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| Roundtable |
| Book Club |
| Third Sunday Roundtable |
| Reflections |
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Reflections Meeting
The April 28 Reflections Meeting and potluck lunch will be held at the home of Schera and Ted Lollis, 9219 George Williams Road, Knoxville 37922. Call 865-690-8742 for directions. The topic is "No Magic Bullets: Gun Control Issues After Newtown"
We need no reminders of what happened in Newtown, nor of all the previous mass killings within our memories. Months after the tragedy, social networks, online fora, incessant media coverage still rages even though a legislative proposal on gun control was introduced and hearings have begun in the Senate Judiciary Committee.
How do we as a society make decisions on such emotionally charged, highly complex controversies? Not easily, and frequently not well. Today we’ll share our thoughts, feelings, and opinions here within our safe group.
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS:
How does gun ownership relate to various forms of violence, e.g.: suicides, child abuse, domestic violence? What is the likelihood of a gun owner being shot vs. a non-gun owner?
Could our national “tradition” of killing for food/sport ever be altered/revised?
How can we transform this national debate into a matter of public health and fund substantial medical
research therein?
Can the polar opposites in this debate be reconciled? Or are they as abysmally-stagnant as our political
processes? So gather your thoughts, reflections you’ve had with others, and share them with us today.
Apr. 28, 2013, 1:00pm
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May Refelectiuons Meeting
The April Reflections Meeting topic will be "No Magic Bullets: Gun Control Issues After Newtown". We’ll begin with a pot-luck lunch around 1:00 pm, start our discussion around 1:30 pm. Grab a dish, bag, bottle, or box and join us for this (hopefully not too heated) lively exchange at the home of Schera Chadwick & Ted Lollis. [9219 George Williams Road, Knoxville, TN 37922 Call 865.690.8742 for directions.]
Apr. 28, 2013, 1:00 pm
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First Sunday Meeting
Exploring the Roots of Religion
By Professor John R. Hale
We will watch two lectures on this topic offered by The Teaching Company. These lectures present underlying history and connections in modern religions. They will cover Zoroasteranism, religions in Rome and shed some light on the sources of modern myths.
May 05, 2013, 10:30 AM to 12:30 PM
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Public Lecture
"Science, Philosophy and the Meaning of Life" by Massimo Pigliucci, Professor of Philosophy at City University of New York
Dr. Pigliucci argues that a combination of science and philosophy offers the best possible tool for understanding the world and ourselves. Science provides facts; philosophy leads us to reflect on the values with which to assess them. Over the centuries, the two have become uncoupled. Only by rejoining them can we reach our full potential.
Saturday, May 11, 2 p.m.
Goins Auditorium
Pellissippi State Community College
10915 Hardin Valley Road
Knoxville TN
May 11, 2013, 2 pm
Massimo Pigliucci
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The Skeptic Book Club
“Answers for Aristotle: How Science and Philosophy Can Lead Us to A More Meaningful Life” by professor Massimo Pigliucci. - Barnes and Noble Booksellers, 8029 Kingston Pike, 4:00 pm.
How should we live? According to philosopher and biologist Massimo Pigliucci, the greatest guidance to this essential question lies in combining the wisdom of 24 centuries of philosophy with the latest research from 21st century science.
In Answers for Aristotle, Pigliucci argues that the combination of science and philosophy first pioneered by Aristotle offers us the best possible tool for understanding the world and ourselves. As Aristotle knew, each mode of thought has the power to clarify the other: science provides facts, and philosophy helps us reflect on the values with which to assess them. But over the centuries, the two have become uncoupled, leaving us with questions—about morality, love, friendship, justice, and politics—that neither field could fully answer on its own. Pigliucci argues that only by rejoining each other can modern science and philosophy reach their full potential, while we harness them to help us reach ours.
Pigliucci discusses such essential issues as how to tell right from wrong, the nature of love and friendship, and whether we can really ever know ourselves—all in service of helping us find our path to the best possible life. Combining the two most powerful intellectual traditions in history, Answers for Aristotle is a remarkable guide to discovering what really matters and why. (Amazon Review).
May 12, 2013, 4:00 - 6:00 pm
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Third Sunday Meeting
“Untangling the Place of Kudzu with Southern Culture and History” by Professor Derek H. Alderman, Head of the Dept. of Geography, University of Tennessee. Professor Alderman's talk will examine the invasive kudzu vine from a cultural and historical perspective, emphasizing the changing ways in which people, especially southerners, have identified with and used the plant since its introduction to the US in the later 1800s. Emphasis will be placed on how contemporary southerners have incorporated this exotic organism into their cultural landscape expressions, including the ways in which they talk about the world, public symbols, and even naming patterns. This lecture will provide a fascinating introspection into a very distinctive aspect of southern culture that we seldom consider.
