Tonight we launch an atheist church

It’s been a busy few days as we close in on the launch of Sunday Assembly Leeds, the atheist church that isn’t purely atheist or really a church.

We’ve had over 200 RSVPs and confirmation that BBC Look North will be filming live on location and BBC Radio will be doing a segment as well. Over the past week, we’ve had coverage in the Yorkshire Evening Post, Real Radio Leeds, and BBC Radio Leeds. And that’s in addition to the international attention that The Sunday Assembly continues to attract.

It should go well and we have a great team of volunteers working on this. With luck this community will grow and thrive and live up to its motto of getting people to live better, help often, and wonder more.

Tomorrow afternoon I head to Barcelona for a few days, so I may not be able to post an update right away but I’ll try to write a follow up.

For now, read Harrogate Skeptic’s founder Michelle’s take on what value this type of community has had for her.

Launching the Sunday Assembly Leeds!

Over the past few months, I’ve watched with keen interest as Sanderson Jones and Pippa Evans, two British comics that I hadn’t heard of before, founded and started hosting The Sunday Assembly in London. They billed their show as “part foot-stomping show, part atheist church” and set off with the goal of encouraging people to “live better, help often, and wonder more.”

What really got my attention was how successful they were in such a short period of time. The paradoxical marketing as an “atheist church” clearly had legs and was picked up by media around the world. The coverage created curiosity and a crowd of a couple hundred started to grow and spawn interest in America and Australia for more of these things.

Continue reading Launching the Sunday Assembly Leeds!

Skeptic with an Eh?

Seeing a gap in the Leed’s Skeptics in the Pub event for September, I volunteer to give a talk on the skeptical movement in Canada.

Here are the details if you want to come stalk me in person:

Monday, 23 September 2013 19:00 at the Victoria Hotel (28 Great George Street, Leeds LS1 3DL)

While I haven’t written down the exact notes for what I want to cover (I have all weekend), I’m basically going to discuss the 6 years I spent organizing freethought groups in Edmonton and Vancouver, and what I learned about the broader skeptical/Humanist movement in Canada during that time. Hopefully I’ll also have time to get into some of the current issues in Canada and where people stand.

I’ll try to keep gossip and my personal opinions to a minimum during the talk but I may intersperse them during the discussion afterward.

Hopefully it will be filmed so I can post a video of it later for those who want to subject themselves to that. Hope to see you there!