Category: Forums

Hank Pellissier

June 26, 2016

Brighter Brains Institute (BBI, brighterbrains.org/) is a SF Bay nonprofit that promotes humanist principles in western Uganda. BBI built BiZoHa – “the world’s first atheist orphanage”; it recently “converted” four schools in the Ruwenzori mountains to secular humanist principles, and it publishes African humanist writers, like Leo Igwe and Bwambale Robert Musubaho. It also established 12 clinics in the region to combat malaria, cholera, HIV/AIDS and other diseases.

Hank Pellissier is a writer for GreatSchools.org and program director of BBI. Previously he wrote for NYTimes.com and Salon.com, and authored Brighter Brains: 225 ways to elevate and injure IQ. He produced the world’s first Atheist Film Festival (2009, San Francisco) and a 2010 Atheist Calendar.

 

Humanist Community Forum (2016-06-26): “Humanist Missionaries” in Uganda (Hank Pellissier) from Humanist Community-SiliconValley on Vimeo.

 

Yau-man Chan

June 19, 2016

Yau-man Chan is a long time skeptic and atheist. After recently becoming formally involved with the Skeptic Movement he learned that many skeptics are believers/religious and many atheists are not skeptics. He was surprised to meet atheists who subscribe to all sorts of pseudoscience and conspiracy theories. In this talk he will try to engage fellow non-believers to explore why there is not more of an overlap. Why aren’t skeptics naturally also atheists and why do some atheists manage to hold on to many superstitious and non-reality based ideas when they have rejected religion.

 

Humanist Community Forum (2016-06-19): Skepticism and Atheism (Yau-man Chan) from Humanist Community-SiliconValley on Vimeo.

 

Prof. Nancy C. Unger

June 12, 2016

Tremendous gains are being made in revealing the long, rich, colorful, heartbreaking, and inspiring history of LGBTQ people in the United States. Too often, however, that history is reduced to the Stonewall Riots of 1969 or (especially here in California) the life and martyrdom of Harvey Milk. This illustrated presentation highlights the documented presence of people acting on same-sex desires as early as the 1600s, actions surprisingly tolerated within their communities. We’ll follow the transformation of women’s “romantic friendships” into “Boston Marriages,” the roles of President Theodore Roosevelt, the U.S. military, and McCarthism in promoting homophobia. The presentation concludes with the pre-Stonewall movements to eradicate internalized homophobia, and to remove the medical, legal, and social stigmas attached to same-sex love. Prof. Nancy C. Unger is a Professor of History at Santa Clara University, where her regular course offerings include “Lesbians and Gay Men in U.S. History.”

 

 

Humanist Community Forum (2016-06-12): Long Journey to Stonewall: An Illustrated History of LGBTQ America (Nancy C. Unger) from Humanist Community-SiliconValley on Vimeo.

 

AHA Conference Attendees

June 5, 2016

Members of our group who attended the 2016 American Humanist Association Annual Conference (http://conference.americanhumanist.org/chicago/) in Chicago will report on their experiences and impressions there, and will discuss their own views on the future of Humanism (with, of course, lots of questions and comments from the audience).

Featuring a video of a TED Talk by Sam Harris

May 29, 2016

In this Forum, we will show a “TED Talk” (see www.ted.com) with the above title (see http://www.ted.com/talks/sam_harris_science_can_show_what_s_right). The video features Sam Harris, who is the renowned author of “The End of Faith”, a Ph.D. neuroscientist, and a philosopher. After the video is shown, there will be a general audience discussion of the topics that Dr. Harris discusses in this 23 minute video.