Humanist Community of Leeds Blog

Relaunch next month

Thu, 10 Mar 2011 06:10:00 -0500

As you know, we took a break from running Humanist Community this month after having decided in February that it was time to look for a new venue.

We're pleased to announce that we have now settled on a new venue and that events will be resuming from April - taking place on the first Sunday of the month as usual.

That means we will be kicking things off on Sunday 3rd April - but from now on meetings will take place at Stick or Twist, behind the Merrion Centre.

The reason for the venue switch is that we wanted to make the meetings more social and provide greater flexibility - you'll now be able to have a meal or not, without having to miss out on a part of the meeting.

The format will remain similar though - despite the slightly less formal setting we will still be presenting news, short talks and discussions.

Hope to see you there!

Moving to the evening

Sun, 07 Nov 2010 15:23:00 -0500

From December, our meetings will now start at 5:30pm.

The feedback we have been getting is that even though we don't start until almost lunch time - it's still too early when you've been up all night making the most of your one life :D.

So, to allow more people to make it to the meeting we have decided to move it to an evening slot. Doors will now open at 17:30 for an 18:00 start.

The format will remain the same though - we still still be going for a meal afterward, just an evening meal rather than a lunch.

The smoking doctor

Sun, 07 Nov 2010 15:07:00 -0500

One question that often comes up is whether there is an incompatibility between science and religion. This issue came up recently when there was a talk on in Leeds advocating the idea that you can accommodate both in a coherent worldview.

Proponents of the idea argue that there are many people who are both scientists and religious - Francis Collins, head of the Human Genome Project being a good example of this.

Would analogy that could be given however is the idea of the smoking doctor.

When at work the doctor advocates and practices appropriately, he tells his patients not to smoke because it is damaging to their health. Outside of work however, even know he knows the rational course of action is not to smoke, he does it anyway.

Similarly, it could be that such scientists spend their day advocating science and reason, which they ultimately know is the best methodology, cannot bring themselves to bring such rationality to their personal lives.

Friendship

Fri, 06 Aug 2010 16:39:00 -0400

At this month's Humanist Community we talked about friendship. Friend is an interesting word in the English language because it refers to really anyone, from your close friends to people you simply work with or is just a contact (all are refereed to as a "friend", especially on Facebook).

This isn't the case in other languages where the word friend refers to close friend and there are other words to describe someone who is simply an acquaintance - that being the closest term we have to it, and very accurate, though simply too long to use in every day conversation.

We began by going through a list of qualities you would expect a friend to have, recommended to me by a friend from a service given at the Church of Freethought in the United States.

Some of them were very much taken up while other qualities were questioned at length. Honesty was an interesting one for example because we all have friends who are liars or bullshitters - not because they're bad people, it's just who they are. But then again, maybe friendship is knowing that you can take what they say with a pinch of salt.

Shared interests can often be good in a friendship though having disagreements are always good too - for example one of my best friends is an evangelical Christian - we have the shared value of both being interested in religion and ethics even if we come from different sides of the coin.

Reliability is similar to honesty - we all have friends who simply aren't reliable, but then again, if they are at least reliably unreliable that is half way there!

840 months

Sun, 13 Jun 2010 11:23:00 -0400

This month, Gijsbert picked up on something Professor A. C. Grayling said at the recent Enquiry 2010 conference hosted by the Chris Worfolk Foundation.

If all is well you can expect to live to at least 70 years of age, probably more. And 70 years is a long time - I mean think how long a year feels, they feel they are going so fast each birthday but most of the time a year feels like quite a long period of time - it is 365 days after all, many of which unless you are lucky enough to be retired, are probably spent behind an office desk rather bored.

However, if you think about it, 70 years is actually only 840 months. That is a lot of months of course but then a month is quite a short period of time - it's only 4 weeks long, most of which I spend wishing would go by so I can get to pay day.

Therefore it seems to feel somewhat different when you think how fast a month flies by, and the fact that we have less than 1,000 of them to live our entire lives in. To love, laugh, cry, travel the world, follow our dreams and get through the entire back catalogue of House and CSI episodes.

From this perspective, for the humanist who believes this life is the only one we have, at least, feels too short a period of time to waste it. We must make the most if it, live life to it's full and enjoy those precious months we do experience.

Of course, what exactly is wasting a life is another question - maybe just sitting on the sofa watching TV is a good life - who is to say it isn't if you have enjoyed it? This topic we will be looking at next month.

Gambling sometimes pays

Wed, 07 Apr 2010 03:17:00 -0400

Last week I went on a casino night out with work. The casino in question was running a special deal where you could get a two course meal, a glass of wine and a £5 chip for £12, not a bad price at all should you be in to that kind of thing.

