Monthly Meetings

Secular Humanists of the South Carolina Midlands usually meets on the Sunday following the third Saturday of each month.  Meetings normally include a short business session, during which plans are adopted for local projects and special events, followed by a guest speaker, a panel discussion, a movie, and/or a debate.

May Meeting:

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Jonathan Miller, as part of the making of the highly acclaimed BBC series, A Brief History of Disbelief, filmed conversations with some very distinguished minds.  Jonathan, of course, could not resist the temptation to make these conversations wide ranging and so – naturally enough – their final contributions to the BBC series are only a small part of the original interviews. 

Now this six-part series, exclusively available from Alive Mind, is an opportunity to see and hear the conversations at much greater length as Jonathan Miller goes head to head with Daniel Dennett, Denys Turner, Richard Dawkins, Colin McGinn, Arthur Miller and Steven Weinberg.  More often than not, modern television documentaries are forced, for perfectly acceptable reasons, to discard most of the contributions harvested during the making of the programs.  Now, for the first time, Alive Mind is offering the audience the opportunity to see the original contributions in their “original” context and to see a “director’s cut” of these conversations between Jonathan and his distinguished cast. 

This is a series of half hour conversations between fascinating and intelligent minds.  It is designed to appeal to the viewers who, provoked by the contributions to A Brief History of Disbelief, will want to hear what these distinguished minds have to say in a more discursive environment.  However, it’s also designed to appeal to those who might not have watched the series but who would simply be fascinated to listen to what these individuals had to say. 

 

Sunday's free screening will consist of Jonathan Miller's interviews with Richard Dawkins, Denys Turner, and Daniel Dennett. 

Richard Dawkins hardly needs an introduction, and you might have thought that you have heard all you need to from this Oxford Professor who seems to have made it his life’s work to publicly tackle religion wherever he finds it.  Oddly enough though, in this intimate conversation over coffee, filmed in the relaxing atmosphere of Jonathan’s own kitchen, Dawkins displays a gentler and more contemplative side and reveals the deep religious convictions of his youth. 

“Between 9 and 15, I was pretty devout.  I ... got confirmed, I used to pray, I used to ... have little fantasies at school, in boarding school, sort of creeping down to the chapel and praying and having sort of visions of angels and things.” 

But he and Jonathan also discuss the difficult rough edges of Darwin’s theories and develop the argument, touched upon in Jonathan’s discussion with Daniel Dennett, about the extent to which it is necessary or important to challenge religion and religious people.
 

Denys Turner, the Cambridge theologian and Professor of Divinity, argued with Jonathan the case for and against atheism, in an intellectual struggle that lasted, in its entirety, two full and exhausting hours.  But they enjoyed themselves immensely without ever coming to any agreement.  The conversation was complex and dense and defied simplification.  As a result it was not used.  But this half-hour version gives these two mental gymnasts enough room to entertain us with the kind of questions that Denys feels are seldom if ever asked by scientists and sceptics, because they know that they have no simple answers – questions like “Why is there anything – rather than nothing at all?” 

Denys:  “Well I think that you've got to find a way of avoiding a certain kind of question if you're going to be a proper card-carrying atheist.  Marx once said that each age asks only such questions as it can answer and it’s the cutting back on the agenda of questions which seems to me to be the important issue here.” 

Jonathan:  “But if you can ask the question, ‘why is there anything at all?’, and your answer seems to be there is something which accounts for it (i.e.: God), then I find myself asking ‘well why is there God then?’  Why does the question not go into a series of infinite regresses asking the question about why the cause of it all or the bringer about of it all does not itself, himself, or herself require some sort of explanation?” 

Denys:  “But now, you see, you and I are at least engaged in an argument!” 

Filmed in the surprisingly modern, glass and steel office of this contemporary theologian, this conversation is both provocative and challenging.
 

Daniel C. Dennett is a high octane American philosopher with an acerbic mind and a wicked sense of humor.  His books, Darwin’s Dangerous Idea, Consciousness Explained, and Freedom Evolves, are international best sellers.  In his conversation with Jonathan, Dennett explains how Darwin’s theories unravelled the religious mindset. 

“Darwin really broke the dam for disbelief”, he expands on his famous theory of Skyhooks & Cranes – the competing miraculous and rational explanations of phenomena – and he discusses the extent to which people need “magic” in their lives.  Between them, Jonathan and Daniel discuss whether, as sceptics, they should resist the temptation to be as rude as they would like to be towards believers:  “I mean we don’t tell fat people they’re fat, we don’t tell ugly people they’re ugly, we don’t, we don’t – everyday we could go around saying things to people's faces that would be perfectly true and we could prove them and it would just be really mischievous … but there are times when I think it would be much better if we were a lot franker and ruder about religious belief.”  And they wonder whether or not there will ever be a world without religion. 

Daniel:  “I think a lot of people want their life to have a meaning.” 

Jonathan:  “Yes, but there must be something better than religion.” 

Daniel:  “Yes, we certainly hope there is.  What’s it going to be?”

 

Join us Sunday afternoon for a free screening of the interviews of three of the thought-provoking scholars included in the series, The Atheism Tapes. 

Attendees will be offered the opportunity to purchase the complete set of The Atheism Tapes at a 15% discount. 

Directions to Meeting Place

FROM DOWNTOWN COLUMBIA:  Take Huger Street or Elmwood Avenue onto I-126.  Take the Greystone Blvd. Exit and turn right, at the end of the exit ramp, onto Greystone Blvd.  Follow Greystone Blvd. until it runs into Broad River Road.  Turn left onto Broad River Road and go to the next traffic light.  Turn right onto Means Avenue.  The second building on the left is 1313 Means Avenue.

I-26, FROM CHARLESTON:  Take Exit 108 to Bush River Road and turn right at the end of the exit ramp.  Take Bush River Road until runs into Broad River Road.  Turn right onto Broad River Road and go to the next traffic light.  Turn left onto Means Avenue.  The second building on the left is 1313 Means Avenue.

I-26, FROM SPARTANBURG:  Take the Bush River Road Exit and turn left at the end of the exit ramp.  Take Bush River Road until it runs into Broad River Road.  Turn right onto Broad River Road and go to the next traffic light.  Turn left onto Means Avenue.  The second building on the left is 1313 Means Avenue.

I-20, FROM FLORENCE:  Take the Broad River Road Exit and turn left at the end of the exit ramp.  Take Broad River Road until you go through the traffic light where Bush River Road runs into Broad River Road on your right.  Continue on to the next traffic light.  Turn left onto Means Avenue.  The second building on the left is 1313 Means Avenue.