Any Takers?

While my final year project was in its gestation stages I joined the atheist.ie forum, thinking I could probe its users for information and ideas relevant to the thesis, and also because I wanted to bolster the meagre 150 or so members they had at the time (which has since grown to over 800, I'm happy to note).

Registering was about as involved as I got, as once my thesis topic was established I had no need nor inclination to converse with anonymous internet types about a topic that can get quite tiring quite quickly.

Regardless of this fact, I received an e-mail yesterday alerting me that someone from the messageboard had sent me a private message:

Hi,

As an member of atheist.ie living in the Mid-west I thought you might like to know that there is a new group of Humanists, Atheists, Agnostics, and Skeptics meeting in Limerick.

Our website is at http://midwesthumanists.wordpress.com/ and our next meeting is in the Castletroy Park Hotel at 11.00 on Sunday the 19th of October.

Hope to see you there

I have a natural aversion to such gatherings - my concern is that it could be an opportunity for a group of people to unify for the purposes of mutually affirming one another's 'beliefs*', (or as a more eloquent friend described it, a 'circle jerk') - which would fly in the face of my personal philosophy, and therefore not be a thing I want to be a part of (I'm talking about the belief-affirming here, although I should probably clarify I've no interest in circle jerks either).

Of course, there's a chance that this is an organisation that is interested in something a little more cerebral, and if the (rarely updated) blog linked above is any indication, there's at least one like-minded soul (inappropriate metaphor intended) involved that I could happily engage in conversation with.

So then. 11am - Sunday the 19th of October - Castletroy Park Hotel. Anybody want to accompany me on my investigation into this group?

*= I put 'beliefs' in apostrophes because atheism does not involve belief - it involves repudiating the claims of religion, most of which are demonstrably false. I should have just said 'disbeliefs', but I enjoy asteriks. Really spruces up the blog.