Where: 6120 Grove St, Marysville, WA 98270

The Humanists of North Puget Sound and the Witty Humanist Youth will be hosting a seminar by Dale McGowan, author of Parenting Beyond Belief and Raising Freethnkers in Marysville WA on December 11th at 1 p.m. Seating is limited so go tohttp://www.meetup.com/Parenting-Beyond-Belief-seminar-Puget-Sound/ to secure your spot.

Admission is free but we will be accepting donations for local food banks.  We will also be accepting donations to  support our goal bringing great guest to the Puget Sound.

Over nine million parents in the U.S. are raising children without theistic religion. The PARENTING BEYOND BELIEF SEMINAR, a unique half-day workshop with author and educator Dale McGowan, offers encouragement and practical solutions for secular parenting in a religious world.

Based on the freethinking philosophy of the book Newsweek called “a compelling read,” the PARENTING BEYOND BELIEF SEMINAR is empowering secular parents across the country to raise ethical, caring, confident kids without religion.

Participants will learn effective ways to:

• Encourage religious literacy without indoctrination;
• Help kids interact productively with a religious world;
• Help kids develop active moral reasoning;
• Weigh church-state issues in the public sphere;
• Address sensitive issues with religious relatives using the principles of nonviolent communication;
• Help children develop a healthy understanding of death and a joyful love of life;
• Build a family atmosphere of fearless questioning and boundless wonder;

…and much more.

Where: private residence (contact one of board members for address)

On Monday we’ll be having another marketing meeting to continue our work on the bus ad campaign and discuss other marketing action items. Our website, business cards, and tri-fold brochures are in need of an update, and we’d also like to talk about designs/content for additional promotional materials like bumper stickers, t-shirts, cards, buttons, etc. Volunteers are always welcome!

Where: Redmond Library (15990 Northeast 85th Street, Redmond, WA 98052)

Want to see the administrative process in action? Have ideas or volunteer power to offer the board? Come join us at the Redmond Library to see all the exciting decisions the board gets to make. The agenda is below:

Minutes Approval

Treasurer’s Report

Old/Ongoing Business
-       T-shirts – new design – KH
-       Bumper stickers for welcome packet

• price list from FASTSIGNS
• Sticker Robot: www.stickerobot.com

-       Name tags for ambassadors – KH
-       Tri-fold brochures – JB
-       Gift wrapping at B&N – shifts on 12/10, 12/11, 12/17, 12/18, 1100 – 1900
-       Fundraising letter for bus ads – SB/JS
-       Winter Solstice Potluck – HOW is hosting, Dec. 4, 1700 – 2100, 2100 Building
-       Bus ads – report on current campaign – EJ & JB

• Reimburse Kyle, Josh Frost and Mike Wilson
• Media contacts – Bob Seidensticker, Ericka, Kyle
• Website video

-       Atheist Christmas, Dec. 24 – EJ
New Business
-       Newsletter – HA
-       Relay for Life – Rada Bittner-Rozenberg
-       Larger storage unit
-       Ask an Atheists ads – need new ones
-       Stranger ad results – JK
-       DarwinDay – 2100 Building, February 12th

• Schedule planning meetings

-       2012 NW Freethought Conference, Mar. 30 – Apr. 1
-       Facebook – Group or Page?
-       Action items from meetings – JB
-       Ad hoc presentations at meetings
-       Selling merchandise at meetings – what is most effective?
-       SA and 1in4WA websites

• bugs, content, layout changes, etc.
• Need specific action items and deadlines

-       Budget meeting – 08 January 2012, 1130
-       Gift for Tom Flynn, Rich & Deanna

Next Board Meeting
-       08 January 2012, 1300 – 1700, Issaquah Library

Description from the event website:

At the core of our mental lives is a striking contradiction: Although our senses have evolved to give us a detailed perception of the world, as soon as that information hits our brains it becomes biased and distorted, usually without conscious effort. But why? Leading evolutionary theorist Robert Trivers, author of The Folly of Fools, argues that in order to deceive others, we must first deceive ourselves-and we are very good at denying the truth, even when it can have devastating effects. Presented as part of Seattle Science Lectures, with Pacific Science Center and University Book Store. Series sponsored by Microsoft. Series media sponsorship provided by KPLU.

Oh the weather outside may be frightful,

But a holiday party is most delightful!

When: December 4, 2011 at 6:00 p.m.

Where: 2100 Building

RSVP: at the Meetup site

You are invited to join us for our 2011 Winter Solstice Potluck Dinner.  Come and celebrate with your local freethought friends.

This event is always a big hit and we plan to make it even better this year.  Please bring your favorite dish to share.  Bring your own wine or beer. Table service, coffee, and other beverages will be provided.  There will be fun and entertainment!  Join us for the festivities!

This Northwest Freethought Coalition event will be hosted by the Humanists of Washington.

