Minutes of the May meeting of the Niagara Secular Humanists

Date: May 12, 2010

Time: 7:00 PM

Location: North China Buffet, St Catharines

Attending: 6 members and 17 non-members

1. President Horst Klaus brought the meeting to order.

2. Treasurer Roy Blake reported that $67.00 had been collected at the last meeting. A $100.00 donation had been made to AAI and $42.00 had been spent on meeting expenses.

3. Horst introduced Don Cullen, the celebrated theatrical personality, radio/TV writer and performer including 80 appearances on Wane & Shuster plus a Broadway stint in Beyond The Fringe.

4. Don’s topic was “The Need for Narrative in Humanism”. He began by saying that Christians have a wonderful narrative saying that “God created the universe in order to play chess with Satan”. We should learn more about their narrative and note where it deviates from reality. We should also learn our own rich narrative which began with Thales in 600 BCE who said “Natural causes to natural events”. Or Protagoras who said “Man is the measure of all things”. Erasmus, the first to use the word “humanist” said “Common humanity should unite us”. Then he moved on to David Hume and finally the great scientists finishing with Darwin. He finished his talk with the account of George W. Bush’s phone call to French president Jacques Chirac in which he said to Chirac that “Gog and Magog are about to destroy Israel”.

5. He ended his presentation by reading some poetry from his collection “The Bohemian Embassy: Memories and Poems”. Don ran the coffee shop where Margaret Atwood read poetry and Joni Mitchell and Gordon Lightfoot got their start.

6. After the talk, Don sold copies of his book.

7. The meeting ended at 9:00 PM.