Secular Sunday #13 – Almost Human

It’s time for another Secular Sunday!

In this issue:

• News
• Upcoming Events
• The Lighter Side
  

News

• Michael Nugent and Jane Donnelly attended a conference in Limerick on religious pluralism in education. They faced something of an uphill battle regarding prejudice against atheists with one conference speaker even insisting that atheists were not fully human! However, they had the opportunity to make some valuable points and raise awareness about atheism and secularism. Read the full report here.
• While in Limerick, Michael and Jane met some local Atheist Ireland members to discuss setting up a Limerick branch in the coming weeks. We hope to have more news on that soon.
• Michael and Jane will be attending a conference this Monday organised by Amnesty International, about the Government’s proposed constitutional convention. This follows on from various meetings and a political briefing in which rights-based NGOs are working together on this issue. We should have a report on this conference next week.
• Our Cork branch now has a phone number: 089-4113099. You can phone, text or email Cork chairperson Joe O’Regan for information or if you want to help out in any way.

Upcoming Events

• Wednesday 28 March, 7.00 pm, National Library of Ireland, Dublin 2 (map)
  Robert Boyle: Step-father to modern evidence-based medicine. Another in the National Library’s “Particles of the Past” series of lectures. Professor Jim Malone, Director of the Robert Boyle Foundation discusses Robert Boyle’s contribution to medicine. All are welcome. No booking required. Read more
• Sunday 1 April, 4:00 pm, Buswell’s Hotel, Dublin 2 (map)
  The Humanist Association of Ireland meets on the first Sunday of every month. There’s currently no news on their Facebook page but reasoning by induction leads us to believe that April’s meeting will take place as normal.

The Lighter Side

Humour can be a great way to make a point and there are quite a few atheist comics on the Internet, if not in your daily paper. So if Garfield doesn’t do it for you any more, here are some of the best atheist and skeptical web comics to check out:

• Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal deals with religion, science, superheroes and relationships. Today’s comic solves the age-old problem of why God permits suffering.
• Jesus and Mo is a highly irreverent strip starring Jesus (yes,that one!) and Mohammed (or at least a body double). Sometimes biting satire, sometimes childish humor, and sometimes a little of both.
• Atheist Cartoons is exactly that. Single-panel one-off cartoons about atheism, often on topical issues.
• The Atheist Pig is about a pig who’s an atheist. (You probably got that from the title!) It’s pretty new but looks very promising.
• Also worth checking out (if not necessarily atheist-themed) are xkcd, Dinosaur Comics, and The Perry Bible Fellowship. If you know of any other web comics that you consider essential reading, don’t keep them to yourself. Let us know and we’ll pass it on to our readers.

If you have any time remaining after gorging yourselves on comic site archives, don’t forget to check out our website and Facebook page for the latest Atheist Ireland news.

Till next time,

Derek Walsh
Editor, Secular Sunday
Atheist Ireland
secularsunday@atheist.ie