We are meeting at 5 pm at the Blue Moose on September 26 for the Freethinkers Morgantown Book Club. Directly after the meeting we’ll go to our Rail Trail and do our September cleanup.
For our September meeting we are reading Your Inner Fish: A Journey into the 3.5-Billion-Year History of the Human Body by Neil Shubin.
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In October, we’re reading Don’t Sleep, There Are Snakes: Life and Language in the Amazonian Jungle by Daniel L. Everett
We met at the Blue Moose at 5pm on August 15 for the Freethinkers Morgantown Book Club.
We read The GOD Part of the Brain by Matthew Alper. We read the whole book for this meeting.
Please leave suggestions below for future books so that we don’t have to decide at the meeting without being able to look books up.
We are going to head over to our Rail Trail to do our first cleanup directly after this meeting (probably around 7pm-ish, as a very rough guess).
See Here for details and to leave a comment to let us know you’re coming along.
We met at 5pm at the Blue Moose on Sunday, July 18 for the Freethinker’s Morgantown Book Club.
~Update: We finished God Hates You, Hate Him Back and picked our next book: The GOD Part of the Brain
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We are finishing up with God Hates You, Hate Him Back: Making Sense of The Bible by CJ Werleman, from Acts to Revelations, pages 230 to the end.
Feel free to bring your bible for cross references. We’ll follow the same format where we go through the chapters and talk about what we found interesting, using the book as a jumping off point for discussion.
Bring in book suggestions. It might be nice to read something different for a summer change. (Neece wants to read something science-y, but of course, bring in your ideas!)
EDIT! 
We met March 20 at 2pm at Joe and David’s Farm to celebrate the Spring Equinox with a Potluck dinner. We also finished up The God Virus.
Update: We had a fantastic time! We socialized, celebrated, decided, talked, shared, ate, drank, ate more, and talked some more. Thanks so much to Joe and David for being such gracious hosts to their beautiful home and farm! Want to see some pictures I took of our Nature Walk?
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.
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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.
The book we are reading is The God Virus: How religion infects our lives and culture by Darrel W. Ray
We still need someone to take chapter 11, and chapter 10 is also available, if someone wants it.
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.
You may have noticed the tab under the banner that says Library. That lists all the books and media we each recommend. Feel free to contribute to it. In that list you’ll find that Tim recommended a book called Don’t Sleep, There Are Snakes: Life and Language in the Amazonian Jungle by Daniel L. Everett. Brent found an interview on Groks Science Radio Show with the author.
Daniel has three stories to share:
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.
And he shares another story from NPR about “mystical” baboons: Read the rest of this entry »
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:
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) Read the rest of this entry »
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 women need to worry about, and why they avoid cats and cat feces. It can wreak havoc on their unborn baby’s nervous system.
If you’re reading The God Virus, which talks about parasites and viruses as an analogy for religion, I highly recommend watching this video. If you aren’t going to read the book I still recommend the video. The transcript is underneath it too, which will make it even more accessible for you. But the video is longer than the transcript. So take 25 minutes and enjoy it. Here’s another link to the video. I’m telling you, it’s fascinating. As I mentioned, the video is longer than the transcript. He goes into telemeres and molecular age, which I heard a study about recently confirming what he is explaining.
What he’s talking about touches on evolution, common ancestors, parasites and how they go about getting where they need to be, motorcyclists and speed freaks, and schizophrenics, as well as the government’s interest in this parasite. A wild ride indeed! Read the rest of this entry »
We are reading The God Virus for the book club in February. On page 18, Darrel W. Ray describes an experiment. I think I’ve heard of it before, but I thought I’d share it with you because it shows how religion attacks the critical thinking skills of the mind. As Mr. Ray says, it leaves the skill intact for other religions but disables critical thinking about one’s own religion. It really is like a virus of the mind.
Here’s the experiment as explained in the book:
You have a serious conversation with a deeply christian friend. Your friend is intelligent, well educated and knowledgeable. You agree to record the session. The topic is islam. During the session, you discuss that mohammed was a self-appointed prophet and that he claimed he talked to allah and the angels. He wrote a book that he claimed was infallible, and he flew from Jerusalem to heaven on a horse.
During the conversation, you agree that mohammed was probably delusional to think he could talk to god. You agree that the koran was clearly written by mohammed and not allah. It is ludicrous for him to claim that he is the last prophet and that all others are false. Neither you nor your friend can believe that he flew to heaven, let alone on a horse. It all sounds too crazy, and you both agree it is difficult to see how someone could believe such a religion. At the end of the conversation, you say that muslims did not choose their religion; they were born into it. Anyone who was exposed to both christianity and islam would see that christianity is the true religion. Read the rest of this entry »
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 seen the murder of Santa, prays for a miracle to save Christmas. To Lena’s rescue comes Tucker Case, a slimy, reformed Casanova and DEA pilot, who gives her an alibi and sweeps her off her feet. The marijuana-cultivating town constable, Theo Crowe, suspects foul play, but Tucker intervenes with a blackmail scheme to keep the crime buried. Meanwhile, there’s a new arrival in town: the glowingly blond Archangel Raziel (last seen in Lamb) has come “dirtside” on a “miracle mission” involving Josh’s wish and reviving the town’s dearly departed. Pine Cove’s biggest challenge surfaces as comically reanimated zombies begin to rise and feast on the living, and a huge El Niño–induced storm swirls. This little slice of perverse Christmas cheer is enough to make even the most cynical Scrooge guffaw.
The next 3 books after this one will be:
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
Please leave a comment below with your three choices, in order of first favorite. Please comment this week so that you don’t forget and we can get the list set.
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