Norman Ralph

Thanks to an invite from Kieran today, I have just started looking into the world of Google Wave – the real-time collaboration and communication application from Google. It is still in beta form and as such does not have all the features you would expect from the full commercial product. It is missing a lot of the customisation options that Google tends to include with its offerings.

Having only used Wave for a about an hour, I really can see some great potential in what it can do. I think this application will totally change the way that A-Soc and maybe the AHS can do business and conduct meetings, increasing participation and allowing a far more flexible approach to committee meetings in particular. Combining video and voice conferencing with the ability to attach documents, links and other bits to each thread in real-time is soemthing that I think will be of great benefit.

Of course, I do not have that many contacts to share with at the moment to test out a lot of the features and to see if this kind of application is something I would use on a regular basis. Potential is one thing, actually using it daily is another. I am a signed up user of Google Docs, Spotify, Last.fm etc and barely use them (witht he exception of last.fm when on the train).

If you want an invite to join me on Google Wave then contact me with your email and how collaborating with me would be useful to us both. If you are already on Wave and want me to add you to my contacts, again contact me with your details.

I hope to let you all know how using Wave fares as I am really quite excited about it.

After spending three years at univeristy in Leeds, two years living with me, one year working as a developer in York and countless drunken escapades, Michelle is finnaly jetting off to pastures new. She starts her PGCE at the University of Lancaster in September and is heading home to Jersey this week, leaving West Yorkshire (forever?).

Just got back from celebrating Sophie’s 21st birthday at D-Fusion in Leeds. D-Fusion is a karaoke bar/restaurant/night club and is well worth a punt if you are bored or just love singing in public! Drinks are reasonably priced for this kind of place and the staff seem really friendly. Their song collection appeared to be particularly weak to start with, the book of songs being very thin. However, the manager informed me that they had over 20,000 songs on their karaoke control machine and that they could find any song we requested.

With this being a Tuesday night, many of the faces were from A-Soc and a few of the committee got the ball rolling in terms of singing, Zoltan biting the bullet and getting up first.

The night was good, although I left relatively early as had just compelted a 12 hour shift at work and I am due back at work in less that 8 hours! Luckily I have a half day, finishing around lunchtime but back for 12 hours on Thursday to try and make an imapct on the backlog we have built up.

I have been involved in the atheist community for a little over four years now and I have often pondered the question on how atheists and humanists can actually convince other people that their worldview is just as fulfilling and worthwhile as any other, particularly the religious world views.

I first dabbled in an organised atheist society when I joined Leeds Atheist Society, the student society for atheists and associated free thinkers at the University of Leeds. Drawn by the prospect of heated debate and intellectual stimulation I quashed the feeling of unease that most atheists have at the back of their minds when considering any form of organisation for atheists. Within a few months I had converted to a believer in the necessity and usefulness of a society for atheists. This conversion enabled me to take on more and more responsibility within the organisation, delivering talks and lectures and after six months I was elected Secretary. This committee position meant that I now had to consider not only what I wanted from the society but how the society should develop and what it should provide for its members. This led me to first really think about the atheist brand and how best to sell the worldview that excludes a supreme being or beings, that excludes absolute morality and embraces rational, sceptical thought as its cornerstones.

The year I served as Secretary saw Leeds Atheist Society develop some tools with which to answer these questions, namely the One Life course aimed at non self-identifying atheists on how a secular world view could offer the same benefits and comfort as a religious one. The society itself also tried to start opening up its appeal to a wider audience by reducing the reliance on anti-religion themes and embracing a more educational feel to its meetings.

Whilst a lot was achieved, I felt more could be done to increase the appeal of the society to religious students as well as our traditional base, the atheists and agnostics. It was on this agenda that I ran for President in April 2008; as ever in a small society, the competition for committee places was low and I was elected unopposed to run the group.

