Back in August, we attended a debate between Dr Michael Shermer and John Lennox at the Wesley Centre in Sydney. The full video is now out on youtube for your viewing pleasure.
Driving home after taking Zach for a walk, this song came on the radio. The first few lines made our ears prick up. It's not often you hear this kind of sentiment so blatantly expressed on the radio. I think this could become the anthem for our 'good without god' campaign.
The Living End Raise the Alarm
I may not believe in God, It doesn't mean I'm a lesser person. I still have a heart, And I know what it feels like to be broken.
I may not believe in Jesus, But I believe in sacrifice. Life doesn't always stand a reason, And no one ever gets a chance to live it twice.
But I'd rather risk my fate, Than to lose my faith, In the lovin', the hatin', The constant debatin', The chaos, the calm. Raise the alarm.
The living that die, The constant deny, The chaos, the calm. Raise the alarm.
Whoa, whoa... Raise the alarm.
I may not believe in regrets, But I believe in salvation. Some things I'd rather forget. We choose what we see, And we see what we choose to believe.
In the name of the father, The son, and the holy ghost. I'm not concerned with religion, After all it's what's inside that matters most.
But I'd rather risk my fate, Than to lose my faith, In the lovin', the hatin', The constant debatin', The chaos, the calm. Raise the alarm.
The living that die, The constant deny, The chaos, the calm. Raise the alarm.
Whoa, whoa... Raise the alarm. Whoa, whoa... Raise the alarm.
But I'd rather risk my fate, Than to lose my faith, Yeah, I'd rather risk my fate, Than to lose my faith, In the lovin', the hatin', The constant debatin', The chaos, the calm. Raise the alarm.
The living that die, The constant deny The chaos, the calm, Raise the alarm
Whoa, whoa... Raise the alarm Whoa, whoa... Raise the alarm. (Yeah!) Raise the alarm.
The video from last Thursday's debate (more here & here) is now online.
Thanks again to everyone that came and showed support. I had a great time and enjoyed the experience. I hope to be able to get more involved in public discourse and feel that each time I jump into the ring, I finish up learning a whole lot more about what I'm doing.
I thought I'd give a bit of a rundown on the debate between myself and Mike Paget on 'Which makes more sense, atheism or Christianity?'
First of all, I'd like to thank the AFA for giving me the opportunity to represent them once again. To find out more about the AFA, you can check out their website or become a member.
But as for the debate itself, I think it was a good night and everyone that came would have been a little challenged. I was incredibly nervous before hand, especially when the seats had all been filled and there were just as many people standing as there were sitting. I couldn't estimate how many there were, but the theater was packed like sardines, with people sitting in the aisles and on the floor at the front, standing at the back and in the corridor. It was terrific to see so many people interested in thinking about these issues.
We will get video and audio of the debate up asap (they couldn't give us the MP3 afterwards as they had agreed to) as we had many Sydney Atheists members recording in various formats. It's now just a case of finding someone who captured the whole lot, (most people's devices failed in the last 10 minutes due to the presence of an interactionalist deity who must have thought it worth his time to turn up just in case Mike proved his existence, allowing him to finally come out of hiding... or through random chance operating against our favour) and making it available for download.
If you have recordings from the night, please contact me at criticalmass@live.com.au
I was much more nervous about the questions from the floor, and to make matters worse, it was ridiculously hot and I was sweating like a pig by the time they came around. The questions weren't too bad, but I don't think I answered them as well as I could have, had I been given some preparation time. I found question time to be the most challenging, as I prefer to think things out and prepare my arguments, rather than thinking on my feet, but having had the experience I will be working on building up my answers to the types of questions people are likely to ask.
Afterwards, there were heaps of people that came up and congratulated me, and a lot less that wanted to argue with me.
It was a terrific experience to be involved in this debate. Each time I get to do one of these things I feel terribly under-prepared, especially so as this was my first time speaking in front of a crowd, but pushing myself has the benefit of improving my knowledge on the subjects. I look forward to my next opportunity to do something, but for now I have a brand new puppy to play with...
