GAC Review

Submitted by michaelkingsfordgray on Sat, 20/03/2010 - 2:19pm

It has been about a week since the 2010 Global Atheist Convention in Melbourne ended, and I don't think that I have fully recovered yet!

Highlights:

  • The first 'day' was short, and concentrated on comedy. A truly inspired choice.
  • The second day was long, and far more serious, (except for PZ who, even when on a rant, cannot help but be amusing).
  • On the third day, the stone was rolled away to reveal a heady mixture of the profound and the profane.
  • Twitter. It works exceptionally well in this kind of environment. And I am possibly the most rabid anti-twitter curmudgeon on the planet, if not the the Universe!
  • That this awesome event was run by volunteers.
  • That the organisers got it just about right on their very first go!
  • That the sex1 balance was not all that imbalanced in favour of middle-aged white guys with beards.
  • Taslima Nasrin made most of the audience weepy2 with her horrific tales of religious abuse. The standing ovation that she received made her, in turn, shed a tear. I doubt that she had been in the company of so many dedicated atheists who support her continued struggle in her life. (>2500, so I am informed. Atheists, not years.)
  • Ian Robinson. Who didn't care if PowerPoint worked or not!
  • That Richard Dawkins actually prepared something new, that tangentially touches on belief, but also included his special subject: evolution. Very refreshing, from which I actually learned a lot, which I was not expecting. Especially on "vacuum behaviours" as they relate to religious observances.
  • Too many other things to list.

Sue-Ann Post & Catherine Deveny went down especially well.

My daughter is now stalking Jamie Kilstein as she thinks that he is the funniest thing since, erm, well: something really really funny.
She is also rightly in awe of our national treasure: Robyn Williams. A truly relaxed & magic speaker.

Lowlights:

  1. Having to wake up appallingly early in order to catch the 8:30 start!
  2. Bloody philosophers and their endlessly droning-public-mental-masturbations. (Grayling excluded of course)
  3. Speakers who read out their power-point slides word-for-word. (See 2.)
  4. The fact that two of the speakers required 3 (possibly armed) security guards in front of the stage due to death threats from delusional religious mental-infants.
  5. That not every atheist or theist could attend. We are witnessing the start of something BIG. The anti-religious equivalent of the start of the civil rights movement.

_________________

1 I refuse to mis-employ the term "gender" here.
Gender simply means "genre" or "class". It has precisely nothing to do with male vs. female.

2 I admit to having become emotionally overwhelmed at the end of her presentation.