Our inaugural meeting was held Oct. 15 from 7:30 to
almost 11:00. We had 10 people attend, there were approximately five
individuals who thought they might make it but were unable to for various
reasons. Thankfully several people unexpectedly brought friends and
family. This is an excellent starting point. Some people even
showed up early.
Kevin had asked several questions, about goals, format, etc. so I prepared a
rough agenda, on which we covered the several few items.
We did go around the table and introduced ourselves. Several people came
out of curiosity. Being concerned about the dynamics of a large group of
people who know each other, I have intentionally not been telling many of my
friends about the meeting. Of the people I did not know, almost everyone
was either someone from meetup.com or their friends or family.

We discussed skeptics vs. atheists. There were at least two people who
are not atheists, so it was good to discus the difference between skepticism
and atheism and that all skeptics are not atheists. We do not want the discussion to get bogged down on just
religion or to make people with a belief God feel excluded. When the
discussion turns to religion all other conversations stop.
We had a long brainstorming session about possible topics, generating
way too
many topics. Several people expressed interest in going to a haunted
house or ghost hunting, and investigating Saskatchewan folklore. We
also discussed having a film or youtube clips and discussing them.
In the end people felt that we should strive for variety (as
the discussion list can attest) and contradictorily focus. Most importantly people wanted to learn and
T-Shirts.
As we adjourned it was decided to keep the momentum and have
our next meeting in two weeks (Oct. 29) at Amigo’s
Everyone appeared to have a good time and stayed to the end.
I am a bit concerned that Amigo’s back room is a bit hard to
find. I added detail to the room
location on the web site and booked the room under the Saskatoon Skeptics. 
Future topics for discussion:
- Lunar Landing Hoax
- Chiropracty
- Homeopathy
- Public funds paying for
alternative medicine
- The health care system
- Logical fallacies vs. the
scientific methods
- The young offenders act/does
our prison system work
- Where do morals come from
- Are Richard Dawkins' Memes
real
- Housing crisis
- Saskatchewan folklore
- Synchronicity/deja vue
- Media concentration/fear
uncertainty and doubt/bias
- 9/11 truthers and how they
have effectively been shut down
- Slacker uprising
- Al Gore/Global warming, will
it destroy the earth?
- Evolution Vs Creationists/Intelligent
Design
- Fossil Gap
- Sex education in school
- Intelligent Design movement
- Animal rights
- Stem cell research
- HPV vaccine
- Over population
- Definition of evidence
- Are Saskatchewan people
sexually repressed
- Abortion/When does a person
become a person?
- Cloning
- Genetically modified food
- Is there something with the
full moon
- Feminist myths.
;) |