Bruin Alliance of Skeptics and Secularists

The following minutes are from our April 10 meeting.

Announcements

We are hosting a debate between Matt Slick and John Shook. It will occur on Wednesday, April 29, 6:30 pm, in Humanities A51. The topic is “Christianity or Secular Humanism: Which is ethically superior?” Expect to see more advertisement of this event soon.

Some of you may have seen the signs on Bruin Walk which say “Is God a Delusion?” This event is hosted by the Lutheran Campus Ministries (the same people who have that “Religion is for the weak” table in front of Pauley Pavilion). The talk, given by Angus Menuge, occurs on Thursday, April 16, 6:00 PM in Broad 2100A.

David proposed an idea: BASS talks. If there’s any topic you find interesting, and think BASS should find interesting too, then you can contact any of us. You can give an organized presentation, about 10 minutes without being interrupted. This gives you an opportunity to practice public speaking, and allows us to devote a small section of meetings to a more structured discussion. (Of course, the opportunity to give a talk was always available, but now we’re making it official.)

Meeting Discussion

We started out by watching a video with James Randi, Hugh Laurie (actor of House), and an Astrologer. And then we watched a clip from Alexander Pelosi’s documentary, Friends of God.

The latter video showed a lot of cute kids parroting creationist mantras. Some of us find this a little disturbing. On the other hand, kids can just as easily be taught to say the opposite the next day, so maybe there’s no need to read too much into it. Another discussion point was the phrase “War on Christians” which was used near the end of the video. Some find this persecution complex to be unjustified, since Christians constitute a powerful majority. Maybe they’re referring just to Fundamentalist Christians, who compose only 25% of the population (still a powerful majority).

To kick off a more politically oriented topic, we watched a video of a “man of truth” who advocates getting rid of paper money. From what I understand, the New World Order plans to make your paper money worthless in the very near future. We started discussing why the gold standard is supposedly good, and why it is supposedly bad. Matthew explained that money is currently worth something because it’s backed up by the government. If we were using the gold standard, then money would be worth something because it’s backed up by gold, which has been historically very consistent in its value. Matthew questioned the need for a persistent currency. Ben thought that having a depreciable currency stimulates the economy because it encourages cash flow. After more back and forth, we watched Scrooge McDuck’s explanation of money.

To cap the meeting, we watched this strange advertisement for the Nation for Marriage, an organization which opposes gay marriage. I would like to see some of the claims in this ad supported by evidence, wouldn’t you?