The year I was in presidency saw a lot of changes to the attitudes and direction of the society. We introduced a second and third course, Perspective and Answers respectively. The former gave a soapbox to a different religious speaker each week to give a talk and explain their world view and then accept questions from the audience. The purpose of this course was to promote understanding of the world views that we are trying to compete with. The course was a resounding success and really helped develop our image on campus. Answers was a course designed to develop the debating and speaking skills of our members so that they had the ability to discuss their own world view with a sound understanding of what it was they actually believed.

The whole year had a very education theme to it, with many talks and debates on important moral and ethical issues as well as trying to define exactly what it meant to hold an atheist world view.

Through my work with Leeds Atheist Society, I got involved with setting up the National Federation of Atheist, Humanist and Secular Student Societies (AHS) and ended up serving as its president for seven unforgettable months. The AHS raised many questions around the idea of selling the atheist world view. One of our main aims was to promote and facilitate the formation of new societies across the UK.

Alongside the formal involvement with the atheist community which fired by interest in the idea of developing the atheist brand, I have had the pleasure of working with a number of other people that have also had a passion for the question. My friend and colleague at Leeds Atheist Society and the AHS, Chris Worfolk, is a keen believer in the idea of spreading the atheist and particularly the humanist world view through charitable work and direct action. Chris, through his foundation, has set up and continues to be heavily involved with the Humanist Action Group, Leeds Skeptics as well as serving as president of the Leeds Atheist Society whilst a student and sitting as a trustee of the AHS since his graduation. His article in the inaugural edition of Secular Future (the AHS’s quarterly newsletter) was the spark that ignited my desire to document my grappling with this topic.

Chris believes that the only way to develop the atheist and humanist brand is to compete directly with the religious brands. That means offering the rewards that can be found by being involved with those ideas. Humanist Action Group offers a range of charitable activities with its current focus being on feeding the homeless of Leeds and offering community services such as graffiti removal. Leeds Skeptics provides an environment for sceptical discussion and a number of social opportunities too.

Richard Parker, medical doctor and co-founder of Humanist Action Group, is another friend and colleague that believes quite strongly in community action to help sell the atheist and humanist world views. Richard considers that one of the best ways to build the brand is to make an impact on both the practical and political fronts. Richard’s has long considered how he can make the difference by being involved with local and national government.

Whilst community action and involvement are clearly practical ways to offer the physical rewards that religious charity offers its followers I am left feeling that there needs to be more effort made to compete with the spiritual and emotional needs of adherents to a secular world view.

Religion offers a number of benefits that atheists cannot compete with; eternal life, salvation, love, forgiveness, security and absolute truth being a few examples. Whilst academically an atheist or humanist can refute the philosophy of the examples, they cannot offer an alternative. It is no good for an atheist to say they eternal life is a fiction and that absolute truth is a myth if they cannot offer a suitable alternative. In many ways, belief in these ideals is like an addiction. The believers are unwilling to cold turkey; they do not want to just give up their warm, fuzzy feelings of comfort and easy answers. They need an alternative, they need something to help wean them off a religious world view that, most surveys say, their adherence to is cursory and towards the atheist or humanist one.

Many atheists will not agree with that conclusion as they feel that an atheist’s role is not to convert people to “atheism” and on the whole I agree with them. The issue here is that I am not advocating conversion but merely the recognition by the majority that their apparent world view does not actually explain how they see the world.

The biggest question of all is what can we use to replace those emotional and spiritual crutches outlined above? My gut instinct is the same now as it was during my time as officer of the Leeds Atheist Society, education. Educating people about what atheists thing and believe, what it means to be a humanist, how a life as a non-believer is richer and more rewarding that the alternative.

I would urge fellow atheists and humanists to accept this challenge and start teaching people what it is you believe, not what you don’t believe!

I am using this site less and less to update the blogosphere of my daily activities, so I think a change of direction is necessary to make sure that this site doesn’t become a ghost town.

