January 2020 Volume 02 - Issue 01 Operation Liftoff: We Are Surprisingly Close To Meeting our First Fundraising Goal! Building an Epic Executive Board: We’re Looking for Super Directors to Join our Team Monthly Survey: Are you a Vegan, Vegetarian, or Meat $770.19 Raised $79.81 Remaining Lover? Crypto Donations By the Executive Board Competitive Volunteering: We are about $80 away from By the Executive Board The 2020 Service Olympic successfully meeting our first Our young organization includes Competitions Have Begun Harmony Fest 2019: A Look fundraising goal of $850. In fact, if all three chapters that meet weekly with Back at our Fist Winter of the freethinkers who attend next an average attendance of six Festivals week’s meetings donate just $5, we returning members each. We’ve Local Group News will blast far past that goal! raised an average of $77 per month Bonus Article: Can Skeptics and curious new freethinkers are Benefit from the Placebo Send a $5 Donation learning about us every day! Effect? Recommended Reading: Why The next big step in our growth is Operation Liftoff is the first step in Things Seem True the formation of an epic Executive our organization’s road to tax From Our Quote Collection: Board! In this article, you will see the exemption and nonprofit status – Kindness and Humanity responsibilities of a board member and we are gaining momentum. Jan 2020 Donor Rewards and how you, or someone you know, Thank you to everyone who has Popular Podcasts: 5 Habits for may join our team! a Healthy Mind helped us get so close to covering our Executive Report legal paperwork fees. Because of Director Duties you, we are ready for launch! The Seeker’s Key Monthly Newsletter FreeThoughtForum.org By Nicholas Burk (Executive Board) By Nicholas Burk (Executive Board) At our meetings, we hope that our guests and members will always be Last December, a member of our able to freely speak their mind. A Springville group asked his fellow Free Thought Forum is a place to forum members for a hand with exchange important ideas without moving out of town later that day. He fear of judgment, rejection, or honestly didn’t expect much help censorship. Likewise, cryptocurrency because he wasn’t able to give much enthusiasts exchange currencies advance notice. Yet what followed represents something at the core of Are you a Vegan, Vegetarian, or such as Bitcoin freely and our organization! Once the meeting Meat Lover? Let us know where you anonymously as part of a was concluded, four volunteers fall on the great debate about what decentralized system. In both cases, stepped up and drove directly to our we should and shouldn’t eat along personal liberty is paramount. member in need. By the time all of with your main reasons why. Share the boxes where packed and the your answer and we will be happy to moving truck was loaded for the final publish our results next month! time, each volunteer had donated an average of four hours! Answer Poll To encourage our members and Last Month’s Survey Group Leaders to continue to make a For fans of blockchain-based positive difference in their commerce, our organization is glad communities, the Executive Board is to announce that we now accept proud to usher in the first annual Bitcoin donations! For our wallet Service Olympics of the Free Thought address and more information, check Initiative! Each chapter will compete out our new Bitcoin Page: to volunteer the most service hours Freethoughtforum.org/Bitcoin. every month and the winners will be announced in our newsletter. Good Donate Bitcoin luck to our three groups and thank you for your good work! The Seeker’s Key Monthly Newsletter FreeThoughtForum.org other surprises. Here are a few snapshots from the festivities. Thank you to everyone who made these occasions special. Enjoy! By Nicholas Burk (Executive Board) Unity, friendship, community, cooperation, humanity, and more were celebrated at our 2019 Harmony and HumanLight Festivals. In Springville, Draper, and online we enjoyed casseroles, fresh veggies, fresh fruit, fried chicken, decorated deer cookies, donuts, and other homemade sweets as shared our favorite holiday songs, played catchphrase, and picked up gift bags filled with nuts, chocolates, dreidels, Donate red new year envelopes, a holiday card from the Executive Board, and The Seeker’s Key Monthly Newsletter FreeThoughtForum.org • Jan 4 – Friendly Chat and Support • Jan 5 – Friendly Chat and Support • Jan 5 – Friendly Chat and Support Circle Circle Circle • Jan 11 – The Big Bang • Jan 7 – Volunteer Project: The • Jan 12 – The Big Bang • Jan 18 – Great Ideas From Burrito Project SLC • Jan 19 – Great Ideas From Confucius • Jan 12 – The Big Bang Confucius • Jan 25 – 5 Habits for Better • Jan 19 – Great Ideas From • Jan 26 – 5 Habits for Better Emotional Health Confucius Emotional Health • Feb 1 – Friendly Chat and • Jan 26 – 5 Habits for Better • Feb 2 – Friendly Chat and Support Circle Emotional