Secular Portal Blogs

Everybody loves Dawkins

Sunday, February 14th, 2010 | Chris Worfolk | No Comments

On Tuesday we held our annual debate at Atheist Society as to whether Professor Dawkins had been a positive or negative influence on the whole atheism discussion.

To my surprise almost everyone came out in a huge sea of support for Dawkins and rightfully so too!

Paganism and curry

Sunday, February 7th, 2010 | Chris Worfolk | No Comments

On Friday we invited the Pentagram society to Perspective to talk about Paganism. It was a very interesting talk although I have to say I’m not a fan of Paganism, or certainly that brand of Paganism because it’s too wishy washy new age. While religions such as Christianity are clear they are making crazy claims in a take it or leave it fashion, the views expressed were very much trying to force a square peg into a round hole and say it fits.

For example one of the things suggested was that what we called magic thirty years ago is now called neuro-linguistic programming and so a lot of Paganism is things science simply doesn’t understand yet. That would almost be an argument if it wasn’t for the fact that NLP is for the most part unproven bullshit. More importantly it really smacks of when alternative medicine practitioners try to attribute something that clearly doesn’t work but they are still trying to sell as being something to do with quantum theory, taking advantage of the lack of public understanding of the topic.

It was also interesting to witness the fact they couldn’t actually work out what they believed in. Most religions have differences in their beliefs – just look at the amount of different denominations of Christianity (or even Islam which now has more and more developing despite stricter controls over it and even, unbelievably, Scientology) but they do at least have some common beliefs. 100% of Christians believe in Jesus for example whereas the Pagans didn’t seem to be able to give us anything they could say 100% of Pagans believed in which, as Chris Tedd did, raises the question “how do you even know your a Pagan?”

Finally I also felt there was a lack of internal consistency in the beliefs, probably resulting in the fact that they can’t really work out what it is they believe in. For example they started by talking about reincarnation and then later talked about talking to dead ancestors so Heini raised the question “how can you talk to dead ancestors if they have been reincarnated?”

A much better approach to take to the belief system I felt was the one presented to us at last year’s session on Paganism where out speaker basically said “I’m not going to lie to you, we made it all up in the 60s, but it works for me.” Never the less, it was a very interesting evening and well worth attending.

Charity quiz night

Sunday, February 7th, 2010 | Chris Worfolk | No Comments

We held another charity quiz night at A-Soc last Tuesday. Unfortunately there was a lack of turn out but those that did brave the cold all enjoyed themselves and a vast array of raffle prizes resulted in a lot of winners – some people even winning twice! Most importantly of course, my team took home the win for the quiz and by quite a long way too . Even more impressive for the rest of the team when you find out that Nicola, who claims to be doing a biology degree, couldn’t answer any of the biology questions .

10:23 homeopathic protest

Sunday, January 31st, 2010 | Chris Worfolk | No Comments

Yesterday saw a nationwide protest against the sale of homeopathic remedies at Boots. At cities across the UK, and indeed some in Australia and Canada too, people gathered to take a homeopathic overdose to show that there was in fact nothing in the pills at all.

At Leeds we managed to get 32 people down to the event most of which, including myself, downed an entire bottle of homeopathic arsenic and yet somehow survived. We also got a reporter from ITV’s Calendar news come down and featured us on their evening segment – I’ve yet to see it but I’ve heard a mixed reaction so far.

The response from Boots was a predictable one – homeopathy is recognised by the NHS (something which is in the process of changing as the government inquiry is quickly dismantling the case for it) and that many people use homeopathic remedies – of course many people read horoscopes that doesn’t mean there is any truth in them. But of course we knew they would just ignore the science and just try and insist that lots of people bought it so it must be true.

Most of the major papers have run stories about it today so we’re chalking this one down as a big success for the skeptics movement. A big thank you to everyone from Leeds Skeptics who came down to take part, Daryl for organising the Leeds event and the guys at Merseyside Skeptics for putting it all together.

Magic underwear

Sunday, January 31st, 2010 | Chris Worfolk | No Comments

On Friday, the new season of Perspective kicked off in Leeds with representatives from the Mormon faith coming down to talk to us. I was actually surprised how interesting and informative it is, there is actually quite a lot of deviation from traditional Christianity that is not immediately apparent.

We weren’t best prepared for the course not having things like plates but the food was never the less good and with Essentials now open until 10pm we even managed to source some coffee (Extras stocked it but they only had decaff so I just walked out).

Simon Singh speaks at Leeds

Sunday, January 31st, 2010 | Chris Worfolk | No Comments

On Tuesday Simon Singh came to the University of Leeds to talk about liable reform. Obviously as a free thinking group the Atheist Society was particularly concerned with such lawsuits for speaking out against obvious nonsense we asked Liberty@Leeds to be involved and had Sophie and Norm deliver a quick introduction on why it was important to us.

The talk itself was very good, it was both amusing and very informative. It is hard to believe how biased the legal system is (actually have studied law I don’t find it that unbelievable but that certainly isn’t a good thing) and how easy it is to bring a liable suit forward – makes me wonder what would happen if the thousands of people who have seen Simon speak and are behind him brought a frivolous suit against the BCA.

Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed

Wednesday, January 13th, 2010 | Chris Worfolk | No Comments

Yesterday we screened Ben Stein’s Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed documentary which looks at the reaction of the scientific community to intelligent design proponents. It was of course pretty rubbish and didn’t really present much evidence but has plenty of emotional pleas about the future of freedom and of course the obligatory appearance of Godwin’s law in.

Attendance was good for an exam period, at least for those who managed to find us tucked away in the Baines Wing, in the three years I spent running around that campus I think I have only been up there once.

Cuthbert’s January sale

Saturday, January 9th, 2010 | Chris Worfolk | No Comments

On Tuesday we headed down to Cuthbert Brodrick for the usual Atheist Society Tuesday night social. Wetherspoon’s are currently running a January sale which includes meals for £1.99 and a pint or a glass of wine for 99p!

Winter Solstice meal

Wednesday, December 16th, 2009 | Chris Worfolk | No Comments

Tuesday night saw the annual Atheist Society Winter Solstice meal. It was reasonably well attended being hosted by LS6 which is like a hobbit hole with little caverns that just keep burying deeper into what looks quite small from the outside but is actually massive.

Afterwards we headed into Headingley for some drinks at the Skyrack.

Ending it all

Wednesday, December 16th, 2009 | Chris Worfolk | No Comments

Last Tuesday saw the last proper meeting of term one at Atheist Society.

Having screened Morgan Spurlock’s Where in the World is Osama Bin Laden which was a very interesting watch but non-surprisingly very pandering towards the left we headed down to D-Fusion for a night of karaoke.