Last night’s meeting at Portsmouth Skeptics int he Pub was great fun. Rather than have a single speaker, previous speakers were asked to come back and host tables on whatever subjects they deemed fit and interesting. I hosted a philosophy table and primed people with a few questions on a sheet:
- What makes you you? (ie what is the “I”?) Can I be responsible for something I did 25 years ago?
- Can you be good without God? (ie what is “good”?)
- At some point in the near / far future, we will run out of space. Should we advocate a one child policy and to be proactive, should that be now? What about your right to have children? How about someone else’s right for you not to have children?
- What is a right? Is there such a thing as a human right, or is this just a conception?
- If my brain was transplanted into your body, who will that body be?
- Why should we trust science? Is there any other way of knowing anything other than empirical evidence?
We touched on a lot of subjects and people got a lot out of it. There were several rotations during the evening when people rotated tables to keep it fresh. I stayed and chatted until time at the bar and then continued talking religion and philosophy outside the pub until almost midnight, so all things considered, a fun and interesting night!
