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September 11, Saturday, 2:30 PM - 4:30 PM, Creative Conflict Resolution Techniques
Secularists
take pride in their supposed ability to solve problems rationally,
whether in their personal lives, on the job, or in the political or
philosophical arena. But do we know how to be tactful? Partisanship in
America is rampant today, and we deplore the vitriolic nature of our
public discourse. However, do we know how to improve it? Can we learn
how to cool the rhetoric in the heat of debate and dial down our own
emotional responses and those of our opponents? San Diego Secular Humanist Outreach will sponsor a mini-workshop titled Creative Conflict Resolution Techniques
on September 11 from 2:30 to 4:30 pm in the San Diego Conference Room
at the County Health Services Complex at 3851 Rosecrans Street in the
Old Town / Midway area.
In charge of the presentation will be Fran Howard and Barbara Anderson from the Hands of Peace / Alternatives to Violence Project,
which is a non-profit, all volunteer group dedicated to reducing
conflict in our homes, our relationships and our community. HOP
regularly holds workshops in the community, in prisons, colleges, and
for Americorps and other groups. AVP is an international organization
(you may visit its Web site at www.avpusa/org), and is a recipient of
the Gandhi Non-Violence Award.
August 29, Sunday, 2:00 PM - Humanist Huddle at the SD Central Library
We will be showing the DVD "Trinity and Beyond: The Atomic Movie",
an unsettling yet visually fascinating documentary presenting the
history of the design, development, production and testing of nuclear
weapons between 1945 until 1963. Narrated by William Shatner and
featuring an original score performed by the Moscow Symphony Orchestra,
this award-winning documentary reveals previously unreleased and
classified government footage depicting in graphic detail these powerful
and awesome weapons.
August 22, Sunday, 2:00 PM
The HFSD will come together to commemorate the life and works of Lloyd Morain,
who prior to his death on July 13 at the age of 93, was the last
surviving member of the International Humanist and Ethical Union's
founding generation. The
program will include readings, commentary, and messages from around the
world. To enhance the discussion please read in advance two short books
by Lloyd Morain, Humanism as the Next Step and The Human Cougar; the first of these was co-authored with Mary Morain.
August 22, Sunday, 7:00 PM - SDARI
Join
your friends with the San Diego Association of Rational Inquiry as they
welcome Dr. Rebecca Moore, chair of the Religious Studies Department at
SDSU. Dr. Moore will speak about Jonestown and the Peoples Temple.
Two of Dr. Moore's sisters were followers of Jim Jones, and lost their
lives in the group suicide at Jonestown. Her academic understanding of
cults, as well as her heart-wrenching personal association with the
Peoples Temple is NOT to be missed.
August 19, Thursday, 7:00 PM - Book Club Discussion
Who
has more power in this world to directly and adversely affect your
life... God or the Global Corporation? Join the HFSD Book Club as we
discuss, The Corporation: The Pathological Pursuit of Porfit and Power. For details, click here!
August 14, Saturday, 11:30 AM
Do
you live north of San Diego proper? Wish to strengthen the Freethought
presence in North County? We'd love to meet you! In a joint effort
sponsored by the Humanist Fellowship of San Diego and its affiliate, San
Diego Secular Humanist Outreach, we're calling interested secularists
to a meetup, documentary viewing, and roundtable discussion in the
Seminar Room at the Rancho Bernardo Library, on Saturday, August 14th, from 11:30 am to 1:30 pm. We'll be showing the second episode of Jonathan Miller's 2004 BBC documentary A Brief History of Disbelief. Episode 2, Noughts and Crosses
discusses Christianity's domination in Europe from 500 AD on, and how
disbelief began to re-emerge in the 15th and 16th centuries. Miller
discovers that division within the Church played a more powerful role
than the scientific discoveries of the period. He also visits Paris, the
home of the 18th century atheist, Baron D'Holbach, and shows how
politically dangerous it was to undermine the religious faith of the
masses.
August 1, Sunday, 2:00 PM
Perhaps
you've read recently that scientists at the J. Craig Venter Institute
have accomplished a major breakthrough in the creation of synthetic
cells. In its ongoing series of lectures on science, San Diego Secular Humanist Outreach will sponsor a lecture on this topic. Our speaker for the occasion will be Greg Wanger,
a post doctoral fellow at JCVI. While Wanger is not a member of the
Synthetic Biology research team at the institute -- he is presently a
part of the Electro-microbiology group there -- he has agreed to present
a talk focusing on the science behind the construction of synthetic
cells in general, some of the ethics and new policies being proposed,
and possible future directions for synthetic biology.
