Democracy for Vancouver

The Humanists of Greater Portland is a lively and growing group of free-thinking people who are committed to living full, meaningful lives based on reason, critical thought, and compassion. Please explore our beliefs and activities.

Our website can be found here

What we believe

We meet every Sunday morning, 9:30-11:00 am (socializing from 9:00-9:30) here:

Friendly House Community Center, corner of NW 26th and Thurman st.
1737 NW 26th Ave
Portland, Or 97210
Voice: 503-222-5531

There are a lot of members and visitors from the Vancouver area. Please come for a visit. You wont be bored.

Programs are presented in four broad areas relevant to Humanism:
Human Well-being; Science/Reason; Secularism; and Humanities, Culture and Morality.

January Programs

Sunday, January 7 Geonomics: How People Can Prosper and Conserve, presented by Jeffery J. Smith, President, Forum on Geonomics (www.geonomics.org)

People spend lots of money on land, on natural and mineral resources, and on the electromagnetic spectrum, yet our spending never compensates anyone’s labor. Such spending merely enriches owners. What if we directed that spending from the pockets of a few to the pockets of everyone? Places that already do share some of this flow - the value of sites and resources - do so easily, by levying a tax, like the Australian land tax, then pay out a dividend, like the Alaskan oil dividend. Recovering this flow of “rent” makes it possible to remove counterproductive taxes on wages, buildings, and useful enterprise. Paying a dividend makes it possible to remove counterproductive subsidies (especially corporate welfare). Oregon again has a bill to shift the property tax off buildings, onto locations. Doing so is a way to treat Earth and her worth as part of the commons, as society did long ago.

Sunday, January 14 What the *bleep* do (and don’t) we know about the ‘nonreligious’? - presented by Frank Pasquale, HGP

Direct and detailed research on people with “naturalistic” worldviews (those that are substantially or affirmatively non-theistic, -supernatural, or -transcendental) has been surprisingly limited. The state of current knowledge will be reviewed. The aims of a new, comprehensive study of such people in the Northwest will also be discussed. Frank L. Pasquale, Ph. D., is a Research Associate with the Institute for the Study of Secularism in Society and Culture (ISSSC) at Trinity College, Hartford, Connecticut, and a Portland resident.

Sunday January 21 Poetry - presented by Robert Sanford, HGP

In the last of this series of programs on poetry, Robert will lead the un-poetic to discovery and the poetically-inclined to deeper enjoyment of this form of literature.

Sunday January 28 OPEN DISCUSSION

The open discussion will consist of three groups - two discussing pre-selected topics and one group choosing their own topic. Attendees choose the group in which they would like to participate.

1) Peak oil and its implications to our HGP community.

2) Religious terrorists - how do Humanists respond?

3) Topic du jour