I haven’t blogged in a while so i will just bring everyone up to date:

1) I have had to take some time out from my studies to address a few situations, namely my finances. This credit crunch is a real bitch. Sidetracking slightly, why is it a credit crunch exactly? What’s crunching?

2) As a result of my sabbatical from university, I have had to step down from my roles within both the AHS and Leeds Atheist Society. This was a massive disappointment for me as long term readers will be aware I have been involved with both organisation since their inception. I hope to contine playing a role in some sort of capacity, even if just as a regular old member. The main issue being my need to give the leadership room to develop their own style and direction.

3) I have gone full time with my job at O2. I am now a performance adviser and basically I do the same job, with more responsibility for no extra reward. Well I technically get increased job satisfaction and a job i enjoy most of the time, but not exactly going to make a dent in the old finances!

4) I have moved in with Liz, just the two of us, into a nice little cottage in the Seacroft area of Leeds. It is one of the original village buildings from before they added all the council estates that now mean that Seacroft is a suburb of Leeds rather than its own little village.

5) As a result of the above, I have less than I used to to write about on here, hence the need for a wholsesale change in direction.

I would like to start concentrating on developing a few ideas I have for essays and the like on my particular subjects of choice, i.e. management, secularism, atheism and humanism. Some of this blog is going to get dedicated to that and related stuff, like pics, tweets etc. I also think I am going to put some more syndications on here, sharing posts and ideas by other atheist writers, bloggers and speakers.

I have also started thinking recently about whether there is scope to get more involved in actually devleoping the atheist movement into one that makes a real difference. Chris has focussed in on Humanist Action Group and is working towards turning that into a real charity. Whilst I could piggy back on to that, I wonder whether I could ever really make a difference. My areas of interest is with young people, I think it with this group that real difference can be made. I used to do a lot of work with Lancashire County Council and their youth and community section. I was involved in a number of youth participation programmes too. I also wonder whether I could use some of my contacts in parliament to do soemthing with lobbying and maje a difference that way.

Well as you can see, there are a number of directions this blog could take. I don’t know yet which one I fancy, or which one will come to fruition. Maybe inspiration will hit me, or maybe I will try all of them until I get one that works!

That’s right folks, normanralph.com is two years old today!

I am actually a little shocked about that fact to be honest. I really didn’t think when I posted that very first time that I would still be blogging two years later!

A lot has happened in thos two years, although not as much as maybe I had hoped for really. I am still studying, working for not a huge amount of money, living like a student, still rather hefty in shape but then I have developed a long term relationship, learned so much about so many things through uni and work, formed and run a national representational organisation, set the ground work for a charitable venture (more on that in the future, it’s all a bit hush hush at the moment) and made some great new friends.

Anyway, it’s cake time now!

There is a saying that goes “another day, another dollar” and it seems only fitting that I begin my review of 2008 with a quote regarding time and money. 2008 has been a mixed bag of a year, like most years it cam with its ups and downs. The news stories of the year reflect this, with Team GB performing heroics in Beijing and then the economic issues of the last quarter. I hope the rest of this post reflects this theme.

January
Exams were the order of the day at the opening of 2008. never a good start. Although this particular bunch of exams went pretty well and helped set up a relatively successful second semester on my new course. A-Soc kicked off its second full year with its first event of 2008, the low turnout not indicating the successes to follow. January aslo saw Chris finally lose his virginity at Wendy House.

February
Darwin Day 2008 was supposed to be the highlight of February, but it got somewhat overshadowed by Sarann’s secret affair! The planning of Rationalist Week seems to get earlier and earlier and we officially kicked off the organisation of A-Soc’s flagship event on the 13th February. Somehow, I also managed to fit in a well deserved few days away with Liz in the lake District – you cannot beat walking, relaxing and real ale by the fire to wash away exam and coursework stress! The Union’s political machinations also culminated with me being dubbed “Norman the No! Man” due to my inability to sit back and watch debates go undebated, regardless of my actual view points.

