About
Leaders
Keith
Software developer and founder of Kaleido Labs after retiring from teaching IT at RMIT. Interested in free speech, criticising Evolution and helping people improve themselves.
Luke
Pastor of St Kilda Presbyterian Church, writes occasionally at ‘Post-Apocalyptic’ Theology. Interested in spirtual conversations and philosophy.
Links
- Estuary Meetup Group: https://www.meetup.com/estuary-melbourne
- Estuary Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/estuarymelbourne
- Estuary YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@Estuary_Melbourne
- Global Estuary Hub: https://www.estuaryhub.com/
- Keith’s Planet Evidence Meetup group: https://www.meetup.com/planet-evidence/
- Luke’s YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@post-apocalyptic_theology
- St James Old Catherdral website : https://www.sjoc.org.au/
- St Kilda Presbyterian Church website: https://www.stkildapc.org/
Suggestion Box
History & Purpose
Estuary Melbourne is a community that encourages talking freely about life, meaning and the universe. It is led and organised by Keith and Luke and affiliated with Paul VanderKlay, and the global Estuary movement. An estuary is the place where a river meets the sea and where, if it’s healthy, there’s an abundant natural habitat. This metaphor represents the way the fresh-water of faith interacts with the salty ocean water of the world, allowing a variety of healthy discussions to take place. We organise our gatherings through Meetup.com and meet twice a month in two locations; St James Anglican Church and St Kilda Presbyterian Church. Our community began as a free-speech group at RMIT in 2017 and then evolved into a Jordan Peterson discussion group in 2019 and is now a permanent group gathering to discuss philosophy, self-help, religion and culture. We have a protocol to guide our discussion but otherwise everyone is welcome. Our goal is to foster an ongoing community who enjoy thinking freely about life, meaning and the universe.
Past discussion topics
- Erving Goffman, Total Surveillance and The Private Self
- Jerusalem and the Axis Mundi with Jordan Peterson
- Aristotelian Deism and Jungian Theism with Peterson and Flew
- Scapegoats & ritual, René Girard part two
- Mimetic Desire & René Girard part one
- Skepticism, Jesus & cultural Christianity
- Dawkins vs Weinstein
- AI, Consciousness & Philosophy: Peterson, Dennett and McGilchrist
- The QAnon Shaman – Insurrection & the nature of God/Reality
- 3rd wave atheism – Alain de Botton
- Mary Harrington & Reactionary Feminism
- The collective unconsciousness and archetypes
- Jordan Peterson on Postmodernism
- Censorship and conspiracy theories
- End-State Atheism: Sam Harris
Discussion Protocol
As an affirmation of what type of discussion that we want to have, and a way to set the sub-culture of the group, the facilitator reads out the following discussion protocol at the start of each discussion.
We encourage you to engage in …
- Speaking your mind
- Speaking with passion
- Contributing your knowledge
- Debate with people who disagree with you
- Showing kindness
- Sharing personal stories
And we trust you have the common sense to exercise …
- Courtesy to treat people with common decency
- Patience to not cross-talk or dominate
- Humility to be open to learn from others
- Curiosity to truly appreciate different ideas
- Self control by observing others personal boundaries
- Keeping the confidences of others