HUMANISM EXPLORATIONS

July 2020

🌟 HUMANISM EXPLORATIONS🌟 is part of the Center For Inquiry , CFI Rogue Valley Humanists and Freethinkers and RVUUF.

Location: Rogue Valley Unitarian Universalist Fellowship (under the balcony) *

87 Fourth Street, Ashland, Oregon

Meetings are on the first and third Sundays of the month, 3 to 5 p.m.

💡*NOTE: For the foreseeable future, due to pandemic precautions, our meetings will be held via Zoom or Google Meet free online video conferencing applications.

✅ If you would like to receive a ZOOM invitation link please Email: HumanismExplorations@gmail.com.

Humanism Explorations Zoom Meeting for

Sunday July 19, 2020 3 to 5 P.M.

How Can We "Know" What Isn't So?

Do facts really matter?

Why does disconfirming evidence actually strengthen our core beliefs?

May a fact be true for you but not for me?

We live in a "post truth" era of subjective truth, false reporting, with alleged plandemic, climate change, Sandy Hook, pizza gate and even spherical Earth hoaxes. Deep state, QAnon and science denial conspiracies are gaining ascendancy in our culture. Do we have effective remedies? If so, what are they?

See:

Post-truth - Wikipedia

List of conspiracy theories - Wikipedia

Why Facts Don't Convince People (and what you can do about it) (2 1/2 min)

Why you think you're right -- even if you're wrong - TED TALK Julia Galef (11 min)

What to trust in a "post-truth" world - TED TALK Alex Edmans (17 min)

Introduction to Propaganda - Academy of ideas (11 min)

How Should We Respond to People Who Spread Conspiracy Theories? - Psychology Today 5-14-20

The Conspiracy theory Handbook: Free Download


Sunday July 5, 2020 3 to 5 P.M.

Henry David Thoreau

Henry David Thoreau was born 203 years ago this July 12. His books, articles, essays, journals, and poetry total more than twenty volumes and he famously was a friend to the Unitarian minister and literary genius Ralph Waldo Emerson. He inspired both Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King through his essay Civil Disobedience which continues to inspire present day leaders of the Black Lives Matter movement. Thoreau is rightly honored for being an ardent abolitionist, a fiercely independent thinker and a pioneer of the environmental and ecology movements of today, but did he have a dark side and was he really a humanist?

See:

Henry David Thoreau - Wikipedia

Thoreau and Civil Disobedience - (5 min)

POLITICAL THEORY - Henry David Thoreau (5 min)

Henry David Thoreau -- Greatest Quotes (10 min)

The Moral Judgments of Henry David Thoreau: Why, given its fabrications, inconsistencies, and myopia, do we continue to cherish “Walden”? - The New Yorker

In Defense of Thoreau: He may have been a jerk, but he still matters. - The Atlantic

In Defense of Henry David Thoreau: New literary revisionism might make the seer of Walden Pond more relevant to readers today. - Sierra magazine