What we’re about
Who Are We?
A casual, welcoming community for skeptical freethinkers and secular humanists in Whatcom, Skagit and Snohomish. We meet to question ideas, share our stories, and explore big questions with reason, curiosity, and respectful disagreement. If you enjoy good conversation and open-minded inquiry, you’ll fit right in.
Our Website: SoundViews.Org
For those in Skagit County, please click on the Meetup link below for local meetings:
Skagit County Secular Humanists of North Puget Sound
For those in Snohomish County, please click on the Meetup link below for local meetings:
Snohomish County Freethinkers
Upcoming events
1
Drinking Skeptically: is The World Getting Better? AKA Are You Pink or Gray?
Jalapeños Barkley Village, 2945 Newmarket St Bellingham, WA 98226 USA, Bellingham, wa, USFor our next meeting we will be discussing the hot topic of progress: Is the world getting better or worse? To explore this, we will get our cues from two thinkers who have debated this question very publicly:
- Steven Pinker, Harvard Psychologist, argues that Enlightenment ideas--reason, science, humanism--have produced dramatic and measurable material and moral progress for humanity.
- John Gray, philosopher formerly of the London School of Economics, is a well-known critic of the Enlightenment who claims that "progress" is a myth inherited from religion. Humans, he says, are fundamentally the same as they have always been; nothing important really changes much.
What do you think? Do you see the world through Pink(er)-colored glasses or is your world Gray?
To get into the debate, check out these two short pieces:
Gray's opening salvo:
John Gray: Steven Pinker is wrong about violence and war
And then Pinker's response:
Guess what? More people are living in peace now. Just look at the numbers
If you want to go deeper, you can also explore each author's book-length treatments.
Pinker
Enlightenment Now
The Better Angels of our Nature
Gray
Straw Dogs
False Dawn6 attendees
Past events
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