Lunchtime Debating Club - August 2023
Dine, Discuss, and Debate in a friendly environment!
“It is better to debate a question without settling it than to settle a question without debating it.” Joseph Joubert
Dine, Discuss, and Debate in a friendly environment!
Our first Lunchtime Debating Club was a great success, and we've agreed to hold meetings regularly on the second Wednesday of the month. If you would like to join us, or to know more about the Lunchtime Debating Club, please email Reading Humanists at reading@humanistgroups.ork.uk.
The topics we'll be discussing can be seen on the Reading humanists web page: Debating Club - Reading Humanists. You can also read previous contributions and make comments to join in the discussion.
We’ll be informally discussing ideas about human progress, social issues, and human fallibility. If you’re open minded, enjoy a good debate, and interested to learn from the ideas of others, come along to dine and discuss in a local pub. We believe that everyone has something valuable to contribute to the conversation and we would love for you to be a part of it.
The discussion will cover any socially relevant issue. Participants will decide on the topics for discussion based on their interests. From evolution to anthropology, from economics to psychology, from the environment to . . . anything that catches your interest.
Questions we’ve been considering include:
- 1.5 ⁰C is coming, why aren’t we panicking?
- How are humans able to form large scale societies?
- Are democracies capable of addressing long term issues?
- How do we confirm ideas that we’ve read about?
- Can society bear the cost of an ageing population?
- How does progress fit with environmental challenges?
- Why are we all so concerned about Philip Schofield?
If you want to contribute, we’d ask you to prepare something that has fired up your imagination. Contributions might be sharing ideas from a book or article you’ve read, or simply an idea that you’ve researched. Individuals will submit a written summary of their idea before the meal. On the day, the group will question, debate, and assess the implications. If you want to come along to listen and comment, that’s fine too. The aim is to engage a group of like-minded people who enjoy understanding and challenging each other’s ideas.
David Good (Reading Humanists)
Roger Heppleston (Windsor Humanists)