Goins Cafeteria Annex, Pellissippi State Community College.
May 19, 2013, 10:30 am - 12:30 pm
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Reflections Meeting
The May 26 Reflections Meeting and potluck lunch will be held at the home of Schera and Ted Lollis, 9219 George Williams Road, Knoxville 37922. Call 865-690-8742 for directions. The topic is "Are We Compassionate about Individual Rights of Minorities?"
Our nation and many religions profess to respect the rights of individuals and minorities. The American Civil Liberties Union, for example, “works to extend rights to segments of our population that have traditionally been denied their rights.” Yet public opinion often condemns minorities, and it often requires acts of individual courage to defend the rights of the underdog.
o What do we think about immigration and other moral issues of today?
o What do we think about the man on the recent PBS broadcast on the Constitution who said: “Non-Christians don’t have any rights because they are less than five percent of the population”?
o What about the human rights of the two Boston bombers?
o Were the three "Transform Now Plowshares" activists correct to argue in federal court that their civil disobedience at Y-12 was sanctioned by the historic examples of Mahatma Gandhi and the civil rights movement?
This topic is wide open and skirt the boundary (if there is one) between civil rights and personal morality. You may choose to address broad principles or specific examples.
May 26, 2013, 1:00 pm - 4:00 pm
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First Sunday Meeting
“Bright-Sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking
has Undermined America” – a DVD presentation by Barbara Ehrenreich from the Skeptics Society Distinguished Lecture Series.
In this utterly original take on the American frame of mind, Barbara Ehrenreich traces the strange career of our sunny outlook from its origins as a marginal 19th-century healing technique to its enshrinement as a dominant, almost mandatory, cultural attitude. Evangelical mega-churches preach the good news that you only have to want something to get it, because God wants to “prosper” you. The medical profession prescribes positive thinking for its presumed health benefits. Academia has made room for new departments of “positive psychology” and the “science of happiness.” Nowhere, though, has bright-siding taken firmer root than within the business community, where, as Ehrenreich shows, the refusal even to consider negative outcomes — like mortgage defaults — contributed directly to the current economic crisis. With the mythbusting powers for which she is acclaimed, Ehrenreich exposes the downside of America’s penchant for positive thinking: On a personal level, it leads to self-blame and a morbid preoccupation with stamping out “negative” thoughts. On a national level, it’s brought us an era of irrational optimism resulting in disaster.
Location: Goins building cafeteria annex, Pellissippi State Comunity College, 10:30 am - 12:30 pm.
June 02, 2013, 10:30 am - 12:30 pm
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The Skeptic Book Club
“Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed” by Jared Diamond - Barnes and Noble Booksellers, 8029 Kingston Pike, 4:00 pm.
In Jared Diamond’s follow-up to the Pulitzer-Prize winning “Guns, Germs and Steel”, the author explores how climate change, the population explosion and political discord create the conditions for the collapse of civilization
Environmental damage, climate change, globalization, rapid population growth, and unwise political choices were all factors in the demise of societies around the world, but some found solutions and persisted. As in “Guns, Germs, and Steel”, Diamond traces the fundamental pattern of catastrophe, and weaves an all-encompassing global thesis through a series of fascinating historical-cultural narratives. “Collapse” moves from the Polynesian cultures on Easter Island to the flourishing American civilizations of the Anasazi and the Maya and finally to the doomed Viking colony on Greenland. Similar problems face us today and have already brought disaster to Rwanda and Haiti, even as China and Australia are trying to cope in innovative ways. Despite our own society’s apparently inexhaustible wealth and unrivaled political power, ominous warning signs have begun to emerge even in ecologically robust areas like Montana.
Brilliant, illuminating, and immensely absorbing, “Collapse” is destined to take its place as one of the essential books of our time, raising the urgent question: How can our world best avoid committing ecological suicide? (Amazon review)
June 09, 2013, 4:00 - 6:00 pm
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Third Sunday Meeting
“Third Rock from the Sun – a Biography” – a presentation by RET member Ralph Isler . The origin and history of the earth has fascinated people from the earliest civilizations to the present day. Almost all ancient societies have creation mythologies, usually involving supernatural, or at least superhuman, gods. But over the last 150 years or so, modern science has allowed us to produce a detailed, naturalistic, evolutionary history of the earth from its origin 4.57 billion years ago to the present. This undertaking represents the quintessential model for how historical sciences work to illuminate the past. Emphasis will be not only on what we know about the earth’s history but on how science has determined its age, the time of formation of the first oceans, the origins of life, the great extinction events and much more.
Goins Building Cafeteria Annex, Pellissippi State Community College, 10:30 am - 12:30 pm.
June 16, 2013, 10:30 am - 12:30 pm
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