Secular Portal Blogs

A helping hand

Wednesday, January 28th, 2009 | Chris Worfolk | No Comments

Christian Voice having been defeated in their challenge of the atheist bus ads, they are probably wondering what to do next. Being the nice person I am, and also bored at work, I knocked together a few counter ads for them.

Life and times

Wednesday, January 28th, 2009 | Chris Worfolk | No Comments

The exam period being over, things were back to normal at A-Soc this week even if the union managed to lose our room bookings and end up putting us in Meeting Room 4 without a projector. Good times.

The social was a big success though with a rather large crowd having formed by the end with plenty of people both coming down from the meeting and joining us there. Ironically the one week Liz wasn’t there was the one week all her men turned up!

Perspective Starts This Week

Monday, January 26th, 2009 | Leeds Atheist Society | No Comments

Exams are over! I know I am relieved to go back to my normal timetable of lectures and at least four A-Soc events a week to keep me occupied.

Well, with the launch of our new course, Perspective, starting on Friday our wish has come true.

We kick off by inviting Ba'hai Society to come and tell us a bit about themselves and what they believe in. We will be hosting them in Meeting Room 5 in the ARC at 7pm this Friday. As usual food and drink will be provided.

We will be introducing a different society each week, including the Christian Union, Islam, Paganism and more besides.

In keeping with this Semester's focus on education, I will be giving a talk on the Life and Times of Mohammed this Tuesday in Meeting Room 3 at 7pm.

Hope to see you there!

AHS Launch is hotting up

Monday, January 26th, 2009 | Norman Ralph | No Comments

The AHS’s national launch is taking place in a couple of weeks on 19th February and the preparations for it are really hotting up.

We have our speakers booked – Richard Dawkins, Polly Toynbee and A.C. Grayling, along with a stand up comedian, stalls and catering are all in the pipeline.

This is going to be such a great event.

If there are any fellow free-thinkers in the London area on the day then they should come along and see what all the fuss is about.

For more information contact me.

Tags: ahs, launch

York Brights

Thursday, January 22nd, 2009 | Chris Worfolk | No Comments

Yesterday I headed over to York to attend the local Brights meetup. Nick having pointed out that you can drive as fast as you can get the train over, I decided to brave the roads and eventually found myself in York city centre parked up by the river.

The parking machine not taking credit cards or notes I ended up registering with York’s phone parking service which of course is needlessly unuser friendly but eventually I managed to get it sorted and headed out to find Stonegate.

This was an interesting challenge and one I missed by quite a long way but luckily the very helpful Nick Nav service managed to guide me into the road and I had soon located the pub.

The turn out was good, there was about fifteen people in total which is enough to make sure the conversation kept flowing. There was quite a mix of interesting characters including one guy who essentially rejected Einstein’s relativity in exchange for his own acceleration relativity.

All in all though it was nice to be around another group of like minded individuals. York is a beautiful city and quite an active one it would seem as well with this group, North Yorkshire Humanists being based there as well and a Humanist Society at the university, even if they don’t answer anyone’s emails.

ASA rules on atheist bus ads

Thursday, January 22nd, 2009 | Chris Worfolk | No Comments

The ASA have ruled on the atheist bus ad issue and decided there is nothing wrong with the adverts. In their statement they said…

The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) has concluded that the “There’s probably no God” bus ad campaign by the British Humanist Association is not in breach of the advertising code. The ASA will therefore not launch an investigation and the case is now closed.

The ASA carefully assessed the 326 complaints it received. Some complained that the ad was offensive and denigratory to people of faith. Others challenged whether the ad was misleading because the advertiser would not be able to substantiate its claim that God “probably” does not exist.

The ASA Council concluded that the ad was an expression of the advertiser’s opinion and that the claims in it were not capable of objective substantiation. Although the ASA acknowledges that the content of the ad would be at odds with the beliefs of many, it concluded that it was unlikely to mislead or to cause serious or widespread offence.

This was to be expected given the consequences of making a different ruling but never the less a welcome decision.

Baby Bible Bashers

Wednesday, January 21st, 2009 | Chris Worfolk | No Comments

Continuing our exam time film screenings, yesterday’s Atheist Society meeting saw us show the documentary film Baby Bible Bashers, charting the activities of three young preachers as they attempt to spread the word of the Bible despite their small stature.

