Secular Sunday #24 – Body and Bloom

Time for another Secular Sunday!

In this issue:

• News
• Upcoming Events
• Bloomsday Blasphemy

News

• The International Eucharistic Congress has opened in Dublin to protests by SOCA (Survivors of Child Abuse) and LGBT Noise among others. SOCA were demonstrating against the refusal of Sean Brady to resign as Primate of All Ireland given his role in covering up and enabling sexual abuse of children by priests, while LGBT Noise were protesting the ongoing efforts by the Catholic Church to oppose equal civil rights for LGBT people.
• There are some more videos from last month’s European Atheist Convention: Taslima Nasreen, Tanya Smith and PZ Myers Q&A.

Upcoming Events

• Thursday 14 June, 6:00 pm, Science Gallery, Dublin 2 (map)
• “Charles Darwin and the Question of Design in Nature”. Professor John Hedley Brooke will be talking about the collision of art, science, religion and nature. The event is free but booking is essential. More details
• Friday 15 June, 8:00 pm, Blackrock Castle Observatory, Cork (map)
  “So You Think You Own Your Body?” Cork Skeptics will be hosting bioethicist Dr. Muireann Quigley who will be speaking about the changing role of the body and human biomaterials in a rapidly developing biotechnological world. More details. Facebook event page
• Saturday 16 June, 6:30 pm, TOG, Dublin Hackerspace, Dublin 8 (map)
  “So You Think You Own Your Body?” Details as above, but with Dublin skeptics. Facebook event page
• Wednesday 20 June, 8:00 pm, Absolute Hotel, Sir Harry’s Mall, Limerick (map)
  The Mid West Humanists will be meeting. All are welcome.
• Thursday 21 June, 7:30 pm, The Bankers, Dublin 2 (map)
  The monthly meeting of Dublin Atheists in the Pub. We’ll have more details soon.
• Saturday 30 June, 10:00 am, Teachers Club, Parnell Square, Dublin 1 (map)
  Dublin Offlines: Speaking out against the Scientology cult Ex-members of the cult of Scientology speak out against its fraud and abuse. Facebook event page

Bloomsday Blasphemy

Next Saturday is Bloomsday, a celebration of James Joyce’s masterpiece Ulysses. The Bloomsday Festival in Dublin runs from today until the 16th. Details

To celebrate, here’s a particularly blasphemous section of that great book:

The Ballad of Joking Jesus

I’m the queerest young fellow that ever you heard
My mother’s a Jew, my father’s a bird.
With Joseph the Joiner I cannot agree
So here’s to disciples and Calvary.

If anyone thinks that I amn’t divine
He’ll get no free drinks when I’m making the wine
But have to drink water and wish it were plain
That I make when the wine becomes water again.

Goodbye, now, goodbye! Write down all that I said
And tell Tom, Dick, and Harry I rose from the dead.
What’s bred in the bone cannot fail me to fly
And Olivet’s breezy… Goodbye, now, goodbye!

Till next week,

Derek Walsh,
Editor, Secular Sunday
Atheist Ireland