Global Atheist Convention – Friday Wrapup

I’m still pretty run-down and tired from the Melbourne trip: something about running around the convention in the day and catching up with friends at night and coming straight back to work didn’t give rise to much rest. So here’s an abbreviated and disorganised list of what happened at the Rise of Atheism convention. Some speakers gave food for thought that will have a separate post some time down the track but for now here’s the rundown of Friday night:

• After the opening on Friday night, we were treated to Sue-Ann Post who I remember from Good News Week back in the 1990s. She describes herself as Australia’s only six foot, lesbian, ex-Mormon, diabetic, comedian and writer. Probably true at that. Hilarious, great delivery, good tone and a nice bit about a bit of anti-god preaching she once did on stage just to show that the same techniques work to whip up a crowd no matter what the subject. (People in the back were responding with something like “Amen sister! Fuck god!” gospel-style). But the most jaw-dropping bit was that Sue-Ann, a survivor of sexual abuse by her stepfather was once told by a new-ager after a show that he must have loved her so much because he chose to be reincarnated as her step-father, and must have wanted for them to be together so much that he wasn’t stopped by their relationship (or her age). A nice logical conclusion to the Everything Happens For A Reason bit of BS.
• Mark Tier spoke about living and raising his kids in the ultra-Catholic Philippines, where a legally mandated freedom of religion doesn’t stop there being 2 kinds of schools: Catholic schools and [government] schools run BY Catholics. His son’s class had to take a morality test at regular interval which his son failed because he kept answering no to ridiculous questions like “do you always think about God first?”. The priest asked him “don’t you know what to answer in order to pass the test by now?” and his son said “do you want me to lie, Father?” As a result, the priest stopped giving him the test and filled it out on his behalf (ie. forged it) so that his class wouldn’t have a “moral failure”. Nice.
• Then came Catherine Deveny in another great bit of standup comedy. Apparently media coverage was outraged that they dared to have comedy and not philosophical arguments, as if comedy wasn’t the best choice for a Friday night opening, also as if there was no room for anything but moroseness. I even had someone I spoke to at an unrelated friends’ dinner question why there’d be comedy. Am I missing something? Is there nothing to be made fun of?! Anyway, Deveny was a lot louder and brasher than Sue-Ann, which was good except for 1 or 2 cheap jokes which I heartily forgive, being meek and mildhearted. On not making cheap jokes even for great causes, see this great post.

For an example of how even in a supposedly tame place like Australia even a supposedly tempered organisation like the ABC can still pull out some ridiculous coverage, check out a blog they set up specifically for the convention. It’s mostly reactions and misunderstandings from a religious viewpoint, although of course there might be one or two decent thoughts there since it’s almost impossible to write a few thousand words without saying anything right.

That’s all for today, I’ll post on the other 2 days of the conference tomorrow.