July 31, Saturday, 10:40 AM
Join
the HFSD at the Landmark Theatres in La Jolla for a showing of Agora.
Winner of seven Goya Awards (Spain’s equivalent of the Oscar), Agora
is a breathtaking, English-language historical drama directed and
co-written by Academy Award-winner Alejandro Amenábar (The Sea Inside). The film is set in ancient Egypt under Roman rule, where violent
religious upheaval in the streets of Alexandria spills over into the
city’s famous Library. Trapped inside its walls, the brilliant and
beautiful astronomer Hypatia (Rachel Weisz, The Constant Gardener) and
her disciples fight to save the wisdom of the Ancient World. Among these
disciples are two men competing for her heart: the witty, privileged
Orestes and Davus, Hypatia’s young slave, who is torn between his secret
love for her and the freedom he knows can be his if he chooses to join
the unstoppable surge of the Christians.Following the film we will go to the deli next door for lunch and
discussion!
July 28, Wednesday, 10:00 AM
Groundbreaking ceremony at the NEW San Diego Central Library location at 11th and K Streets in downtown San Diego. Finally!!
July
25, Sunday, 2:00 PM
Join us for our Humanist Huddle at the Central Library in downtown San Diego. We will be featuring the debut of the "Humanist News Reel", a selection of topical and relevant video clips created by HFSD Board Member James Zimmerman.
July
15, Thursday at 7:00 PM
The
Humanist Book Club discusses Salvation Boulevard
by Larry Beinhart. From the Edgar Award-winning novelist and author of Wag
the Dog and The Librarian comes a new mystery
novel about a private investigator and a case that tests his courage,
character and soul. The victim is an atheist professor, the main
suspect—who has confessed and is in custody—a Muslim foreign student,
the defense attorney a Jew and the detective a born-again Christian. As
P.I. Carl Van Wagener gets deeper and deeper into the investigation of
the death of Professor Nathaniel MacLeod, his most basic beliefs and
relationships are tried and his world is turned upside down. Salvation
Boulevard is a page-turning thriller in the tradition of John
Grisham and Richard Condon that grapples with the ecstatic and entropic
nature of religious faith in contemporary America. We will meet at the
Living Room
Café, 5900 El Cajon Blvd., three
blocks west of College Ave. Please call Michael at 690-5491 to reserve
and to get details of the location and an update on possible changes.
July
10, Saturday at 6:00 PM
A lecture sponsored by the San Diego Secular Humanist
Outreach.
Most of us have discovered the fallacies inherent in
traditional religion. But we're now being inundated by a new wave of
imaginative hucksters advocating their own versions of supernaturalism,
and hawking their similarly bizarre notions in the guise of science --
even attempting to co-opt its language. Scientists have a
recently-coined term for this pseudoscience and crackpottery: they call
it "woo" -- I suppose as in "Woo-ooh, that's really far out!"
For example, there's been Oprah Winfrey's recent ballyhooing
of The Secret, a best-seller that slaps the "The Law of Attraction"
label on the popular notion of positive-visualization, then "cranks it
into hyperdrive, [applying] it to to the Self and personal desire . . .
and pretends that the whole thing is a revelation backed by both modern
science and thousands of years of wisdom." And don't overlook Depak
Chopra's fanciful assertions regarding "Biocentrism," the idea that the
universe is the product of human awareness, and that quantum mechanics
somehow supports his "theory."
Enter Jonathan Whitmore a PhD candidate in theoretical
astrophysics at UCSD. He writes: "Concepts within physics are frequently
misused to support all manner of 'woo': New-Age cures, homeopathy, 'The
Secret,' magical thinking, and wishful thinking in general.
Creationists sometimes attempt to use physics to argue against the
theory of evolution. Physics is a powerful tool for understanding,
predicting, and controlling the natural world -- so it is an attractive
ally if you want to find support for your ideas. The problem comes when
people try to use physics to support ideas and conclusions that physics
simply does not support."
July 9, Friday at 7:00 PM
The
Humanist Fellowship of San Diego gathers for the showing of The Nature of Existence, a film conceived, written and directed by Roger Nygard. "I went to the source of all the major religions and belief systems and asked people why we exist. The contrasts were interesting, but where I was truly amazed was at the overlap, the agreement between many religions…"
Traveling the globe for four years and hundreds of interviews, Nygard took the 450 hours of footage and made it into a 94 minute feature documentary. Combining an investigative approach to the spiritual with a humorous edge, Nygard offers a challenging, funny, and enlightening view to one of humanity's most universal quests, as the most important journey we ever take may be the journey to find meaning in our own existence.
