I’m currently sitting an auditorium in the Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre with about four thousand other atheists. Wow. It is a fascinating event, having already had talks from Peter Singer, Leslie Cannold and Dan Barker. I’m about to hear a panel on religion and politics which I need to take note of so hopefully I will post later.
The audience is fascinating – the stereotypes of old white male atheists are trashed at this convention – there are lots of young faces ( making me at 43 feeling relatively old), still slightly higher percentage of men than women but not overly noticeable, and the women I have spoken to so far are articulate, passionate and just plain awesome.
Time to pay more attention to the panel, will blog some more later.
Fascinating talks so far. Daniel Dennett incredibly popular, the feedback coming through on the convention twitter very positive, just heard someone say they would be happy to hear him read the phone book! Though the content of his talk was great. He spoke about the many clergy now struggling to come to terms with their atheism which has developed as they have looked a little too close at their own religion.
Leslie Cannold pointed out that Australia does not have separation of religion and government with public funding of religious chaplains in schoold as well as government funding of canonisations and religious celebrations worth many millions of dollars.
Several speakers have pointed out that many “religious”people are, in fact, quite supportive of secular government and that atheists should work with these people to fight the vocal religious minority who try and bring religion into government, for example opposing gay marriage.
In fact, the general impression from the talks and background discussions is that most atheists don’t oppose religion per se, they just want religion to stop trying to interfere in the lives of others.