For more information, please contact the Humanists of Washington at humanists@comcast.net

• Date and time: November 19, from 1:00pm – 6:00pm
• This is a potluck event, so bring your favorite dish to share as well as a serving spoon. We’ll supply eating utensils, healthy drinks and condiments.
• The event is indoors at the Si View Community Center (400 SE Orchard Dr, North Bend, WA).

The event day schedule will be as follows:

• 1:00pm – 1:30pm Guests arrive/check-in
• 1:30pm – 2:30pm Potluck meal
• 2:30pm – 3:00pm Presentation and Icebreaker Activities
• 3:00pm – 5:00pm Main Events

Please RSVP at the Meetup.

Tom Flynn has been recounting the history of the year-end holidays – and offering his rollicking rationale for why secular humanists should just sit the merriment out – since his book The Trouble with Christmascame out in 1993. His presentation is now fully illustrated in a lavish PowerPoint presentation containing more than 200 slides. (Fear not, as the angel never really said; some of those slides go by really, really fast.)

In “The Trouble with Christmas” Flynn will examine where our most treasured holiday traditions came from – from the Christ Child to Santa Claus, from the wassail bowl to the tannenbaum – and ask whether there’s still time to send them back. It’s an information-filled, thought-provoking, yet wildly funny audio-visual extravaganza. Missing this presentation would be like getting a lump of coal in your stocking!

Flynn is Executive Director of the Council for Secular Humanism, Editor of Free Inquiry magazine, and Director of the Robert Green Ingersoll Birthplace Museum. He co-founded and was for 13 years co-editor of the newsletter Secular Humanist Bulletin. In 1984, having recently given up his religious beliefs for atheism, Flynn stopped celebrating Christmas because “it was no longer the birthday of anyone I knew.” Flynn urges fellow unbe¬lievers to make themselves more visible by sitting out the winter holidays. He argues that Christmas is too narrowly Anglophile to continue much longer as the compulsory winter holiday of an increasingly diverse America. And he maintains: “Yes, Virginia, believing in the Santa Claus myth is harmful to young people’s mental development.”

After writing The Trouble with Christmas in 1993, Flynn made hundreds of radio and TV appearances in his role as the curmudgeonly “anti-Claus.” A leading authority on the Santa myth, he appeared in A&E Network’s Biography segment on Santa, which has aired hundreds of times. His other books include the science-fiction satire novels Galactic Rapture and Nothing Sacred and the reference work The New Encyclopedia of Unbelief, which he edited.

Meeting Room #2.  Doors open at 6:30 pm; presentation will begin at 7:00 pm.

You can RSVP here, on the Seattle Atheists Meetup Group.

If you are able to volunteer, please contact the coordinator, Jami Blackann.

Play the Seattle Atheists Left Behind commercial (music from DoKashiteru)

It’s October 22, and Harold Camping is trying for a birdie: the world will be ended! Again! What better way to celebrate the terror than by watching a terrible movie? Join us as we exploit our recently purchased public viewing rights to the fullest with a screening of Left Behind, a Christian movie about the apocalypse. We won’t spoil the ending for you, but we’ll tell you this much: that’s a lot of hair gel.

Talking over the movie is highly encouraged. Let’s do this Mystery Science Theater style. In fact, if you’ve seen it before, feel free to prepare yourself with in-depth, incisive commentary on the marked changes in Kirk Cameron’s hair since Growing Pains. We’ll have popcorn and soda and all manner of terrible things to match this terrible movie.  Bring your own bananas.

This will be the official end to our Rapture Relief campaign, which helped spark a Camp Quest in the Puget Sound (thanks to everyone!). A $5 donation would be appreciated.

We have limited space. Please RSVP at the Meetup if you plan to go.If you can’t go, but would like to donate to Camp Quest NorthWest, you can click here:

Bio: Rich Lyons spent 20 years as a minister of the United Pentecostal Church, before a series of events caused him to take a rational look at his faith.

In the following years, he gradually debunked and rejected, one-by-one, the many doctrines of the church where he preached. Eventually, he left that church and finally left faith altogether. That process was quite painful, and resulted in Rich being abandoned by his family and friends, and losing not only his home and job, but also losing a career and a way of life.

Today, Rich and his wife, Deanna Joy, live in Seattle and are active in the atheist and skeptic communities here. They host a podcast called, “Living After Faith,” which addresses the process of coming out of religion, and how to live again after leaving the life of faith.

RSVP here: http://www.meetup.com/seattle-atheists/events/36502392/

We also encourage you to bring canned food items for our year-round Seattle Atheists SeasonLESS Food Drive. We’ll donate the food we collect to Family Works and Volunteers of America food banks in the name of Seattle Atheists.

Food banks everywhere are experiencing a sharp decrease in the amount of food available to hungry families. It’s time to make sure that giving continues, even AFTER the traditional holiday giving season.