July 4, Sunday at 1 :00 PM
The Humanist Fellowship of San Diego joins the Humanist Association of San Diego for their Fourth Annual Independence from Dogma Day Picnic!
June 27, Sunday at 2:00 PM
Humanist Huddle will watch the library's showing of Agens Varda's autobiographical film. Following the film we will have a short discussion and adjourn to Brian's Pub.
June
19, Saturday at 11:00 PM
The
HFSD is meeting in North County! Join with us to view part one of the BBC documentary A Brief History of Disbelief by Jonathan Miller that traces the history of atheism. The series includes extracts from interviews with various academic luminaries including Arthur Miller, Richard Dawkins, Steve Weinberg, Colin McGinn, Denys Turner, Pascal Boyer and Daniel Dennett. The series also includes many quotations from the works of atheists, agnostics and deists, all read by Bernard Hill.
June 17, Thursday at 1:00 PM
The
Humanist Book Club discusses The Humanist Tradition in the West
by Sir Alan Bullock. Humanism is universally recognized as one of the
most basic concepts in the development of Western civilization, and yet
the meaning of the term itself is far from clear. By following an
historical rather than an analytical approach, the author demonstrates
that it is possible to make sense of the different meanings which have
been attributed to humanism, and to place them within a coherent
framework.
June
4-6,
Friday-Sunday
Don't
miss one of the largest gatherings of humanists, atheists, and
freethinkers from across the country! The Annual Conference of the
American Humanist Association will feature informative breakout
sessions, activist training sessions for humanist chapter leaders,
banquets honoring distinguished awardees, book signings by celebrity
authors, and more! For more information and to
register, go to the AHA website: http://www.americanhumanist.org/. Next year's conference will be held in Cambridge April 7-10, 2011.
May
27, Thursday at 7:00 PM
The
Humanist Book Club discusses Elmer Gantry
by Sinclair Lewis. Besides being an effective satire targeted against
religious hypocrisy, Elmer Gantry provides insight into the clash of
cultural forces in America in the 1920s. During this period, traditional
religious believers were deeply disturbed by the encroachments made on
faith by science and secularism. They also decried the growth within the
church of the “higher criticism,” that sought to understand the Bible
based on modern methods of scholarship.
May
23, Sunday at 2:00 PM
Lecture
Series on Science and Religion: Sex, Love, & Death:
Socioevolutionary Theory and Science
with Dr. Brian H. Spitzberg with the School of Communications at SDSU.
This presentation, based on Dr. Spitzberg’s plenary lecture from the
SDSU symposium dedicated to Darwin’s impact on the humanities and social
sciences, deals with issues about differentiating “science” and
“pseudo-science” with particular regard to challenges in
socioevolutionary theory and research. This technical lecture, which
touches upon the works of Popper, Lakatos, Kuhn, and Gould, is focused
on how to see the way forward in guiding future socioevolutionary
exploration. Dr. Brian H. Spitzberg is the Senate Distinguished
Professor in the School of Communication at San Diego State University
and author or co-author of 3 scholarly books, co-editor of 3 scholarly
books, and author or co-author of over 40 scholarly articles and over 40
scholarly book chapters. Included among these are four books on "the
dark side" of communication and relationships. His 2004 book Dark
Side
of Relationship Pursuit: From Attraction to Obsession and Stalking
won
the International Association for Relationship Research book award in
2006.
May 12, Wednesday at 6:00 PM
Secular Coalition for America,
The first organization representing Secular Americans to engage in a
formal briefing with White House officials, invites you to hear their Executive
Director Sean Faircloth speak to us on: A
Plan for a Secular Decade: One Nation Under the Constitution.
The Secular Coalition for America lobbies for secular policies in
Washington, D.C., and recently held the first-ever policy briefing for
Secular Americans with Obama administration officials. Secular Coalition
Executive Director Sean Faircloth will discuss how the values of our
nation's founders directly connect to the values of the secular movement
and how theocratically-based injustices in American law are not an
historical artifact -- but rather a stark, current reality that we all
have a moral obligation to address.