Health Support Circle • Feb 1 – Volunteer Project: • Feb 2 – Friendly Chat and • Feb 9 – Evidence for Evolution Promotional Poster Blitz Support Circle • Feb 16 – Voltaire’s Wit and • Feb 8 – Evidence for Evolution • Feb 7 – Volunteer Project: Wisdom • Feb 15 – Voltaire’s Wit and Promotional Poster Blitz • Feb 23 – Elite Volunteer Training Wisdom • Feb 9 – Evidence for Evolution • Mar 1 – Friendly Chat and • Feb 15 – Darwin Day 2020 • Feb 15 – Darwin Day 2020 Support Circle Celebration Celebration • Mar 8 – Thinking Scientifically • Feb 22 – Elite Volunteer Training • Feb 16 – Voltaire’s Wit and • Mar 15 – The Virtues of Stoicism • Feb 29 – Thinking Scientifically Wisdom • Mar 22 – Temperance Festival • Feb 29 – Group Activity: Rock • Feb 23 – Elite Volunteer Training (An Annual Celebration) Canyon Hike • Mar 1 – Friendly Chat and • Mar 29 – Model Citizenship • Mar 7 – Friendly Chat and Support Circle • Apr 5 – Friendly Chat and Support Support Circle • Mar 8 – Thinking Scientifically Circle • Mar 14 – The Virtues of Stoicism • Mar 15 – The Virtues of Stoicism • Apr 12 – Vaccines, Outbreaks, • Mar 21 – Temperance Festival • Mar 22 – Temperance Festival and Epidemiology (An Annual Celebration) (An Annual Celebration) • Apr 19 – Great Ideas from • Mar 28 – Model Citizenship • Mar 29 – Model Citizenship Zoroastrianism • April 4 – First Week Feast and • Apr 5 – First Week Feast and Support Circle Support Circle • April 11 – Vaccines, Outbreaks, • Apr 12 – Vaccines, Outbreaks, and Epidemiology and Epidemiology • April 18 – Great Ideas from • Apr 19 – Great Ideas from Zoroastrianism Zoroastrianism Congratulations to our newest After three months of service, Assistant of the Springville group! Jacob Collier has decided to step Letting your friends know that an Sam Wagner has enthusiastically down as Draper’s Group Leader to online meeting will be taking place accepted the position along with focus more on his work and schooling has never been easier! Keep an eye Lance Freeman. Assistant Dale while retaining the role of Assistant. out on our social media pages for Thurber has transferred to our Online He was joined recently by Jared Platt, memes like the one above and feel Group where we’re sure he’ll be able one of Draper’s most dedicated free to share them with whomever to put his skills and talents to good members! you’d like to invite. use! The Seeker’s Key Monthly Newsletter FreeThoughtForum.org By Nicholas Burk (Springville Group Leader) In the fields of medicine and psychology, it is well understood that one’s belief in the effectiveness of something can directly influence that thing’s perceived effectiveness. Basically, the more you want Gain access to past and future something to work, the more it BONUS articles by becoming seems to work! This is one way to A monthly contributor of describe the “placebo effect,” a $5 or more! neurological phenomenon that explains why things like faith healing Freethoughtforum.org/donate or sugar pills have such dramatic benefits for those who believe. But what about those who don’t believe? If you are a skeptic, are there ways for you to tap into the positive aspects of placebo? In this month's bonus article, we’ll explore all of that and more! Set Up Monthly Donations The Seeker’s Key Monthly Newsletter FreeThoughtForum.org foolish many of our own cherished prejudices will seem to an age which has a different temper of mind. The Free Thought Initiative is grateful for the support of our first sponsor, Delectation of Tomatoes! From the same book, page 111: This small company from Utah is a strong proponent of buying local, To teach how to live without eating healthy, self-reliance, certainty, and yet without being sustainable farming, ecologically paralyzed by hesitation, is perhaps responsible living, preservation of the chief thing that philosophy, in our heritage seeds, and helping others age, can still do for those who study realize the physical, emotional, and it. social benefits of gardening. A quote from Bertrand Russell’s A History of Western Philosophy, Chapter 4, Page 39: Two things are to be remembered: that a man whose opinions and theories are worth studying may be presumed to have had some intelligence, but that no man is likely to have arrived at complete and final truth on any subject whatever. When an intelligent man expresses a view which seems to us obviously absurd, we should not attempt to prove that it is somehow true, but we should try to understand how it ever came to seem true. This exercise of historical and psychological imagination at Visit Website once enlarges the scope of our thinking, and helps us to realize how The Seeker’s Key Monthly Newsletter FreeThoughtForum.org We have some thoughtful surprises for our donors in January. Check out the donor-only article Thank you, again, to all of those who in this issue about the placebo effect have contributed to our cause thus and how even the most skeptical far.