We had 15 one more for our January meeting. We seem to consistently get exactly this many people. It gives us an excellent variety of viewpoints and good opportunity for everyone to participate. Our topic was broad areas of ethics and the meaning of life. We made use of Sam Harris excellent book on The Moral Landscape.

For our February meeting we will consider the range of viewpoints from anti-theists who want to see the end of religion to those who advocate positive engagement with religious communities. Edd Doerr, Eugenie Scott and Rob Boston (Rob is the February speaker at our MDC chapter) are excellent examples of people who have achieved much in the way of defending church/state separation or defending science education. There seem to be many more observers who focus only on the flaws of religion. I want to expand this topic to include the creative ideas that we might have about what we might wish to see on either end of this spectrum. What might we do to creatively engage religious communities and what can we do to better show the madness in believing in that which is not there?

As noted before, the counts on meetup do not reflect the numbers who will be there. This is because many have friends who invite them or or they learn about our group through other than meetup channels or they just look at meetup to verify that we are having a meeting and if they RSVP they only do it at the last minute. Even a small count on meetup will mean that we will have a good number at our meeting.

Robert Ahrens as usual will be hosting this third Friday of the month meeting. The meeting will start at 8 pm. People may arrive as early as 7:30 so that we can actually start at 8 pm. Please bring a small contribution of food and/or drink to be shared with the group. The home is in Rockville near Viers Mill and Aspen Hill Road. Transport to and from the Twinbrook Metro stop can be arranged if needed.

Mr Ahrens address and phone numbers are not posted here to preserve the privacy of his home. Those details will be emailed the week of the meeting to those who are coming (see note below). Affirmative RSVPs should be posted before 8 pm the prior Thursday to allow time to notify all attendees.

Note: an occasional problem with Meetup emails is that some spam filters will preclude delivery of Meetup email. If you RSVP Yes and want the email informing you of a meeting held in a private home this can be a problem. To prevent this a member can add info@meetup.com to their personal email addresses. If a member does not receive the directions to a Friday meeting by late Tuesday evening he/she needs to directly contact to the organizer. Use the Meetup option for this. A phone call to 202-643-4366 leaving your email address is another option. Posting a comment saying that you did not receive the directions (without including your personal email address) is not helpful since if your spam filter stopped the first email it will also stop subsequent email. We want people to be comfortable in opening up their homes to other meetup members and this technical difficulty is a small price to pay to preserve the privacy of those who host events in their homes.