A society for atheists, rationalists, secularists and humanists
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)!
In the spirit of maintaining regular blog posts, merry winter solstice everyone!
The time of present giving being for the most part over means the society has been able to cash in on the January sales (which now start online on December 23rd apparently lol) in preparation for next year's activities.
Along those lines Monty Python's Life of Brian arrived this morning ready for it's screening next month. Not an event to miss!
It's quite an exciting time for the society at the moment. Which is why we haven't blogged for ages, it's all just been too exciting :p. Seriously though.
Tonight's meeting, "What God can't do" saw a strong turn-out and quite a good chat in the pub afterwards. Plus we have a lot of exciting events coming up.
Namely, in a few weeks time it's Atheist Week. This is a week long (well, 4 days actually so not a week at all) series of events, debates and talks about Atheism. It's not quite on the scale of Rationalist Week but it's going to be big!
Secondly, the weekend following that is the Weekend in London. We're currently throwing together all the details for that and it's shaping up to be an amazing weekend. One which I wouldn't want to miss!
Next week is a crazy week for the society - we have 5 events! Yep, count them, 5 of them. That's crazy. Actually don't count them as only 4 are listed on the events page as we don't explicitly mention our weekly social because it's just implied by now.
We have two debates on Tuesday, a talk on Thursday and social on both Tuesday and Thursday. So seriously, you have no excuses for not coming to at least one of those events!
You think you have it intense but think of us poor committee - we have 7 events to attend as we also have at least two meetings to go to. A-Soc doesn't half keep you busy!
I'd like to say a big thank you to everyone who came down and made the intro meeting quite a success. We welcomed quite a few new members into the society and I'm looking forward to a great year.
I was speaking to Craig at the Christian Union lunch bar yesterday who claimed there was significantly less than a few million people in the world that called themselves atheist.
I ended up looking up coming over some statistics will looking for some statistics on Humanism which make for interesting reading. Adherents.com which seems to be the de facto standard for religious stats put the figure at "200 to 240 million."
World Almanac put the number at 205 million. I couldn't find the page on Encyclopaedia Britannica but depending on what figures you believe thet put the number somewhere between 40 and 150 million.
Meanwhile Landover Baptist Church puts the number at 300 ;).
Thank you so much to everyone who helped out with Rationalist Week! Thanks to the contributions of everyone in both time and resources the week was an amazing success for the society.
I think we learned a lot from running the event next year and will be having a meeting about what went well and what didn't sometime in the future.
I'd just like to thank everyone who came down to the launch party last night. We got a good number of people who were interested on the society and we didn't trash the place so we got our deposit back and everything ;).
I went to the first faith and cultural societies assembly today. Attendance was a little better than expected with about 12-15 of us there (compared to the 8 last time according to Craig and 2 at the last general interest assembly according to Jess) and I picked up some interesting tips about the funding forms and such so it's all good. I've also done the block bookings form and we have put together a budget too which is all ready to submit tomorrow.