March
One of the coups of 2008 came when Si finally succumbed to peer pressure and started blogging! In another blow for democracy, my decision to stand for Faith and Culture rep for the Union was rebuked as I was effectively blocked from standing (or voting). My main memory of March, however, was the setting up of Secular Portal, which would ultimately turn into my current project, the AHS.

April
Rationalist Week 2008. Need I say much more about how awesome April was? Except for everything that went wrong it was a great success! The icing on the cake was being elected president of A-Soc at the AGM. We managed to recruit a decent sized committee and really was the icing on the cake as far as the success of A-Soc in the first half of 2008.

May
it seems I didn’t blog about very much in May. Probably down to the exams etc that I was taking, along with recovering from April!

June
I started work with O2 at the beginning of June and spent most of the month training for my new role. I did manage to squeeze in a few social activities too, brewing my own ale for the SoC graduation reception was a particular highlight. I also went to see Avril Lavigne perform in Manchester, which was also pretty awesome. I also moved out of the house I had lived in for three of my four years at university.

July
Work and parties seemed to be the order of the day this month in 2008.

I’m going to stop splitting up the months for the second half of 2008 as I didn’t actually spend much time bloggine. Really, I worked near enough all summer – managing a day off for V Festival – either at O2 or putting together Intro Week for A-Soc.

Part of me thinks I should write here what happened in the couple of months I wasn’t blogging, but I feel that it wouldn’t do it justice. It wasn’t until December that I began blogging again, inspired by the relaunch of the site and our end of year festivities.

Hopefully, I will continue this new found blogging activity into 2009.

My marks out of ten for 2008 as a year, a good 7.

So, yeah, last night was our New Year’s Eve party in Leeds. A well attended event considering that most people are home with their family and “real” friends that was dominated by a couple of events. Firstly, our living room flooded, a direct result of the second event – our first ever communal shower! Eight of us decided that alcohol and partying had progressed as far as it could and the next logical step was a semi-naked (and mostly naked in Michelle’s case) communal shower. Keep your eyes peeled for the exclusive pay-per-view site containing the pictures and videos!

It was definitely a good night all round and I now definitely feel closer to my house mates than ever before! It was also the first A-Soc event of 2009, seeing as the majority of the guests sit or have sat on the committee. We atheists really do have it larger.

Although, having said all that we all know that parties are just an excuse for recovery steak the morning after and as such we all headed to the Deer Park for our steak. Even the 45 minute wait on food didn’t dampen the excitement and meaty goodness of a well cooked bit of steak. Mmmm, steak, drool.

Friday night saw two landmarks.

1) I finshed my O2 training, so I am allowed to talk to real people about real problems from Monday!

2) We had our housewarming party.

The party was pretty good, it started really slowly – 5 people when I got home from work at 10pm – but it picked up nicely by the end. I was a little worried that it wouldn’t as we do live some whay away from the rest of the gang and the majority of students cannot be bothered to make the two buses to get to our house. The only disappointing thing was that a couple of mates from work flaked on me and didn’t turn up. Kudos to Dan for turning up and staying even though he didn’t know anyone! James and Mike suck!!

I was suitably drunk by the end of the evening as were most people, which is always a good sign. We also had a full house as most people stayed over.

Spent a lot of the night arguing about politics which was very grown up fo us, except the topic was socialism which is very studenty. Most people grow out of socialism when they get a job!

All in all though, a good night!

A couple of weeks ago Chris, Michelle, George and I went across to Manchester to see Avril Lavigne live on tour. I had a few reservations about the trip when Chris first approached me with the idea. Avril is not everybody’s cup of tea and her target audience is definitely not the twenty-something year old male!

The gig was awesome. She is really good live. Her set was a little predictable, but with five albums now there are not that many variations she can make. The encore epitomised the predictability as she sent out dancers before she appeared, removing any hint of spontaneity. The music was good though and Avril commands the stage like few others. She may only be my age but she definitely is a star.