Donate blood at any Puget Sound Blood Center. A group donation with dinner to follow will be held at the Bellevue donation center. Contact Jerry for more info. Visit PSBC for blood center hours and locations.

Where: Puget Sound Blood Centers
When: Thursday, May 6 from 5:30 p.m. to 6:30 p.m.
Register at http://www.psbc.org

NOTE: If you have concerns about transportation to/from any of our events, please contact Becky, Member Relations committee chair, at secretary@seattletheists.org.

Seattle Atheists member Casey Doran will present a talk entitled “Epistemology: A Critical Approach to Apologetics” for our March membership meeting.

This presentation will be a basic overview of the philosophical notion of epistemology, more commonly known as the “theory of knowledge,” and how thinkers from Ancient Greece to the Enlightenment and through the Modern Era have approached the question of how it is that we come to “know” anything. Casey will focus specifically on belief as a component of knowledge, how all of us (atheists included) rely heavily on beliefs to understand the world around us, and how standards of evidence that we use to justify our beliefs can differ drastically. Lastly, he will address common theological arguments and help arm quick-witted atheists with some counter-apologetics when someone claims to *know* that “God exists.”

Following a Q&A session with Casey, we will have a short break and reconvene for our Membership Volunteer Fair. This is a great opportunity to learn about how you can participate in the wide range of activities, events, and projects Seattle Atheists is embarking on this year!

We encourage you to bring non-perishable food items for our year-round Seattle Atheists SeasonLESS Food Drive. We donate items we collect to Family Works, Northwest Harvest, and Volunteers of America food banks in the name of Seattle Atheists.

Seattle Atheists will be donating over $800 to The Childrens Hospital Fund thanks to the efforts of gift wrappers and the generosity of all the bookstore patrons who donated!  Also this month Seattle Atheists collected 57 lb. of food for Northwest Harvest.  Thank you, and remember to bring non-perishable goods to SA meetings and events!

In his Jan. 20 letter to the Tacoma News Tribune, Brad Elken asks of the crisis in Haiti, “Where are the atheists?”

Atheists are precisely where we’ve always been: giving what help we can to people who need it. Countless atheists and free-thought organizations have united under the aegis of Richard Dawkins’ Non-Believers Giving Aid, a multi-organizational drive to raise money for the people affected by the terrible earthquake in Haiti. Together, we’ve already raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for two admirable secular organizations: the International Red Cross and Doctors Without Borders.

True to the message of the holiday sign we placed outside of the Capitol building this past year, Seattle Atheists extends its resources and thoughts to those suffering, regardless of creed, belief, or religion. For the past several years, we’ve raised thousands of dollars for Seattle Children’s Hospital, we donated a large sum of money after the 2005 tsunami, we organize a year-round blood drive, and a year-round SeasonLESS Food Drive, which provides food throughout the year — not just during the traditional holiday giving season. We have a project underway now to donate books to our troops overseas with Operation Paperback.

Unlike the religious groups mentioned by Mr. Elken, these organizations do not proselytize or use tragedies as an easy opportunity to convert vulnerable people. Christian organizations are exploiting the situation in Haiti by distributing solar-powered talking Bibles. The Haitian people don’t need bibles — they need clean water, food, and shelter. They need doctors, medicine, engineers, and aid workers to rebuild their country. They do not need faith-based opportunists who are already using the crisis as if it were a fire sale for religious conversion and salesmanship. They don’t need organizations that use charity as a Trojan horse to spreading their beliefs to vulnerable people.

The earthquake in Haiti was a tragedy, not an opportunity. Access to the country is limited right now. Every evangelist getting off the plane takes the place of a doctor. Every Bible is crowding out medical supplies.

Let’s be good for goodness’ sake.

The Board of Seattle Atheists

To ensure rapid response to this tragedy, we would like our readers to donate immediately to any of the following charities working right now to help the people of Haiti:

Humanist Charities Haiti Earthquake Relief Fund

We urge all members of the humanist and freethought community to join us in the relief effort. You can make a donation to the Humanist Charities’ Haiti Earthquake Relief Fund online, or by calling 1-800-837-3792.

The Center for Inquiry

CFI is accepting disaster-relief donations through its S.H.A.R.E. program to support those providing care to the survivors of the magnitude-7 earthquake. 100 percent of all donations will be sent directly to the secular aid group Doctors Without Borders, which suffered the loss of all
three of its medical facilities and is working against difficulties to provide the basics of first-aid care and stabilization.

Please make your contribution to S.H.A.R.E. here. All funds sent to S.H.A.R.E. are tax
exempt in the United States.

Red Cross

Donate to the American Red Cross Haiti Relief Fund here:
http://american.redcross.org/

Additional charites:

MADRE
Partners in Health
Doctors Without Borders
Americares
International Relief Teams
Mercy Corps

Operation Paperback collects gently used books and sends them to American troops deployed overseas. Since 1999, we have shipped over 950,000 books to locations around the globe.

Many of our troops are serving far from home and living in facilities that provide few of the comforts of home. At the end of the duty day, the opportunity to escape into a good book is welcomed. Every week we receive thanks from troops who are glad to be appreciated and remembered.

Our service members make sacrifices every day for our country. It takes so little to let them know that we appreciate what they are doing for us. When you donate to Operation Paperback, you will let our troops know that you support them, and you have not forgotten them.

To get a head start collecting books at home, here are some instructions:

Troops have requested the following genres: action, bestsellers, biographies and memoirs, fantasy, history, horror, mysteries, science-fiction, true crime. Do not send romances unless specifically requested by the individual! Our troops have received a disproportionate amount of this genre and they aren’t very happy about it. Be sure that the books you collect are in very good condition.

Downtown Borders Books & Music:

Mon., Dec. 21, 3 p.m. to 7 p.m.
Wed., Dec. 23, 11 a.m. to 3 p.m.
Thurs, Dec. 24, 11 a.m. to 3 p.m.

For information on how to be involved, contact Wendy at (425) 269-9108. For more information, visit the event’s Meetup site.