“Religion & Belief: where are we going?” by Jeremy Rodell, Humanists UK
Separation of Church and State (March 2023)
With guest presenter, Stephen Evans, CEO, National Secular Society. As King Charles assumes the title of Defender of the Faith, Stephen Evans explores the role of religion in the monarchy and the UK’s political affairs, and asks whether the time has come to disestablish the Church of England.
| Inside the White Rose: an anti-vaxx, Covid conspiracy theory ecosystem |
| May 2023 |
| With guest Speaker, Michael Marshall (President, Merseyside Skeptics Society and Editor, The Skeptic) |
While most people accepted the realities of the virus, little white stickers began to appear in public around the world claiming COVID-19 was a hoax concocted by the governments of the world to instil fear into their people, as a pretext for introducing new, permanent totalitarian laws.
The graffiti was part of a co-ordinated grassroots campaign by a group calling itself The White Rose, urging members of the public to join their encrypted messaging channels to learn more about what was really going on.
So that’s what Michael Marshall, full-time skeptical investigator and activist, did. After spending months undercover in the messaging app Telegram, he has reported on the various conspiracy theories spread by the White Rose, and how groups used the Covid crisis to radicalise vaccine hesitant members of the public into a dangerous ecosystem of misinformation and extremism.
| Inter Faith Week |
| November 2023 |
| The Common Good |
As part of our contribution to Inter Faith Week, we hosted this presentation with our guest, Nick Briggs. Nick is a student at Goldsmiths College, University of London. He is in the final year of his PhD. The full description of the talk can be summarised as: “How can the concept of the Common Good help us to understand: What keeps societies together and what drives societies apart?”.