Brave Little Toaster

Come join us in Student Building 150 at 7:30pm for a showing of The Brave Little Toaster. Keeping with this week’s theme of relaxing during the stressful time of midterms and homework and things, we picked this wonderful film. It’s really a great time; you should join us.

We are also looking for movie suggestions for future movie nights. Please suggest some!

Tom Flynn

Join us this Saturday, in Woodburn Hall, room 100, at 4pm for a lecture by Tom Flynn, entitled ‘Robert Green Ingersoll: The Most Remarkable American Most People Never Heard Of.’

Tom Flynn is the Executive Director of the Council for Secular Humanism, and also editor of Free Inquiry magazine.

We will be meeting in the Dogwood Room in the IMU at 8pm, as usual.

This Sunday is the first Sunday Funday of the semester! On Sunday Funday, we bring in games and snacks and stuff and just have fun. I think we’ve had enough serious discussion for a while and everyone deserves a break from discussion/homework/studying.

Not only do we need to have some fun, we also have to celebrate the Earth’s birthday! In the 17th century, Bishop Ussher used the Bible to show that the Earth was created on October 23, 4004 BCE. So, we’re also celebrating that! I mean, the creation of the Earth is quite a momentous event and deserves some satirical celebration, right?

So, bring a friend; bring a game; bring a snack! It’s going to be awesome.

Our sister organization, the Indiana Atheist Bus Campaign, had an immensely successful debate last night. Here is what they had to say. Please consider donating.

Last night more than 300 people came out to see Dan Waugh and Dan Barker debate the Indiana Atheist Bus Campaign’s ad “You Can Be Good Without God”. Both respected men were in excellent form and exemplified civility. We at the Bus Campaign could not be more pleased with the debate.

One of our key goals in forming INABC was to promote discussion amongst people who normally do not talk to each other due to disagreement. We wanted to encourage critical thinking on the reasons behind faith or lack thereof. Both of these goals ultimately create more understanding between theists and nontheists in our community. Dan Waugh and Dan Barker not only fulfilled our goals but did so in a very respectful manner.

We want people to feel comfortable discussing sensitive, controversial topics like religion. Oftentimes people are fearful to express their opinions or do not want to offend someone else. However, as both Waugh and Barker showed us last night, we can break down these barriers in a way that is not inflammatory or disrespectful. We can discuss religion critically whether we believe or do not believe in God.

While audience members may not have agreed with the speakers, this debate gave people the opportunity to hear well thought out arguments that may have been contradictory to the ones they held when they walked in. Events like this should happen more often! With these debates we can enter an age where critical discussion of religion is met with no hesitation, no fear. With your help, we can make strides towards a world where any idea can enter into a fair and balanced discussion where neither side feels the need to hold back.

Our work is not done. There are so many cities that have not seen our message! So many more topics that have yet to be debated! Your gift is not just a donation; it is an investment into a society of free minds, good hearts, and loud voices. Make your online tax deductable gift today.

This lecture is sponsored by the IUB Department of Religious Studies. We are cancelling our normally scheduled movie night and encouraging everyone to attend this lecture in its stead. It will be at 7:30pm on Thursday (10/22) in Rawles 100.

Dr. John Haught, Distinguished Research Professor and Senior Fellow in Science and Religion at the Woodstock Theological Center at Georgetown University, is an expert and frequent lecturer on Christian thought and evolution controversies such as intelligent design and creationism.

Professor Haught regards science and religion as two different and noncompeting levels of explanation for natural phenomena. He advocates a theistic form of evolution that avoids the twin pitfalls of excessive materialism or scientism that seeks to “disprove” religion, on the one hand, and religion that seeks to present itself as science, on the other (as with intelligent design). In his view, Darwin’s vision of life, instead of being hostile to religion, actually provides opportunity for mature reflection on ideas about God and cosmic meaning. He thus refers to Darwin’s theory as a “gift” to Christian theology. He also draws conclusions about ecological ethics—how humans should treat the natural world and nonhuman life—from his interpretation of theistic evolution.

John Haught has published numerous works dealing with religion and evolution, including Deeper Than Darwin: The Prospect for Religion in the Age of Evolution (2003), God After Darwin: A Theology of Evolution (2000), and Responses to 101 Questions on God and Evolution (2001). In 2005 Haught testified as an expert witness for the plaintiffs in the famous Dover “intelligent design” trial, where he presented arguments that intelligent design is a form of religion, not science. Some of his more recent scholarship, such as God and the New Atheism (2008) presents a detailed rejoinder to the so-called neo-atheist criticisms of religion popularized by Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, and Sam Harris. Haught maintains that these anti-religion arguments contain little that could be considered “new,” and that they display logical inconsistencies and crude caricatures of religious belief.

