Pecha Kucha Night and Brainstorming Session

Posted on March 8, 2010 by Richard Jacques

The Liverpool Humanist Group presents:-

Pecha Kucha Night and Brainstorming Session

Date:     Wednesday 10th March 2010
Time:    7.30pm
Venue:  The Crown (upstairs room), 43 Lime Street, Liverpool L1 1JQ
Cost:      Free!

We will be holding an event of two halves. By popular demand, the first part of the evening will follow our ever popular “Pecha Kucha” night format.

Pecha Kucha (Japanese for chit chat) is a structured open forum in which participants present ideas for general discussion.

Come along and bring with you an idea or thought which you’d like to talk about for two, five or seven minutes.

Ideas can come from anywhere – a newspaper article you’ve read, a book, a conversation you’ve had, something you’ve seen, a piece of art work – anything which has impressed you and lends itself to discussion from a humanist perspective.

The second part of the evening will be something of a “Brainstorming” session, in which we will discuss the future direction and activities of Liverpool Humanist Group.

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3rd Annual Darwin Day Lecture

Posted on January 20, 2010 by Richard Jacques

To celebrate the 201st anniversary of Charles Darwin’s birth, Liverpool Humanist Group presents its 3rd annual

Darwin Day Lecture

Professor Robin Crompton

The arboreal origins of human walking

Professor Crompton runs the Primate Evolution and Morphology Group (PREMOG) at the University of Liverpool.  The Group concerns itself mainly with the locomotor systems of primates and hominids, with particular emphasis on the structure and operation of the foot and its interaction with the ground.

Professor Robin Crompton

The talk will focus on the new discoveries and ideas which are coming together to suggest that, far from being a relatively modern evolutionary event, human bipedal locomotion was already pre-adapted for much earlier in our history when our ancestors were still partially or completely arboreal animals. It will show how these discoveries shed new light on the evolution of the great apes as a whole, and the subfamily Homininae, containing ourselves and the chimpanzees, in particular.

Darwin Day is an international celebration of science and humanity held on or around February 12, the day that Charles Darwin was born on in 1809. Specifically, it celebrates the discoveries and life of Charles Darwin — the man who first described biological evolution via natural selection with scientific rigour. More generally, Darwin Day expresses gratitude for the enormous benefits that scientific knowledge, acquired through human curiosity and ingenuity, has contributed to the advancement of humanity.

THIS IS A BLANK LINE
Date: Wednesday 10th February 2010
Time: 7.30pm
Venue: The Crown (upstairs room), 43 Lime Street, Liverpool L1 1JQ
Cost: TBC

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Marvellous Mid-Winter Festivus for the Rest of Us!

Posted on December 1, 2009 by Richard Jacques

The Liverpool Humanist Group presents:-

Merry Christmas! Happy Saturnalia! Cool Yule!

Marvellous Mid-Winter Festivus for the Rest of Us!


There’s probably no God, so stop worrying and come and enjoy a marvellous mid-winter social event with the Liverpool Humanist Group. Raffle and prizes, with proceeds to the Uganda Humanist Schools Trust. Prizes include a bottle of Mumm Champagne, a box of Dark Fairtrade Chocolates, a copy of “The Atheist’s Guide to Christmas”, and a copy of “The Gnostic Gospels”.

Hilda has also promised to organise parlour games, including Consequences, and Humanist Christmas Carols.

Wednesday 9th December 2009, 7.30 pm

The 07 Café Bar, 103 Mount Pleasant, Liverpool, L3 5TB

All welcome

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Pecha Kucha Night

Posted on November 1, 2009 by Liverpool Humanist

The Liverpool Humanist Group presents:-

Pecha Kucha Night

Date:     Wednesday, 11th November 2009
Time:    7.30pm
Venue:  The Crown (upstairs room), 43 Lime Street, Liverpool L1 1JQ
Cost:      Free!

Pecha Kucha (Japanese for chit chat) is a structured open forum in which participants present ideas for general discussion.

Come along and bring with you an idea or thought which you’d like to talk about for two, five or seven minutes.

Ideas can come from anywhere – a newspaper article you’ve read, a book, a conversation you’ve had, something you’ve seen, a piece of art work – anything which has impressed you and lends itself to discussion from a humanist perspective.

Even if you don’t want to present a thought, come along anyway for the chat and the craic!

All Welcome

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Humanist shock at report on independent faith schools

Posted on October 9, 2009 by Liverpool Humanist

The BHA has responded to a report by Ofsted into independent faith schools, which revealed that twelve independent religious schools ‘raised concerns about any requirement to teach details of other faiths’.

Andrew Copson, BHA director of education, said, ‘The standards according to which these schools were inspected constitute a very low threshold – and even so there is cause for concern in what the inspection has uncovered. We have significant concerns about how some independent schools can undermine understanding between people with different religious and non-religious beliefs.’

For further comment or information, contact Andrew Copson on 020 7462 4992.

Ofsted Report Oct 09

Quotation
There is no excuse for deceiving children. And when, as must happen in conventional families, they find that their parents have lied, they lose confidence in them and feel justified in lying to them.
Bertrand Russell

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The Atheist Bus Campaign and The Atheist’s Guide to Christmas

Posted on October 1, 2009 by Richard Jacques

Liverpool Humanist Group, in association with The Merseyside Skeptics Society, and The University of Liverpool Atheist Society, are pleased to welcome Ariane Sherine to Liverpool:-

The Atheist Bus Campaign and The Atheist’s Guide to Christmas

a talk and presentation by Ariane Sherine

Date:     Thursday 15th October 2009
Time:    7.30pm
Venue:  The Crown (upstairs room), 43 Lime Street, Liverpool L1 1JQ
Cost: Voluntary collection in aid of the Terrence Higgins Trust. Please give generously.

