A society for atheists, rationalists, secularists and humanists
Getting up at 6am, after a night out painted as a blue Avatar is never easy. The excitement of meeting other students from around the country, with the same obsession I have made it a lot easier. After a somewhat eventful journey down south and then through the enlarged rabbit warren Londoners call the tube, I arrived at St Ethelburga's where the first NUS Interfaith Forum was due to take place.
The forum started off with a welcome from Ben Whittaker, NUS Vice President for Welfare. This was followed by an introduction by Kat Luckock, NUS Student Inter-Faith Coordinator. She went though why the forum has been set up and forum guidelines.
We then got into small groups and discussed what Interfaith is, what we have been involved with personally and issues and challenges that we have faced. My group had four faiths represented, with varying experience in interfaith work from a strong interest to someone that set up a coexist society at Warwick and someone that organises interfaith football at Bath. Each group presented their discussions to the rest of the room. One thing that became startlingly apparent was the Leeds Atheist Society has arranged and been involved in more and a wider variety of Interfaith events than any other group present, including interfaith/coexist societies!
After a lovely lunch Campusalaam trained us in the FlashPOD method. This is a way to record a deep discussion of a specific event or issue and then share it online.
The day lived up to my high expectations. After almost two years of arranging Interfaith events mostly through Leeds Atheist Society, meeting other people with the same goal was invaluable. We shared stories of problems we had encountered and how we had over come them.
It was great to see that it is not just Atheists who believe in the importance of Interfaith. The forum was made up of mostly Jews and Muslims and I met one Sikh and one Baha’I too.
The forum is going to meet with the Minister for Universities, David Lammy on 4th March. How this is going to be ran was discussed by the forum.
Amongst the project aims the six Interfaith Forums will help the members to develop a strong inter-faith collaboration and enhance campus cohesion by creating space for interfaith dialogue and activities.
I believe it is already doing this. By using the FlashPOD method my group discussed why certain faith societies are less than enthusiastic about supporting interfaith events run by Leeds Atheist Society. I found this extremely insightful. Apparently people of faith feel they have nothing in common with Atheists and the idea that we want to spend time with them is greeted with suspicion as they think that we think they are stupid. I at least managed to dispel the popular myths about atheism.
Many of us that attended the forum have added each other to facebook so we can keep in contact until the next forum meeting. It was defiantly worth travelling 400 miles on Valentines day to attend.
I hope that the future forums will include more networking and small group discussions. These will facilitate the sharing of ideas for how to arrange successful interfaith events and discussion of problems that arose when staging these events. There is also need for training and a sharing of know-how on how to word things, as these are contentious issues and insensitivity benefits no-one. It would be terrible to unintentionally offend two faith societies on campus within minutes, wait that might have already happened!
I have suggested Leeds SU as a venue for the next forum and have sent in an article similar to this to the NUS, which will hopefully be appearing on their website shortly.
Oh and I think Leeds Atheist Society are officially entitled to the title ‘King of UK Interfaith.’ :D
First off I would like to issue an apology from the society for those who were looking forward to our event "Fitna: The Big Debate" which was going to be taking place Tuesday - February 9th, as this will no longer be the case.
Despite us announcing the events months ago, the union have decided to step in 5 days before the event and not allow us to run the event because they claim it violates the university's freedom of expression policy.
We are currently in talks with the union as to what steps will be required it in order for us to be able to run the event as it will be rescheduled for a later date. Watch this space for more information.
We might not be seeing the perfect summer in terms of weather, but A-Soc's weekly socials are definitely one of the high points of the summer calendar.
Meeting every Tuesday at 7pm at the Library pub on the corner of Hyde Park we enjoy an evening of light hearted revelry, drinking of fine (and by fine I mean cheap :P) beverages and even the odd discussion about the society, religion, swine flu et al.
So if you are in Leeds over the summer feel free to head on down and join us for the evening.
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
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!
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 :P ) 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'.
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.
Leeds Atheist Society will be playing host to the second national conference of The National Federation of Atheist, Humanist and Secular Student Societies (The AHS) this weekend, 14th -16th November.
It is going to be a great experience for those that take part and an opportuntiy for Leeds A-Soc to really show off. I hope many of you will make it down for some of the events and witness an historic moment - the formalisation of a antional organisation as we ratify its first constitution.
The details of the weekend can be found on our front page.