About us
We are an active group of humanists gathering at least once a month in Bristol.
Our regular meetings are on the first Monday of each month (though check website and Meet Up as occasionally it changes, due to bank holidays etc); we hold a talk/lecture/discussion forum on topics broadly related to humanism and now regularly hold get-to-know-you socials. We are now also running a regular film group and book group, which are not listed on Meet Up - if you are interested in joining these then email us at bristolhumanists@gmail.com
Please note that 'joining' on Meet Up is not the same as actually joining Bristol Humanists. You can become a member here https://www.bristolhumanists.com/membership
Our meetings are open to anyone, in the spirit of engagement and public debate. They are FREE if you are a member of Bristol Humanists, or we ask for a £5/£2 (low income rate) donation if not.
If you're not religious and would like to meet like minded people, if you are curious about what humanism is or simply if the theme of the activity of the event is appealing to you, please join us.
We also run the annual Bristol Darwin Day lecture, which happens on/near February 12th (Darwin's birthday). And we now hold another annual lecture in the autumn, the Emma Martin Lecture, to celebrate Bristol's most amazing freethinker, humanist & women's rights campaigner.
Full details of all our activities and how to join are posted on our website http://bristolhumanists.com and Facebook pages https://en-gb.facebook.com/BristolHumanists/
Upcoming events
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Otherlands with Thomas Halliday. the Darwin Day Lecture
Bristol Folk House, 40A Park Street, Bristol, BS1 5JG, GBOtherlands is an epic, exhilarating journey into deep time, showing us the Earth as it used to exist, and the worlds that were here before ours. Travelling back in time to the dawn of complex life, and across all seven continents, award-winning paleobiologist Thomas Halliday gives us a mesmerising up-close encounter with eras that are normally
unimaginably distant. You will be immersed in a series of ancient landscapes, from the mammoth steppe in Ice Age Alaska to the lush rainforests of Eocene Antarctica, with its colonies of giant penguins, to Ediacaran Australia, where the moon was far brighter than it is today. We visit the birthplace of humanity; we hear the crashing of the highest waterfall the Earth has ever known; and we watch as life emerges again after the asteroid hits; and the age of the mammal then dawns. These lost worlds seem fantastical and yet every description is grounded in the fossil record.Otherlands is a remarkable imaginative feat: an emotional narrative that underscores the tenacity of life - yet also the fragility of seemingly permanent ecosystems, including our own. You will see the last 500 million years not as an endless expanse of unfathomable time, but as a series of worlds, simultaneously fabulous and familiar.
The book Otherlands was shortlisted for the Wainwright Prize for Nature Writing, and was a Sunday Times ‘Book of the Year’
"To read Otherlands is to marvel not only at these unfamiliar lands and creatures, but also that we have the science to bring them to life in such vivid detail." New Scientist
".this ...book offers a brilliant series of reconstructions of life in the deep past, richly imagined from the fine details of the fossil record.....as near to the experience of visiting these ancient worlds as you are likely to get." Artsdesk
"Epically cinematic... A book of almost unimaginable riches'" Sunday Times
A best book of the year - Sunday Times, Telegraph, Prospect, The New Yorker and BBC History
Dr Thomas Halliday
is a paleobiologist, specialising in mammal evolution and phylogenetics
(the science of working out how organisms are related). He has been a researcher and a
graduate student at the University of Bristol and at University College London, and as a
postdoctoral researcher at University College London and the University of Birmingham. He was an Honorary Fellow at the University of Birmingham and is an Associate with the Natural History Museum. He is also an international croquet player!Darwin Day
Darwin Day has been celebrated since the 1930's, marking the birthday (Feb 12th) of arguably the world's greatest ever scientist, Charles Darwin, the father of evolution by natural selection. Bristol Humanists has held a Darwin Day annual lecture by a noted scientist for the last 10 years. Significant previous Darwin Day lecturers have included Adam Rutherford, Angel Saini, Nichola Raihani & Anil SethTickets
This is a ticketed event. Tickets available here https://wegottickets.com/event/685110A bookstall will be provided by our partners Heron Books. The bar/cafe of the Folk House will be open beforehand and afterwards. Hot food is available, but needs to be ordered in advance, by emailing folkhousecafe@gmail.com, before Feb 13th . Doors open at 18.00pm.
1 attendee
Past events
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