Afterwards we headed down to The Terrace for some much needed refreshments especially given the union still have a sale on which means pints of coke are currently going for £0.60! May the good times roll.

Barack’s Big Day

Tuesday, January 20th, 2009 | Norman Ralph | No Comments

Barack Obama was sworn in today as the USA’s 44th president, the first African-American (or any ethnic minority) president in their history, with the largest TV audience ever for a presidential inauguration.

I am a fan of Obama’s, i like his social healthcare plans and his views on America’s role in world politics. I even like some aspects of his economic plan, even though he is a lefty when it comes to government spending.

His inaugural address was a masterpiece in speech writing, which of course we should expect seeing as it his first global address and possibly his mosyt important. His rhetoric was sublime, he quoted just about every famous American leader to date and threw in a few bible quotes as well. When discussing the religious make up of America he even nodded in the vague direction of atheists and agnostics.

What disappointedme about the speech though, was his persistant references to his black history ad to god and faith. He must have mentioned god, faith, religion, spirit and every other Christian buzz word known to man at least once.

I realise that to be a US politcian means being Christian, but surely you do not have to make reference to it every 5 seconds or so.

I like Obama, I really do. He is a breath of fresh air in international poliics, and possibly one of the finest presidents I am likely to live through, but his religion is going to annoy me. At least Geroge W had the decency to let everyone know he was a stauch evangelical Christian who actively listened to God from the beginning – mainly by being a Texan Reublican! – Obamaq has snuck his evangelism under the radar.

Oh well. We are getting there at least.

Atheists will need martyrs if they are to compete with Christians

Monday, January 19th, 2009 | Chris Worfolk | No Comments

The nature of writing for the media these days means you need to be sensational and controversial. This is true whether you’re writing for the Daily Star or the Telegraph. And so I suspect when Gerald Warner wrote “Atheists will need martyrs if they are to compete with Christians” he doesn’t actually believe most of what we writes, or at least not with the conviction to which he writes it.

Never the less I feel it is important to address the issues raised in his blog entry.

Most of what he writes is (or at least should be) laughable. Comments such as “it is good to see a Christian making difficulties for aggressive secularists” hold no real standing. I have yet to hear of a case of an atheist bus driving refusing to drive a bus with an Alpha advert on it nor has Ariane Sherine filed an official complaint with the ASA against them.

In reality of course the secular community is constantly under attack from the religious community. If they aren’t trying to indoctrinate our children with religious ideas at faith schools they’re trying to prevent our freedom of expression.

Quite frankly some of his writing his embarassing and would be far better placed within the pages of The Sun and The Daily Mail. Unrelevant comments with obvious connotations such as “Mr Heather, who served in the Royal Navy for 25 years”, “congratulations to this British sea dog for fighting back” are of the cheap tacky ilk you would expect to find on American news reporting.

From here the comments move to simple ignorance. “Is this not, in fact, an agnostic, rather an atheist, advertisement?” It is interesting that he later lists Dawkins in his post and yet seems to show no knowledge of Dawkins writings surrounding the subject. If Mr Warner had read The God Delusion he would in fact understand that these terms are essentially interchangable and it’s perfectly possible to be an atheist and accept there is a chance there is a god (indeed I don’t know a single atheist who completely rules out the idea).

This is followed by a good deal of very Christian thinking such as “since when was the message that there is no one in charge, nobody to protect us or lend succour, thought reassuring?” Not withstanding the fact that such a statement shows why many religious people would allow themselves to believe such an obvious falsehood, I find it hard to believe why some people can’t understand why some of us would actually be more comforted by the fact that we have free will as opposed to our destiny being controlled by a being with a rather genocidal past record.

Further more I almost laughed out loud when I read the claim that “many of the people who most zestfully enjoy life are Christians.” Mr Warner is clearly working on a very different sample set than I am.

To answer the underlying point though, atheist martyrs are already here. Not withstanding the treats we have received at A-Soc (and according to Alex at the BHA, they receive their fair share too), Salman Rushdie is only alive today because they couldn’t find him and Theo van Gogh has already died for his convictions.

Happy atheistmas

Monday, January 19th, 2009 | Chris Worfolk | No Comments

So, turns out Christianity isn’t at the heart of Christmas after all .