On Thursday (16/10/08) I will be debating Mike Paget on the subject 'Which makes more sense; Atheism or Christianity?' The debate will be at 6PM in The Theatre Lounge, Level 3 Tower, UTS, Sydney. It is being presented by Credo, a campus-based religious group, so I am expecting the audience to be a bit slanted towards belief and it might be a tough crowd.
Mike is the Anglican chaplain for UTS and is also the assistant minister for St Barnabas Broadway. He also writes a blog.Then there's me, I simply haven't seen any convincing, objectively verifiable evidence to prove the existence of a god, hence I am an atheist. I am also ordained, so 'Reverend Alan vs Reverend Mike' might be an appropriate subtitle for the debate.
You can see the promotional material here, here and here.
There are a few points to make about the flyer though:
'Atheism and Christianity are both very prominent beliefs in our societytoday '
Atheism is not a 'belief', but a lack of belief. Atheism is to belief asbald is to hair colour
'Atheism, which denies the existence of a God, gods or the supernatural...'
Atheism doesn't deny their existence, just finds no evidence and thereforeno reason tobelieve in them. I think these people equate atheism with antitheism. An atheist can deny the existance of a god, but is not required to. It is a much more solid position to say 'until there is reasonable evidence, I will retain the null hypothesis that belief in god is unnecessary.'
On top of that, most of the atheists that I've heard talk on the subject would be welcoming of any decent evidence for the existance of a god. If it were to be found, it would expand our view of the universe and all that is exponentially.
I think it is a rather outdated concept that an atheist is a grumpy old scholar that rants on and on about the impossibility of a god. Atheists today seem more interested in the reasons that people choose to believe in something with no decent evidence for doing so and we are more than happy to run comprehensive experiments on any testable claim made by proponants of religion. If an interactionalist god did exist, it should leave testable traces in the physical world. So far, none have been found. The universe appears exactly as would be expected if there were no god, so it is unnecdessary to propose the existancwe of one.
'the Christian Bible and its belief in one God has remained unchanged for2000 years.'
What? WHAT? UNCHANGED???!!!!! That has to be one of the most ignorant sentences I've read from a christian. It's so wrong, I don't know where to start... ummm addition of Jesus as God; Judaism > Christainity; Umpteen reinterpretations and rewritings of the bible; Mistranslations leading to major plot twists (Mary went from being a young girl to a virgin... shhh, don't tell the Catholics!)
I look forward to the debate and I think it is going to be very stimulating and should get the audience thinking about the basis of their religious position.
If you're in the area, come along!
I hope to see you there.
If you would like more info you can contact me at criticalmass@live.com.au
Russell Glasser of the ACA recently presented a lecture entitled "How atheists can be effective evangelists". I would recommend reading his slide show to anybody wanting to know more about becoming a vocal atheist. It is very well presented and makes a lot of good points about why you would evangelise, how to evangelise and how not to be a jerk about it.
It's one thing to get out there and shout your opinion from the rooftops, but it's another to do it well without coming off as a fist-shaking fanatic. I would like to see more constructive argument and less finger waggling on both sides of the religious debate. If we engage in discussions amicably, it will do a lot to further the arguments of both sides and we won't have to continually argue definitions and semantics.
There's nothing healthier for the mind than a challenging discussion.
There's nothing worse than to see a good point destroyed by emotional ranting.
Pick your arguments. Make them well. Seek the evidence.
Today the Sydney Atheists participated in the Junior Diabetes Research Foundation's "Walk for a Cure" we raised close to one thousand dollars for the foundation and had a great time in the process. Thanks to all those who donated, and a special thank you to everybody that turned up for the walk.
Often atheists get stigmatised as bad people because we don't believe in a god, therefore we are immoral, baby-eating scum.
One of the primary objectives of the Sydney Atheists is to show that we can be good without god. We have a charity branch to the group and as our first charitable act in the community, we donated blood.