Ariane Sherine, Richard Dawkins and Polly Toynbee at the rollout of the Atheist Bus Campaign.

Journalist and comedy writer Ariane Sherine will talk about creating the global Atheist Bus Campaign, now running in twelve countries across the world, and how it started with just 700 words on The Guardian’s website. She’ll also talk about editing the new charity book “The Atheist’s Guide To Christmas”, which features 42 of the world’s most entertaining atheists, including Richard Dawkins, Charlie Brooker and Derren Brown.

ABOUT ARIANE SHERINE

Ariane Sherine is a television comedy writer, journalist and the creator of the Atheist Bus Campaign. She writes regularly for The Guardian, and has also contributed to The Observer, The Independent, The Sunday Times, New Statesman and the NME, as well as writing for television shows including My Family (BBC1) and Countdown (Channel 4).

Ariane won a Special Award from the National Secular Society for the Atheist Bus Campaign, and was a nominee for Secularist of the Year 2009. She was asked to give the first humanist equivalent of Thought For The Day, which was broadcast on Radio 4 in January. She was born in 1980 and lives in London.

Order “The Atheist’s Guide to Christmas” at Amazon, and help raise funds for the Terrence Higgins Trust:

http://www.amazon.co….

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Atheism Central for Secondary Schools

Posted on September 25, 2009 by Liverpool Humanist

Help and general support for atheist students attending religious studies courses in secondary schools in the United Kingdom.

website: Atheism Central for Secondary Schools

Quotation
In religion and politics people’s beliefs and convictions are in almost every case gotten at second-hand, and without examination, from authorities who have not themselves examined the questions at issue but have taken them at second-hand from other non-examiners, whose opinions about them were not worth a brass farthing.
Autobiography of Mark Twain

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Faith Schools – Government published a ‘joint vision statement’

Posted on September 23, 2009 by Liverpool Humanist

The Government published a ‘joint vision statement’ with religious leaders on faith schools in Britain. The document praises the contribution to cohesion, integration and understanding that, it says, faith schools make and suggests the need to expand the number of state-funded faith schools, especially for minority religions.
The BHA today condemned this document, and called the way the Government has behaved in its development and launch ‘absolutely disgraceful’.

To expand state-funded faith schools is to increase discrimination in school admissions against pupils and their parents and to increase employment discrimination against teachers. It means more pupils will be segregated by religion and ethnicity and denied the right to a fully balanced education or to school with children from different backgrounds and learn with and from them.

It is vitally important that we let the Government know how misguided this statement is, and how divisive an increase in the number of state-funded faith schools will be. The BHA is urging all members to write to their MPs to make them aware of their thoughts and positions on this document, and to ask what action their MP intends to take on this issue.

LHG member’s letter to the Guardian: Faith school scandal

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BHA calls for clarification on teacher dismissal on religious grounds in faith schools

Posted on September 9, 2009 by Liverpool Humanist

The British Humanist Association has written to the Department for Children, Schools and Families (DCSF) requesting urgent clarification on the legal powers that voluntary-aided faith schools have to discipline and dismiss teachers on religious grounds.

On September 9th DCSF Minister Vernon Coaker MP (Minister of State for Schools and Learners), stated in a reply to a parliamentary question from BHA Vice-President Evan Harris MP that voluntary-aided schools with a religious character ‘have the ability to have regard to the conduct of a teacher which is incompatible with the tenets of the religion of the school when considering the termination of employment of any teacher’.

BHA Director of Education and Public Affairs Andrew Copson said, ‘The government’s statement appears to give state-funded religious schools enormous and potentially arbitrary control over the lives of their staff, which goes far beyond what domestic and EU law provides. The minister’s comments will provoke deep concern among religious and non-religious people alike. We have therefore asked the government to set out in greater detail exactly how they believe these powers operate and what their limits are, though we do not accept the accuracy of the minister’s initial answer in any case.’

BHA article

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Humanist Schools for Liverpool

Posted on September 1, 2009 by Liverpool Humanist

The Liverpool Humanist Group presents:-

Humanist Schools for Liverpool

A talk by Andrew Copson, Director of Education and Public Affairs for the British Humanist Association

Date: September 8, 2009
Time: 7:30 PM
Venue: The 07 Café Bar, 103 Mount Pleasant, Liverpool L3 6JZ
Cost: £2

Given the preponderance of faith based schools with divisive and discriminatory admissions policies in this area, should we have Humanist Primary Schools across Merseyside? Should we found a Humanist City Academy in Liverpool?

What would be:

* the special ethos
* the curriculum
* the admissions policy

of a Humanist School?

Is there an especially good fit between a Humanist world-view, a humanistic approach to education and the educational and developmental needs of a young person growing to adulthood and citizenship?

Andrew Copson coordinates the BHA’s education work promoting understanding of Humanism as a non-religious worldview both in formal school and college curricula and to the public at large. He also coordinates the BHA’s campaigns for a secular state, for an end to religious privilege and discrimination based on religion or belief and for a rational humanist perspective on public ethical issues. He has written on these issues for The Guardian and New Statesman as well as various journals and is a Member of the Chartered Institute of Public Relations, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and an Associate of the Centre for Law and Religion at Cardiff University.

Andrew graduated from Oxford with a first in Ancient and Modern History and was a member of the winning team of the 2005 Young Educational Thinker of the Year Programme. He came to the BHA in 2005 from the Citizenship Foundation.

Quotation
One is often told that it is a very wrong thing to attack religion, because religion makes men virtuous. So I am told; I have not noticed it.
Bertrand Russell, “Why I Am Not A Christian,” Little Blue Book No. 1372 edited by E Haldeman-Julius.

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