Global Atheist Convention – Saturday Wrapup

• Bright and early on Sat morning, there was Phillip Adams talking about the dangers of missionary zeal and “why we mustn’t be like them”. The part I found memorable was when he described how he joined the Communist party many decades ago and was kicked out for independent thought. At one point he compared the Marxist tracts at the Communist bookstore to Catholic tracts for similarity and even swapped them to see if any would be thereby converted to the other. A great reminder that religious ideology can come in many forms, even in forms that profess to deny gods.
• This was followed by Russell Blackford whose blog I read and enjoy. I was looking forward to this one especially but unfortunately there wasn’t much in the talk. Maybe because he relied too much on his powerpoint presentation, which almost had his entire speech and got stuck leading to long bouts of silence. Let that be a lesson to all public speakers! Also, it might have been a case of being too close: his points was that atheists should be the top champions of religious liberty and other forms of personal freedom for everyone — which to me is too obvious to speak of. And yet, the world shows otherwise
• Max Wallace outlined the great economic costs of the freedom of religion from taxation, estimating a significant part of our income tax going to religious institutions. He proposes to make a documentary exposing this. I agree: people feel the pain of the wallet a lot more than they feel the pain of reason. There was also the amusing bit about registering as a religious organisation at the tax office, apparently what’s required is that you have a building for meeting and worship, a paid minister or similar person and your beliefs must be supernatural. If that’s not the most blatant exposition of religion’s privelege I don’t know what is.
• John Perkins spoke about Islam and Terrorism, didn’t find much there. Making superlative statements like “monotheism was the single worst idea humanity’s ever had” might get applause and nods but seems a bit silly than the more tempered “monotheism is a terrible idea, one of the worst”.
• A real treat was Taslima Nasrin, an activist of women’s rights in Islam and against the burqa. She has 5 fatwas against her and has been exiled from her native Bangladesh for over a decade now, and kicked out by “secular” India after there were further riots against her. I’ve always thought that the Bible was the greatest cure against Christianity and Judaism. She confirmed this for the Quran. Since the Quran must be recited in Arabic, in countries where they don’t speak Arabic (say Bangladesh) schoolkids recite it like parrots. Taslima wanted to find out what it really said and got a copy of a translation. That was the beginning of the end of her Islam. There was a disappointing answer to a question on whether she thought the burqa should be banned in France — she just said the burqa is against women’s dignity, but that was probably because the questions were hard to hear.
• Next came the most disappointing part of the weekend. It was supposed to be a panel discussion with Lyn Allison, Leslie Cannold, Tanya Levin and Jane Caro about atheism and feminism. I was really looking forward to it because of the topic AND the format, alas because of time constraints there was no discussion and instead each speaker just got to present by themselves for 10 mins. Which was mostly great but not what the point was. The chair ended by saying she thinks each of these speakers deserved an hour, which got some applause but I thought it was poor form to put it like that — now I think it was justified, although she could have expressed it differently. The whole point was a discussion, and 4 hours of 4 different talks would not have gotten people talking like a 90 minute panel. The only bit of disappointment was when Leslie Cannold expressed her agnosticism, because she does not claim some kind of arrogant knowledge (gasp!) but other than that the mini-talks were spot on.
• We finally come to the lowlight of the conference: Tamas Pataki. He started off by making excuses for himself, saying that he’s probably going to be the least speaker because he has no jokes, he plans to do philosophy and he plans to share a contrary opinion. I’m sympathetic to the 3rd bit although if your contrary opinion is strong enough to stand up it should be ok to just state it (or introduce it) without giving a veiled declaration-of-handicap. But the 1st and 2nd really turned me off. Basically Pataki fulfilled the stereotype of the stodgy, dull-spoken, philosopher who fumbles around in endless qualifications and definitions of words. It’s that type of soulless fumbling that gives philosophers a bad image and as someone doing a philosophy of science degree I was personally offended at the deliberate unsexiness. Of course if the ideas were good this would have made the presentation interesting as well, but they weren’t. He didn’t seem to have any particular point except right at the end where he stated that we have no idea if a world without religion would be better or worse (he mentioned something about the psychological need of people whose lives are shit to believe that might spill over into something else without religion) so people shouldn’t be too zealous in trying to get rid of religion. This deserves a separate post as it’s interesting to dissect the idea but hopefully it’s clear that there are at least a few things wrong with it.
• Next came AC Grayling who was the exact opposite: a philosopher with great ideas who’s eloquent and has an awesome presence. I overheard someone the next day sing his praises that every sentence was so perfectly constructed, off the cuff, no notes, and had great content too. He spoke about the incompatibility of science and religion and it was great, although he was a bit too vague at times. During the questions, someone questioned his use of the word “spirit” and told us of an ancient pseudoscientific society known as “healers of the spirit” who persist today and meddle in people’s lives. Healers of the spirit in Greek is “psychiatry” and this was an anti-psych nut (perhaps a Scientologist, perhaps not). Grayling had a great answer that the questioner should be pleased it no longer means healers of the spirit and has shed its mystical roots. To which he just replied “but that’s what psychiatry means“. Aah, arguing by definition. On Sunday during Dawkins’s talk the same guy lined up for questions, presumably for another go, but they ran out of time. Part of me regrets it, I’d have loved to hear Dawkins tear him a new one.
• Last was PZ Myers — of mythical internet fame, but we finally have proof he exists! — who also spoke about the incompatibility of science and religion. He acknowledged that it was funny for a blunt scientist to follow a very cultured presentation on the same topic. Indeed his introduction was blunt but as usual with PZ, his barbs are actually perfectly apt and wise. “Science is incompatible with religion in the same way that a reasoned search for truth is incompatible with bullshit.” He presented his critique of attempts to marry the two (especially by Ken Miller), that followed some of his blog posts.

Sunday wrapup coming up!