Blood donation is a terrific way to really help the community and show that we are willing to go the extra mile to help others out.
I'd like to thank Tynan, Nathan, Ansgar, Peter, Phillip, Karen and Robbie for donating and thanks to all of those who turned up for support.
Anyone can donate and contribute to the Sydney Atheists 'club red' pool, just tell them you are donating under a club red group and fill out the slip. And you don't have to wait until our next blood drive to get involved. You can donate at any time (with three months in between leakages). If you do, let me know by emailing me at criticalmass@live.com.au
Our next charity event is a sponsored walk for the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation this Sunday (12th of October). You can donate to us online through our site, or in person. So far we have raised $482 and I'm sure we can get a bit more before the weekend. Donations are tax deductable (for Australian residents) and it will do wonders to help in the research of Juvenile Diabetes.
Religulous is being released in theaters across the states today. I can't wait for this to come out here, but sadly, I think it's going to be AGES until we get it in Australia. If we get it at all that is.
I'm looking forward to hearing the reviews as they start to flow in over the next few days, and I'm sure that it'll be covered in most of my favorite podcasts over the coming weeks. I guess that we'll just have to be happy with experiencing it vicariously through others until we can get our hands on a copy for ourselves.
I'll have to see if any of the local independent cinemas would be interested in running an "Expelled-Religulous" double header. That'd be a blast!
The Sydney Atheists have joined the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation's "Walk to Cure Diabetes". We will be completing the 5km walk on October 12th at Sydney Olympic Park.
To help us make a difference, please consider sponsoring us though my walk website, or choose your favorite Sydney Atheist to donate to from our group site. It will be great to be seen doing good in our atheist t-shirts, but it would be even better if we actually raised some money!
To find out more about the JDRF and how you can help go to the JDRF website.
Sydney Atheist's that would like to join the group can register here. We are registered as a company.
Hello everybody and welcome to the first edition of the Sydney Atheists' newsletter.
We have been really busy over the last few months planning the direction that this group is going to be taking and there have been a lot of interesting developments coming out of the committee meetings (formerly SAAG). The major shift has been in growing the group from being a meetup group to becoming an actual organisation, with a variety of different pursuits and chances for people to be involved in more productive ways. The branches and projects that have been identified are: • The development of a survey to gather information about the group members and non-believers in general. • Education and Syllabus, which is looking at the possible introduction of atheist teaching in educational environments and could include doing talks for schools, productions that demonstrate scientific and rational topics in ways that are accessible to all levels of audiences and influencing syllabus in the educational system. • Charity, which is looking into both outgoing and incoming charity. A blood drive is being organised, see below for details about how you can get involved. A book drive and community service events are also being considered. Then there is the possibility of doing some fundraising for our group, which will develop as the need for funds increases. • Media, which is involved in the production of a blog and this newsletter. A podcast will also be developed and is expected to be launched by the October meetup event. • Vision and Values, which has been working on the core principles that the Sydney Atheists will be built on. • Networking, which involves increasing awareness of Sydney Atheists amongst various organisations, communities and other such outlets. • Legal, which have been looking into the details of becoming an incorporated body, applying for a tax exempt status and discrimination against atheists. • T-Shirts, which is a continuation of the production of the t-shirts being made around world youth day. • Lobbying, which will be responsible for organising and producing press releases, letters to government officials and other opportunities for the Sydney Atheists to make their voice heard. On top of these new directions, the Sydney Atheists will also continue holding monthly Meetings and various social events throughout the month.
We are all really excited about the future of this group and are looking forward to the increased opportunities to make a difference.
We have been working on some charity and community service events for members of the Sydney Atheists to get involved with. The first charity event we will be holding is an atheist blood drive. It’ll be a chance to do something really positive and spread the notion of positive atheism.
The Australian Red Cross Blood Service Sydney CBD blood donor centre is at 20 Elizabeth St, Sydney – right near Martin Place.
The Sydney Atheists encourage all members to take time out of their day on Saturday the 4th of October to participate in the first Atheist Blood Drive at the Elizabeth St Donor Centre.
