Tag Archives: panel

This was the last topic for the day, and shortly those privileged enough to have been given a dinner pass will congregate for food, drinks and good conversation.
The panel featured Richard Dawkins, Rebecca Watson, Aron Ra and Tom Melchiorre.
Rebecca told about the sexist and abusive emails she gets – from atheists, and challenged the conclusions of the earlier panel on female atheist activism. She pointed out that women are taking a risk by standing up and speaking out. Aron Ra spoke of his background, in Texas, where people don’t even realise that you can not believe in, or question, religion. He summarised the difference between the 2 mindsets, between the need to believe and the desire to understand thusly : “Science doesn’t know everything. Religion doesn’t know anything”.

Tom Melchiorre mumbled something unconvincing and incoherent about how Malcolm X and Martin Luther King had some kind of good cop, bad cop thing going, and how atheism should adopt this tactic when dealing with religionists, so that when they refuse to engage the bad cop, they will somehow endorse the good cop. Or something.

Dawkins had 2 points he wanted to make, one, that ridicule and sarcasm are useful tools in confronting religious people, and second, that we have to raise consciousness about atheism.

I’m signing off for the day now, so I can get some mingling done !