvel for The Nation:
This Fourth of July, those who identify themselves as non-believers, or humanists, or atheists — or a whole host of other names which signify a nontheistic worldview — have much cause for celebration. After eight years in the Bush wilderness — and an even longer period of ostracism by the Washington political establishment — a rising demographic of like-minded Americans and a new president are guiding us back to our roots as a secular nation.
“We have generally been a pariah group in America,” says Woody Kaplan, Advisory Board Chair of the Secular Coalition for America. “Pretty much unrecognized by the political establishment. Yet there’s almost no religious group in America as large as us…. We were that third rail that politicians failed to touch.”
Indeed when the Obama Administration invited the Coalition to the White House for
…
We met at 5pm at the Blue Moose on Sunday, March 7.
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