Blood donation is completely safe and won’t take much time out of your Saturday. If you are interested in taking part in our Club Red donation day please contact Alan Conradi at criticalmass@live.com.au for details on how the program works, eligibility information and what happens on the day of the blood drive.
Blood is not only needed during times of emergency, but for many people in the community, including cancer patients, burns victims, expectant mums, premature babies, and people with blood disorders who need blood on a daily basis for their survival and quality of life. Help save lives and share the positive message of the Sydney Atheists.
If you would prefer to donate at the alternate Sydney donor centre in Clarence Street please call 13 14 95 to make your individual appointment.
Sydney Atheists Charter
The Sydney Atheists committee have been working on the charter and have come up with the following as the core of the organisation:
Vision, mission and values Our vision is of a society that lives and grows through evidence-based reasoning and secular values. Our mission is to be: • an active atheist resource for the wider Sydney community; and • an open and welcoming community for atheists and atheist-friendly people. We work through education, charity and by representing the voice of reason in public debate. We also get together to celebrate life and have fun. Our values are: • an open and inquiring attitude • evidence based reasoning • inclusiveness and diversity • respect, compassion and goodwill. The above is based on three core positions: • we want to engage the wider community, not isolate ourselves from it; • we seek a level playing field with religious organisations —we donʼt want to discriminate against religious people or seek special status ourselves; and • we are also about the wonder and awe of existence.
Other stuff A selection of links that members might find interesting. Each month there will be a different selection of sites.
Please forward this newsletter to all of your atheist, agnostic, secular, humanist, freethinking, critical thinking, rationalist, open-minded or generally interesting friends and help to spread rational thinking.
The methods and values of scientific thinking have expanded our knowledge of life and our place in the universe. This modern knowledge—based on experience and evidence—has brought enormous benefit to humanity, yet many people still choose to rely on ancient texts and beliefs to guide their lives and their nations.
The Center for Inquiry exists to change this situation. We are here to promote the scientific outlook—to expand the methods and values of science into all areas of human endeavor.
We invite you to learn more about the ways we are using research, outreach, and activism to advance reason and human values around the world. Then, if these values are as important to you as they are to us, we ask you to join CFI.
Let your voice be heard. With your help, we can ensure that our time—your time—will be a time of science and reason.
In a cultural climate that has become so hostile to science and secularism, the work of CFI is more important than ever. If you cherish rational thinking, science, and secular values, please join CFI today.
In this video are:Richard Dawkins, Lawrence Krauss, Stephen Pinker, Susan Jacoby, Damon Linker, E.O. Wilson, Jennifer Michael Hecht, Ann Druyan, Daniel Dennett and Paul Kurtz.
I have just received this month's "Australian Atheist" magazine, which contains an article by yours truly about the recent interview and panel that I was involved with.
This is an excerpt from the editorial:
Thanks to NSW AFA members, Hannah Taylor and Alan Conradi, the workload was somewhat shared. You may read about Hannah's and Alan's experiences with the media on pages 8-10 and 11-13. Both performed professionally and intelligently, giving an endearing, uplifting, positive and human face to atheism. These bright young people holding firm and rational ideas about existence could only impress the discerning listener and viewer. My guess is that even some religious folk may have been surprised at their assertiveness in clarifying atheist ideas with such confidence. Well done, and thank you.
And here's the article. There’s been a lot of attention given to the different religious groups, especially during the recent catholic perversion of taxpayer’s money dubbed ‘world youth day’. We have seen all kinds of different religions represented in the media, but there hasn’t been much time given to non-belief. This is why, when I received an email from the AFA asking for a young person in Sydney to represent atheism on a religious panel, I thought it was an opportunity too good to pass up. The email explained that News.com were going to be holding a youth panel on religion and were hoping to get an atheist representative. I wrote back straight away. David Nichols called me soon after I replied to the email and we spoke for a while about my positions on the various topics likely to arise, the basis of my atheism, the kinds of books I read etc. In a day or two, I was called back and told that the AFA was happy to have me as the atheistic representative on the forum. I was excited, while at the same time being worried about the possibility of stuffing it up and making atheism look bad.
