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By Neece
 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…
By Neece
 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
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By Neece
 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…
By Neece
 Our October meeting was on October 11 at 5 pm. Same bat channel at the Blue Moose in Morgantown.
The October Theme was: My Personal 10 Commandments.
Make a list of 10 (or less) New Personal Commandments. These are 10 rules or virtues you set for yourself that you might hang on your wall, keep on your desk, or wish to teach to others. These 10 Commandments are like your personal creed for living. Write them down and bring your list. We’ll share them at the meeting.
Remember to keep each commandment succinct. It will be easier to remember.
Also, call it whatever you like. You certainly don’t need to call them commandments. That’s just used for familiarity.
EDIT: I found this and thought it might help you: A List of Virtues. It seems interesting for at least looking at a list of virtues that you might connect…
By Neece
 On October 4th, Fred Edwords from United Coalition of Reason came to Morgantown to talk to us about the media and PR.
Fred Edwords is a public speaker well known to humanists, freethinkers, and religious liberals, and a specialist in media and PR areas. He is the head of UnitedCoR.
The seminar was 4 hours and was both informative and extremely helpful to our organization as we grow and move forward. It will also be helpful to us as individuals in our chosen fields.
Brent and I took a lot of notes, and Fred gave us several useful handouts. We then went to dinner at Mi Pueblos which was delicious, as always. Fred and his lovely wife Mary are great company.
Thank you, Fred, for the excellent seminar and the great conversation over dinner! 
By Neece
 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
…
By Neece
 Hey Everyone!
Monday afternoon we need to all meet under our shiny new billboard on the Mileground to get a great group picture! Which means we need YOU!
The time will probably be around 5:30 pm or a bit after, so that people can meet after work.
Email Neece or leave a comment letting us know you’ll be there. This is very important that we get this picture, hopefully with lots of people, so please try to come.
The billboard location is near Melvin’s Transmission on Mileground Road, westbound into town.
Here’s the map for the billboard on Google. The street view really shows you the situation.
Brent scouted the area for us. He recommends coming in from 68, not through Morgantown as the traffic at that time of day is pretty bad.
Drive most of the way down the Mileground, past the car dealerships, and the…
By Neece
 We had a good meeting at the Blue Moose! Thanks for attending, everyone. We had about 10 people.
We talked about logical fallacies and socialized a bit. Please email the information that you shared to Neece so that I can post it to share with everyone. I’ll be posting the different fallacies as I get them.
September Topic of the Evening: Your Favorite Logical Fallacy
We all chose a logical fallacy and talked a bit about it.
So, for this meeting:
- bring your logical fallacy
- an explanation of what it is
- several examples to share with us
- If someone uses that fallacy on you, how would you refute it?
- Bring a legible copy of your notes for us to post on this site after the meeting, to share with everyone. Even better, send a companion email to Neece before the meeting so
…
By Neece
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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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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