Professor Haught’s lecture “Evolution and Faith: What Is at Stake?” will address the supposed conflict between religious faith and scientific theory in a way that will appeal to a wide audience.

This Saturday at 10:30pm, SAIU is visiting a Hell House run by The House of Prayer, located in Ellettsville.  A Hell House is a Christian version of a haunted house, intended to present scary scenes from a world of secularism and the Hellish consequences, so to speak.  Tickets are $5.

We will be meeting at the IMU circle at 9:30pm. If you need a ride, please email me at jhughto [at] indiana [dot] edu. You should also email me if you can provide rides.

The Indiana Atheist Bus Campaign, along with the Secular Alliance of IU and the Evangelical Community Church, Bloomington, is sponsoring a debate on the question “Can you be good without God?”. It will take place on October 19, 7:00pm, in Woodburn Hall 100 on the Indiana University, Bloomington campus. The debaters are Dan Waugh and Dan Barker.

Dan Waugh

Dan Waugh currently serves as the Pastor of Adult Ministries at Evangelical Community Church in Bloomington, Indiana. He received his M.Div. from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School and is currently working on an advanced degree from Covenant Theological Seminary in St. Louis.

Dan Barker

Co-president of the Freedom From Religion Foundation, Dan Barker is a former minister and evangelist and became a freethinker in 1983.  His newest book is Godless: How An Evangelical Preacher Became One of America’s Leading Atheists.

Event information

Press: Please contact the bus campaign through the form on their website for inquiries.

Parking/Directions: For directions to Woodburn Hall, please visit the IU Campus map.  For parking instructions, please visit IU Parking’s website and scroll down to “Parking Garages.”  The easiest way to park on campus is to use a pay garage…as the website states, they close around midnight or earlier, so if you wait until then you’ll be able to remove your car at no extra cost.  The closest parking is in the Indiana Memorial Union Parking Lot and Jordan Avenue Parking Garage.  You can also find all these locations using Google maps.

The Indiana Atheist Bus Campaign is the group behind the “YOU CAN BE GOOD WITHOUT GOD” ads on Bloomington buses. They’ve also put ads up in South Bend and Chicago and raised thousands of dollars, and the campaign has been an enormous success, but we still need your support. To make your tax-deductible donation today, or for more info, please visit http://INatheistbus.org

Come join us for tea and discussion in the Dogwood room in the IMU this week. Russell’s Tea Parties are SAIU’s periodic general-purpose casual meetups, named after Bertrand Russell’s ‘teapot’ thought experiment, his argument that the burden of proof in supernatural claims lies with the person making the claim.

Come, drink tea, tell us about your religious and non-religious experiences, start a friendly debate, discuss current events, find other members with common interests, start a group project, or even go totally off-topic for a while.

This week’s topic is the exploring the difference between atheism and agnosticism. We’ll be talking about things like whether being completely atheist (meaning 100% certainty that no God exists) is really a logical conclusion that can be made. People tend to have rather strong feelings about things like this so it will be interesting to see what happens. Hope to see you there!

SAIU is volunteering for Mother Hubbard’s Cupboard (MHC).  MHC is a food pantry whose mission is to provide healthful, wholesome foods to people in need, as well as nutrition and gardening education.  They provide our services in ways that build community while enhancing the dignity, respect, and self-care of all involved.

SAIU members go through the pantry, check all the labels on items, and dispose of anything that is past its expiration date.  MHC is located at 1010 S Walnut St, Bloomington IN. We’ll be volunteering from 2PM to 4PM. See you there!

SAIU is volunteering for the Midwest Pages to Prisoners Project, an all-volunteer effort to encourage self-education among the US prison population by providing free reading materials on request.  The program’s participants are interested in prison serving the purpose of rehabilitation rather than punishment, and also recognize that prison libraries are often understocked and have limited availability.

Volunteers receive letters from prisoners, verify a prisoner’s current incarceration status, retrieve books from shelves, pack them, and also keep track of requests and books in the project’s database.  SAIU will be volunteering the first and third Sunday of each month this semester from 2 PM to 5 PM,  Pages to Prisoners is located at 118 S Rogers St, Suite #2, Bloomington IN, 47404, just off Kirkwood. See you there!