Posted: Mar 17, 2010 4:59 am
I've been mulling over the "atheism" part of the conference. The conference emphasised secularism, rationalism, empiricism, human rights, cooperation with religious people as "just people", women's rights, evolution and on and on. Yet no matter how hard I try I can't satisfactorily remove "atheism" as a factor in all this. I might write a longer blog piece about this after I have thought some more. 
Great meeting y'all at the conference. The "socialising amongst atheists" part was probably the only thing that directly hinged on us being atheists.
And yes, there was a groan went up when Richard got the god botherer question, but two important points: 1) The groan was because she was asking about "DNA" when it was obvious she didn't even have a high school understanding of chemistry and 2) Richard quieted the audience and tried to make something of an answer that would be of use to everyone else.
Great meeting y'all at the conference. The "socialising amongst atheists" part was probably the only thing that directly hinged on us being atheists.
And yes, there was a groan went up when Richard got the god botherer question, but two important points: 1) The groan was because she was asking about "DNA" when it was obvious she didn't even have a high school understanding of chemistry and 2) Richard quieted the audience and tried to make something of an answer that would be of use to everyone else.