After the meal we hit the casino floor of course and starting on roulette I managed to hit the right colour three times in a row, turning my £5 free chip into £15 hard cash. I continued to play on the table for a while and by the end of the night I cashed out £23 - enough to cover the cost of the meal, the extra side I got, the two glasses of wine and the coke I had had with still having £1 more than I went in with.

On Sunday I concluded this story with "so it just shows you - gambling does pay." Of course everyone laughed at this point because we all know that in the long term it doesn't pay.

Statistically if you play for long enough you will almost certainly lose. However it is somewhat of a misnomer to say "the house always wins." Sometimes you get lucky, sometimes you don't, this time the majority of our group walked out of the casino having won more money than they lost, next time it will probably be the other way round.

But the moral of the story is that gambling isn't inherently immoral or dangerous - what is dangerous is the tendency of people to get out of control, act irresponsibility and do things they know they shouldn't.

We have to accept this because it's probably all of us at one time or another; we all make mistakes and learn from those mistakes. Saying "well you just shouldn't go a casino" is no better than going there and losing all your money - the real strength of character comes from being able to go there, act responsibility and enjoy yourself.

Brown-throated thrush

Wed, 17 Mar 2010 09:23:00 -0400

Recently we had the comedian Robin Ince kindly give a talk to Leeds Atheist Society and one of the things he talked was one of his favourite Richard Feynman quotes which I also love.

The story goes like this. He was walking through the woods one day when someone asked him "see that bird standing on the stump there? What's the name of it?"

Richard said "I haven't got the slightest idea."

He replied, "It's a brown-throated thrush. Your father doesn't teach you much about science."

Richard smiled to himself because his father had taught him about science. Indeed, one of the things he had taught him was as follows.

In English, we call the bird a brown-throated thrush. In German it's called a halsenflugel, and in Chinese they call it a chung ling. But knowing all these names doesn't tell you anything about the bird.

It doesn't tell you that it flies south for the winter, it sings or that it teaches it's young to fly.

All this fact tells you is about humans and about what different humans in different parts of the world call this type of bird.

It's interesting then to relate this to a lot of the talk that is going on in the political spheres at the moment. We need to "bring back real education" they cry. The example given would be that children would be taught the kings and queens of England so they would know them off by heart.

But really, such a task as memorising names doesn't tell you anything about English history. It doesn't tell you what life was like, the background, the culture - it's just a list of names and nothing more.

The importance of united communities

Tue, 09 Mar 2010 09:04:00 -0500

I was in Oxford a few weeks ago for the national convention of the AHS (the National Federation of Atheist, Humanist and Secular Student Societies) of which I am a trustee.

Part of the convention included some training for the society committees that were attending, one of which was on leadership which I sat in on to add my thoughts and advice.

Once of the big things that came out of it was that the biggest de-motivational factors in student society committees is when you are doing something and other people in the committee aren't doing anything. It just takes one or two people to not pull their weight and you end up feeling "why should I bother?"

This is something that I have experienced first hand during my time serving on the committee at Leeds Atheist Society and I think it's a very good point.

It does work the other way however - there is nothing more motivating and inspiring than when everyone else on the committee is working really hard. When you see this, it gives you a sense of responsibility but also inspires you to really put the effort in and make the society amazing.

I also find the same situation in the flat I share with two of my friends. If the place is a tip and nobody else has done any cleaning, I find it very hard to do any myself.

Conversely if the place has recently been cleaned I feel I need to pull my weight and indeed want to give it that extra sparkle to make sure the whole place looks great.

It occurs to me that the same is probably true of the wider society too.

For example if your neighbourhood is run down, there is graffiti everywhere, people just throw litter on the streets then it is incredibly disheartening.

But on the flip side, if everyone has a positive attitude and does there bit it will inspire everyone else around you to do their bit too.

So while it may not seem like you are making a difference when you pick up some litter, help out someone in distress or even something as simple as holding a door for someone, the difference is probably actually bigger than you think. Not only have you done a good deed but you also may well have inspired those around you to go on and do good deeds as well.

Welcome to the HCoL blog

Sun, 07 Mar 2010 19:59:00 -0500

Welcome to the blog for the Humanist Community of Leeds. We've added this feature so that people can stay up to date with what is going on at the group, but hopefully in a more insightful way than you might expect.

The blog isn't designed to be a news blog with events and the like, but rather a place where we can post some of the topics and discussions that we talk about during the meetings so that if you miss one, you can find out what was said.

It will also hopefully become a wider resource for the general community and of interest to people outside of the group such as those that live elsewhere in the UK and possibly even beyond.