Leeds Atheist Society

Have you ever fancied running your own society? Have you ever been sat in a meeting and wondered “I could do this”?

Well, you can now have your chance!

The A-Soc Annual General Meeting is only a couple of weeks away now. The AGM is where we elect the officers to run the society for the coming academic year. So, if you have always thought you would make a good manager or leader, here is your opportunity.

Almost all employers look favorably on a candidate that has committee and leadership experience at university, so if you want that extra string to your bow then why not run for office?

All of our current committee positions are avaialble, plus a couple of new ones to reflect the growth of Atheist Society over the last few years.

We will be doing a small profile on all of the positions on the blog for the next few weeks and if you have any questions then just speak to an existing committee memeber or drop us a line at leeds[at]atheistsoc.org

Check out this link!

First off, I want to say a huge apology to anyone who turned up for yesterday’s debate with Islamic Society to find that it was cancelled.

The event was being run by the Islamic Society and we only found out the plug had been pulled at about noon yesterday, we tried to get the word out to everyone but obviously you can’t reach everyone in the five hours we had.

On the plus side though, we therefore win by default so there officially is no god!

I’m blogging from the train heading down to London for the national press launch of the National Federation of Atheist, Humanist and Secular Student Societies, or the AHS as it is better known.

Tomorrow will be an exciting day with Polly Toynbee, A.C. Grailing and Richard Dawkins speaking alongside out very own el presidente Norman.

No doubt there will be much reporting going on from the members down here as well as planty of photos on the website after the event!

Interestingly we’re taking a total of ten members down from Leeds. This is unmatched by any other society other than Royal Holloway which is a London based university so it’s not really a challenge for them. As such I think we can give ourselves a good pat on the back for effort.

Keep your eyes pealed on the site for further updates.

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!

We try out best to let people know is going on in the society. But despite our efforts sometimes vocally, at every meeting, via email, via text message, via Facebook, via the website and via RSS feed just aren’t enough. Where then will people find out what is happening?

Luckily, having recently made the move onto Twitter I have also now set up an account for the society that all of the committee can tweet at so now you can follow us here.

Tonight say the first A-Soc event of 2009 take place in the Old Bar. We officially kicked off the new year with a social,a chance for those back in Leeds (and those that never left ) to take a break from work and chill out with soem good company. the decent sized turn out shows that there are many of you no doubt working hard for the upcoming exams.

To help ease you back into the A-Soc calendar we have a couple of relatively light events during the exam period. We start with Sinnimation – a collection of cartoons specially chosen by your committee that have a slight connection to religion, but are just plain funny! Expect The Simpsons, Family Guy, South Park, God, The Devil and Bob and many more! The second week back is a little more serious with us showing the moving docu-film “Baby Bible Bashers”, a look at young Christian evangelists and their ‘work’.

Well, that’s it. Christmas is over and we can get back to normality and a more sensible approach to all things festive.

I recommend everyone catch up on this year’s address to the nation from Her Majesty. It will get you in the mood for some real debate and argument at A-Soc in the new year.

Hope you are all enjoying your time off and that you are ready for the new semester which is only 11 days away!

First off, I would like to thank everyone for their continued support of A-Soc and I am sure you will all agree that this semester has been one of the busiest we have ever had! Some of my personal highlights have included Make Your Own God, Debating the Theists, The AHS Conference, Interfaith Panel and our trip to London.

Not to worry though, we haven’t exhausted all our good ideas and semester 2 will be just as jam packed as ever with exciting things to do and see. Things to watch out for include our new course Perspective, our inaugural formal debate with the Islamic Society and of course the much anticipated Rationalist Week 2009.

As always we rely on your support to make these events happen, so I hope we will see all of you again in the New Year and if you have enjoyed what you have seen then why not tell your friends and bring them to meetings too!

We will continue to run our weekly socials over the holiday period, so those of you still in Leeds are more than welcome to join us for a few festive beverages.

Good luck for those with exams in January.

Merry Winter Solstice (or Chrismukkawaleid)!

Yesterday we completed our second live webcast successfully! So never fear if you are unable to make it down to campus one week because you will be able to watch it live online.

This isn’t going to be for all our events but hopefully a lot of our talks and debates will be broadcast live. You can see a schedule of what events will be broadcast on the webcasts page though this is by no means complete.

As it stands I would still like to get the audio quality a lot better but so far, so good really. All you need to have to be able to watch the webcast is Flash player which most people already have and it seems a fairly robost solution.