May
8, Saturday 10:00 AM to 11:00 PM
Members
of the HFSD will be traveling up to Costa Mesa for the first
annual Orange County Freethought Alliance Conference. The
conference will address: Can Science and Religion Co-exist? Featured
guest speakers will include Dan Barker, Michael Shermer, Eddie Tabash
and PZ Myers. Additional information will be found at
http://www.freethoughtalliance.org.
May 1, Saturday - 12 Noon
Join
us in celebrating May Day! We will have a Chinese lunch at the
Panda Inn and celebrate the May Day Holiday in a Humanistic way. We
will also discuss the Humanist Manifesto.
April
25, Sunday at 2:00 PM
Lecture
Series on Science and Religion: The Biological and Evolutionary
Basis of Romantic Relationships: Are Social Scientists and Humanists in
Biological Denial? with Professor Peter Andersen of SDSU. This
lecture examines the sociobiological and evolutionary basis for of
romantic and sexual relationships. Over the past decades scholars have
looked at the sociological, cultural, and individual basis of romantic
relationships with little regard to evolutionary theory or the
biological basis of human behavior. Dr. Andersen examines a series of
recent studies including several of his own that demonstrates the
powerful influence of unconscious, genetic factors on human courtship
and mating behavior. Dr. Peter Andersen is professor of
Communication at San Diego State University and has degrees from
University of Illinois, Chicago, Illinois State University and Florida
State University. He has done extensive research on Interpersonal
Relationships, Persuasion and, and Nonverbal Communication. He has
authored over 150 book chapters, research papers, and journal articles,
as well as 5 books, including, The Handbook of Communication and
Emotion.
April 18, Sunday - all day
The
Humanist Fellowship of San Diego will be celebrating Earth Day at
EarthFair 2010 in Balboa Park. Come visit our table (#1056)
which is at the northeast corner of the Museum of Art parking lot!!
EarthFair features more than 350 exhibitors, special theme areas, a
Food Pavilion, a special Kids’ Activity Area, three entertainment
venues, the Children’s Earth Parade, the eARTh Gallery art show, and the
Cleaner Car Concourse. There's something for the entire family!
April
15, Thursday at 7:00 PM
Humanist
Book Club meets to discuss, Idiot America: How Stupidity Became a
Virtue in the Land of the Free by Charles P. Pierce.
April
11, Sunday at 2:00 PM
The
Humanist Huddle will view part two of the film Origins: Fourteen
Billion Years of Cosmic Evolution with Neil deGrasse Tyson.
Discussion to follow.
April 3,
Saturday at 11:00 AM
Preparatory meeting for "Peak-of-the-Month"
club. Start planning now to get in shape physically and with the
necessary mental preparation to climb the great mountain peaks of North
America, such as California's tallest, Mount Whitney. The Humanist
Fellowship of San Diego will organize expeditions to take place
beginning next year. There is a magical world up there awaiting your
exploration and it will be awesome to go with a Humanist group. This is
living life to the full and you won't want to miss it. First step is a
planning meeting to discuss these expeditions, talk about what it will
take, and to get to know the members of HFSD who will embark on this
memorable adventure. You will discover new things - not just about
nature, but also about yourself.
April
3, Saturday at 2:00 PM
Why
Humans Believe in God by Craig A. James, author of The
Religion Virus: An Evolutionist Explains Religion's Incredible Hold on
Humanity. South Chula Vista Branch Library, 389 Orange Ave., Chula
Vista. Free. Sponsored by San Diego Secular Humanist Outreach, an
affiliate of the Humanist Fellowship of San Diego.
March 25, Thursday at 7:00 PM
The Humanist Book Club discusses Nemesis: The Last Days of the American Republic
by Chalmers Johnson. In Nemesis, the third installment in his
“Blowback” trilogy, Johnson analyzes U.S. imperial overreach and the
threat it poses to the republic — to our very democracy. He offers a
striking description of the trap that the grandiose dreams of America’s
leaders have led us into.
March 21, Sunday at 2:00 PM
What
is Secular Humanism? What are its objectives? What is its importance?
Why should one support it? Why are the comparatively small numbers of
the nonreligious actively involved in the secular humanist movement?
Dr. Ron Lindsay, CEO of the Center for Inquiry, Los Angeles, provides
an unsparing review of the state of secular humanism today and issues a
rousing call to arms. He demonstrates the critical significance of the
secular perspective, especially as it relates to public policy in this
video titled: Secular Humanism and Its Discontents.
March 18, Thursday at 7:00 PM
Join us for an evening with Dr. Darrel Ray, author of The God Virus.
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