Speaker – Page 68

My Religious Evolution:
From Being a Simple Catholic,
to a Conservative Preacher,
to an Agnostic Atheist

Tom Bergstrom

March 3, 2013

Tom Bergstrom, a Humanist Community member will share important things in his life in this talk. He grew up in a blue collar town of 78,000 in southeast Wisconsin as a practicing Catholic. As a child he was mostly interested in riding his bike fast, and then later developed an interest in world events. However, in his teens he became ill.

For years during Tom’s teens, his best friend used fear tactics to challenge Tom to join the friend’s church. When Tom was 18, he finally joined his friend’s small modest conservative Church Of Christ. After eight years in the Church of Christ or the “C of C”, Tom found out that he could preach. His short preaching career began in his 20’s and lasted a few years from 1991 to about 1994. By 1999 he went through a divorce which led to a new discovery on Christian hypocrisy.

About this he says, “This hypocrisy opened my eyes. I educated myself about philosophy, Taoism, Buddhism, evolution, US history, particle physics, and other sciences. This new education eventually led me to become agnostic. At the same time as I was becoming progressive, American politics was becoming more conservative. Thus, I remembered my old Bible training which taught that there is a big difference between basic Jesus’ saying to love your neighbor and with right-wing American Christian propaganda. The right-wings’ lying rhetoric in the name of Jesus encouraged me to write, blog, protest, join socialists, join humanists, and to expose conservative right-wing American Christians’ hypocritical propaganda. I hope to open your eyes to the magnitude of the false Christian hypocrisy I have seen.”

You may view Tom’s slides here.

Humanist Community Forum (2013-03-03): My Religious Evolution (Tom Bergstrom) from Brian Davis on Vimeo.

What’s Happening to Public Schooling
in the U.S.?

Roberta Ahlquist

February 24, 2013

Roberta Ahlquist has been a Professor in the College of Education at San Jose State for over 35 years. She has taught a variety of courses including Multicultural Foundations of Education, Educational Sociology, Educational Psychology, History of Education, Educational Philosophy and Critical Issues in Education. She supervises prospective high school teachers. Her areas of research include critical race theory, countering hegemony and whiteness, unlearning racism, critical multicultural education, indigenous education and postcolonial studies. Her most recent publication which is available on Amazon is: Assault on Kids (Counterpoints: Studies in the Postmodern Theory of Education) by Paul C. Gorski (Author), Roberta Ahlquist (Author, Editor), Theresa Montaño (Author, Editor), Paul Gorski (Editor).

In addition, Ahlquist is President of a non-profit multicultural resource center, Our Developing World, in Saratoga, California, that reaches out to teachers at all levels of schooling, to provide resources and alternatives to the dominant mainstream curriculum that most students receive in schools. She sees herself as a social justice educator and activist.

Her presentation will include a discussion of the pros and cons of charter schools and why they have become so popular.

Ahlquist grew up in Great Falls, Montana, where she became involved in research about the Blackfeet Indians in Montana. She has been a visiting professor in Brisbane, Queensland, Australia, where she shared anti-oppressive curriculum for two programs, the Udgeroo Unit for Aboriginal Studies, at Queensland University of Technology, and the University of Queensland, where she gave workshops, forums and presentations on white privilege and related topics. She also did research in the outback and co-authored several articles for international publications about Australian teachers teaching in the outback.

Ahlquist was a Fulbright Scholar in 2006 to Finland where she taught a course titled “Teaching for Worlds of Difference” at the University of Turku in Turku, Finland. While is Finland she presented workshops and gave paper presentations at the University of Tampere, at Rouma, a feeder university, and Inari, Finland, in Lapland, at the Institute for Saami Studies. She recently returned from 2012 research in the Middle East, addressing questions for U.S. teachers about the extent to which neo- colonialism continues to play a role in schooling. She is a long-time union and peace activist.

Ahlquist last spoke to the Humanist Community in September 2012, and we are delighted to have her return.

A New Foundation for Civilization: Humanism?

Arthur Jackson

February 17, 2013

Can humanism truly provide a foundation for a society? If not what would it take to do so? Arthur Jackson will lay out his best thinking on this topic.

Arthur is current President of HCSV and Secretary for Humanist Society, AHA (the body that certifies Humanist Celebrants, Ministers, and Chaplains. He Chaired the IHEU Working Party on Humanist Counseling (1968-78). He is also the author of The Humanist Chapter of the Future and the Future of Humanism (1982, 1993) and How to Live the Good Life: A User’s Guide for Modern Humans (2011). He worked as AHA’s Assistant Director (1965-69).

Humanist Community Forum (2013-02-17): A New Foundation for Civilization: Humanism? (Arthur Jackson) from Humanist Community-SiliconValley on Vimeo.

Nonviolent Peaceforce in the Philippines

Gilda Bettencourt

February 10, 2013

Gilda Bettencourt of the Nonviolent Peaceforce (NP) will provide this program. She has been involved for the past 8 years, with people from around the globe who are working to protect vulnerable communities through nonviolent peacekeeping. Nonviolent Peaceforce teams are currently working in the Philippines , South Sudan, the South Caucasus region, Sri Lanka and Guatemala.

Gilda will share a 9-minute video report from PBS and give another 10 minutes of presentation and leave whatever remains for Q & A.

Gilda spoke at the Forum on September 9, 2012 and we are delighted to welcome her back. For more information on the work in the Philippines you can view this video: http://www.nonviolentpeaceforce.org/nonviolent-peaceforce-pbs-video

Humanist Community Forum (2013-02-10): Nonviolent Peaceforce in the Philippines (Gilda Bettencourt) from Humanist Community-SiliconValley on Vimeo.

Death Care Options:
Your Rights, Your Choices, Their Impacts

Deborah Meckler – President, Funeral Consumers Alliance

February 3, 2013

Deborah Meckler is President of the Funeral Consumers Alliance of San Mateo and Santa Clara Counties. The Alliance is a non-profit organization dedicated to helping people find meaningful, dignified and affordable death care for themselves and their loved ones. Besides leading the Alliance, Deborah is also actively working to make ‘green burial’ an option on the San Francisco peninsula. She has a B.S. degree in natural resources management and has worked as a land steward and as an environmental consultant.

Green burial is a topic that some members will be acquainted with and others may know nothing about. To quote from the Funeral Consumers Alliance website, ‘Green burial is a way to return human remains directly to the earth so that they will biodegrade naturally and become soil. It is a way to deal with human remains with as little resource use, energy use, and land disturbance as possible’.

Please come and learn more about this important, environmentally sound option for dealing with the final disposition of human remains, with the dual benefits of keeping pollutants out of the soil and, at the same time, helping to preserve open space in a near-natural state.

More information about green burial and the Funeral Consumers Alliance is available at www.fcapeninsula.org/.

Slides of the presentation are available. You may also view the notes by clicking on the blurb in the upper left-hand corner of each slide. This presentation with the notes contains considerable, valuable research information.

Deborah also recommended two books on the subject of funerals: The Loved One by Evelyn Waugh and The American Way of Death Revisited by Jessica Mitford.

Humanist Community Forum (2013-02-03): Death Care Options: Your Rights, Your Choices, Their Impacts (Deborah Meckler) from Humanist Community-SiliconValley on Vimeo.