Hi All,
There are three big events that local humanists are organizing or participating in towards the end of October. On Wednesday night, October 19th the UCSC Secular Student Alliance is holding a debate on the perennial question, "Does God Exist" (details below). Then on Friday night, Oct 21st the newly formed Cabrillo College Secular Student Alliance will hold its first annual Flying Spaghetti Monster Pastafarian Talk and Dress Like A Pirate Spaghetti Dinner on the Cabrillo College Campus (details below). The week will be capped off with the United Nations Association's Annual UN Day Parade down Pacific Ave on Saturday October 22nd. Secular Humanists and Atheists from throughout the Santa Cruz Community will march under our Reason's Greetings Banner as a contingent in the parade (details below). These events will allow humanists, freethinkers, atheists and non-theists to meet and greet one another and hopefully galvanize us to get together more often on an ongoing basis.
Details of the aforementioned events are given below in chronological order.
1) UCSC Secular Student Association Debate: Does God Exist?
A debate between Eddie Tabash & Dr. Peter E. Payne
Wednesday, Oct. 19, 7-9 PM
Stevenson Event Center (Stevenson College)
University of California, Santa Cruz
Eddie Tabash is a constitutional lawyer in Beverly Hills, CA. He graduated magna cum laude from UCLA in 1973 and from Loyola Law School of Los Angeles in 1976. He is a member of the Board of Directors of the Center for Inquiry, and of its affiliate, the Council for Secular Humanism. He is also a life member of American Atheists. His father was an orthodox rabbi, ordained at one of the most respected pre-World War II rabbinical seminaries in Lithuania. His mother was an Auschwitz survivor from Hungary. After decades of spiritual seeking, he has concluded that we live in a natural universe with no supernatural agencies or occurrences. Eddie Tabash has debated such prominent Christian philosophers as Peter Van Inwaagen, William Lane Craig, Douglas Geivett, and Richard Swinburne, and is looking forward to his second debate against Dr. Peter Payne. In this debate, he is formally representing CFI and the Council for Secular Humanism.
Peter Payne is a Christian philosopher and is the Managing Director of the Institute for Credible Christianity. He and his wife, Janet, work with the UCSC Grad Christian Fellowship. He lectures throughout the U.S. and Europe, and participates in debates with prominent atheists. Peter served for 21 years with InterVarsity Christian Fellowship, including work with undergraduates at UC Santa Cruz and Stanford, and later at the Univ. of Michigan with IVCF's grad and faculty ministry. Peter has a BA from Stanford (Philosophy, 1973). He did graduate studies at the Universidad Iberoamericana in Mexico City before completing a doctoral degree at the Claremont Graduate School (Philosophy, 1996). Peter and Janet make their home in Santa Cruz, CA.
Free and open to the public. Please contact ucsc@secularstudents.org for more information.Cabrillo
2) Cabrillo College Secular Student Alliance Flying Spaghetti Monster Pastafarian Dress and Talk Like a Pirate Spaghetti Dinner. Open to the Public, $10 Students, $15 Others
The event will be held Friday Oct. 21st from 7-9 PM in the Cabrillo College cafeteria in Aptos. Parking will be free in the lot right next to the gym on Soquel Dr. Then attendees walk from the lot over the pedestrian bridge that crosses Soquel Dr. straight to the cafeteria, top floor of the building directly on the right after crossing the bridge.
The SSA strongly encourages attendees to dress and talk as a pirate and to enter the pirate costume contest. We hope to get President Brian King to judge the costume contest. Winner of the costume contest gets a small treasure chest with a Jolly Roger lunchbox inside and, I hope, Marini's chocolate coins and maybe a Verizon cell phone.
We're also selling raffle tickets before the event for a 75/25 raffle--$1 per ticket or $5 for 6 tickets. We keep 75% of the money raised from selling the raffle tickets, and the winner gets 25% of the money raised from selling them. We'll draw the winner at the event, but the winner need not be present to win.
If you come to the event, try to bring a non-perishable food item to donate to Second Harvest Food Bank and/or a used, working cell phone to donate to the Walnut Avenue Women's Center. Attendees who bring a food item receive three free raffle tickets. Those who donate a functional cell phone they are no longer using receive five free raffle tickets.
There will be have entertainment by Il Dolce Suono and 88 Keys, the student choral group and student piano club, respectively. They'll be performing pirate and seafaring songs and leading the audience in some of these.
The menu is mostly organic, with some ingredients supplied by Cabrillo Horticulture Dept. and student Permaculture Club's organic garden on campus. That club will be decorating our tables with fall foliage and pumpkins, too. We hope to have the student Metal-Arts Club make and donate to us a lightweight Flying Spaghetti Monster sculpture made of recycled materials. They also hope to have a jewelry-making table at the event. Finally, the student Sustainability Council will have a table and will be selling Cabrillo College GreenSteps logo Chico Bags and signing people up for AlterNetRides.
3) United Nations Association Human Rights Parade
Saturday, Oct. 22nd. The Annual UN Day Parade for Peace, Human Rights and Justice will start at 10:30 AM at Cathcart Street and will finish at Abbott Square on Cooper Street. Contingents should assemble ½ hour beforehand at 10 AM. Humanists and like-minded people will congregate under our Reason's Greetings banner. Let's try to have a large contingent of local humanists and Atheists in attendance!