After a long summer hiatus, the Mississauga Freethought Association is back up and running in full swing for this academic year. We have a number of interesting events planned for the upcoming year, including lectures, documentary screenings, and of course, our third annual Darwin Day Event in February.

We will be releasing details shortly as to what to expect for this year. Come back and visit our website, or perhaps send us an email at freethoughtcanada@gmail.com and ask to be put on our periodical e-mail list.

As always, suggestions for events are always welcome!

Tom Ulanowski,
President

1. Annual General Meeting (AGM)
Student Centre - Presentation Room, Lower Level
5:00 - 5:45 pm
The MFA is looking for enthusiastic and committed executives for the 2009/10 school term. If you are interested in being a part of the MFA Executive Committee, and have some exciting new event ideas or initiatives, then feel free to come out and get involved. The following positions are available:

President
Vice-President
Secretary
Treasurer
Media/Promotions
Community Relations

If you are interested, please send an email with a short blurb about yourself and the position that you are interested in undertaking to freethoughtcanada@gmail.com

We will also do a quick review of this years financial statements and success of our past events, as well as discuss some ideas for next year!

2. Movie Screening - Religulous (Bill Maher)
Student Centre - Presentation Room, Lower Level
5:45 - 7:00 pm (Followed by a discussion on topics relevant to the film).

“A range of views on the various world religions are explored as Bill Maher travels to numerous religious destinations, such as Jerusalem, the Vatican, and Salt Lake City, interviewing believers from a variety of backgrounds and groups, including a former member of Jews for Jesus, Christians, Muslims, former Mormons, and Hasidic Jews. He travels to Speakers’ Corner in Hyde Park, London and satirically preaches Scientology beliefs.”

This movie is very funny, but does cover some topics that may be controversial to some. We only ask that you come with an open mind, watch the movie, and then discuss the arguments presented in a respectful manner.

Website: http://www.lionsgate.com/religulous/
IMDB: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0815241/

I would like to thank everyone who came out to support the event, the MFA, and of course one of science’s greatest minds! We will be putting on one more event before the school year is done, so stay tuned!

- Tom Ulanowski, President

Thursday, February 12, 2009
5:30 pm
SE 2072 - South Building, UTM
FREE ADMISSION

We are celebrating the bicentenary of Charles Darwin’s birth in 1809, a man who is on any account one of greatest scientists since Newton. The aim of the talk will be to celebrate Darwin by describing his wide-ranging mind, his extraordinarily observant and meticulous work in geology, botany, and biology. Darwin is deservedly renown for his epochal achievement in developing the revolutionary notion of the origin and evolution of species through natural selection. Less well known, however, is his equally innovative and revolutionary, if largely unacknowledged, view of the intimate relations between the ‘social instinct’ and the ‘moral sense’ both in humans and in animals, as his words above indicate. Dr. Di Norcia will communicate the grandeur and beauty of Darwin’s view of social ethics as well as of evolution. In both the matters of natural history and social ethics, he suggests that Charles Darwin’s scientific work to this day represents a ground-breaking intellectual and scientific achievement. And, unfortunately, still largely ignored or ignorantly opposed.

The event will be held at the Central Library in Mississauga, ON on Tuesday, February 10, 2009, starting at 6:30 pm.

This event is open to anyone and everyone - so bring your friends, family, school mates and co-workers, and come celebrate the birth of one of the greatest minds in science!