Thursday, February 24, 2011

Kitsap Skeptics Meetup, Mar 2. Let's Have Some Fun edition...

Well kids since our last two trips to Silver City ended up so lame - because of the seating situation, we're looking for a new venue. Yes, Silver City has great food and beer, but sitting around for 40 minutes waiting to be seated isn't working for us. We will continue to go to Silver City after our KAA Trail Cleanup meetups, though - so they'll still be getting our business...oh I should encourage anyone who's member of the skeptics group to join Kitsap Atheists and Agnostics to be part of the trail cleanup crew, organized by Tara. It's great fun.

This week we're trying Forza Coffee Co. Its in the same parking lot as Arby's across from Kitsap Mall. Address on Meetup or Facebook pages. The cool thing about this spot is that we actually get a whole room, with a closeable door. The not-so-cool thing is that it doesn't seem to be particularly well-managed and it does seem rather "soulless". They serve limited food and beer and wine as well as coffee. Unfortunately they close right at 9pm, so if we want to continue the conversation we'll have to move elsewhere. Another plus...free wifi, so those of us who still use that ancient laptop technology can research while we're there. We'll give it a shot, if it doesn't work we'll keep looking.

Last week's topic, which I realize I forgot to blog about, was GMO's. We were so lucky to get input from Kevin Forta and he's agreed to Skype in to a future meetup, which we will definitely arrange. I'm sorry that I was heavily medicated during the last meetup due to an injury and while I'm sure the conversation was lovely, I really only remember spilling sour cream on my phone. Good nachos. We will definitely revisit that topic, probably at a residential meetup so we can have enough quiet to hear the Skype call.

On to next week. New member Brooke recently posted a link to a TED conference discussion - A world without religion, how would it look? I know we don't usually touch religion in the skeptics group, but I think its an interesting topic worth discussing and even non-atheists can apply their critical thinking skills to that one. In fact I encourage our non-atheist members to attend this (yes, Chad and TC I'm talking about you) Well you can check out that discussion if you want or just roll the idea over in your mind.

There IS homework! It is the most awful, terrible, mind-taxing homework we've ever had for a meetup. It is to watch Ricky Gervais' "The Invention of Lying" You can get it from Netflix, or if you have Cinemax you can get it on demand. It's not rentable on Amazon or Itunes, I don't know any other way to get movies, are there still rental places? I have reserved a copy from the Kitsap Library if anyone wants to borrow it just text/call/email/FB me and I'll get it to you.

So lets all spend the next few days considering what a world without religion would look like. Would it be better? Worse? Would people who have a need for belief turn to addictive behaviors to fulfill that need? Would there be more or less suffering in the world? Come prepared to discuss and laugh - we'll have a copy of the movie at the Meetup, so if you like a particular scene mark it down and we'll play it. This one should be fun!

Amber K.

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