Preparation
I got in contact with News.com and was basically given the same information that was in the original email. What I did pick up from my initial conversations with the reporter was a seeming lack of bias. When discussing my view of religion, she seemed genuinely interested and I got the impression that they were going to represent my views fairly. I was still very aware of the possibility of being misrepresented, especially given the recency of the ‘Expelled’ controversy where Richard Dawkins, PZ Myers, Eugenie Scott and other prominent advocated for secularism were the victims of biased editing from Ben Stein’s intelligent design entourage. From this point, I began to prepare myself for the event. Some of the books that I read during this time include David Mills’ ‘The Atheist Universe’, Christopher Hitchens’ ‘God is not Great’, David Hume’s ‘Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion and Sam Harris’ ‘Letter to a Christian Nation’. I found that ‘The Atheist Experience’ podcast was great for learning how to discuss atheism and I learnt a lot about interview techniques from this and other podcasts. The internet was also a great source of information pertaining to ‘the big questions’, like stem cell research, abortion, sex before marriage, big bang and evolution theories. I practiced defending my positions by engaging in discussions with family, friends and members of the various rational thinking groups that I belong to. On the 21st of April, I received an email from the News.com reporter that said that the format was to be changed from a debate to individual interviews that would be spliced together. The reason for this change of format was because the videos for the news site were to be no longer than around three minutes each and a debate would not work in such a format. This was a shame, as I was looking forward to getting into a bit of a debate, but it was still a good chance to dispel a few myths about atheism and show that we aren’t a rabble of baby-eating Satan worshippers. We were lucky to get the questions ahead of time, which allowed me to draft out my answers and send them to the AFA to see if I was on the right track. Once I had my answers, had read up on a variety of different topics, and had a few practice discussions with people, I felt that I was ready to do the interview.
The interview
When I arrived at the News.com studio, I was quite nervous. I was taken to a meeting room and chatted with the reporter while she set up her equipment. She seemed genuinely interested in atheism, especially the social aspect and where an atheist gets their information from. As the interview progressed, we deviated from the set questions quite a bit. I was asked about why science is important to atheists, whether it is right to question people’s beliefs and a great deal about (catholic) world youth day. I also explained the differences between atheism and agnosticism, tried to dispel the myths about atheism being related to satanism, anarchism, narcissism, etc and I also spoke about how atheism only addresses a lack of belief in gods. The Latter point meaning that there is no atheistic dogma and that each atheist subscribes to their own moral and ethical codes, usually based on a social exchange or humanistic model. I found that once the initial butterflies had been overcome, the 45 minutes flew by. By the end, it felt much more like a natural conversation than an interview. I left the studio feeling excited, but all the way home, I was thinking about my answers to the questions and the things I could have said better or should have made clearer. I was consoled by the idea that it was great just to have a representative for atheism in the interviews and if some good points were made it would be a bonus.
The photo shoot
A few weeks after the interview, all of the participants attended a photo shoot for the online promotion of the clips. It was interesting meeting the other participants, as I wasn’t sure who I’d been up against to this point. I had expected that the religious representatives would be hard-edged, well spoken, thoroughly indoctrinated, public speaking trained preacher-types. Though when I did meet them I found that my fears were unwarranted. They were all fairly normal young people, with no particularly obvious religiousness about them. The Muslim, Hindu and Catholic were there when I arrived. While we waited for the others, we chatted a bit, introducing ourselves and which religion we represented. I got talking to the Catholic about world youth day, which was a good discussion, but we had to agree to disagree. The most interesting of the participants was the Buddhist, who identified as an atheist and fully supported evolution. We spoke about our beliefs, I helped him understand what positive atheism is and the difference between atheism and agnosticism; he explained reincarnation and the core beliefs of Buddhism to me. What was most interesting was that he said that his spiritual belief is fully accepting of the scientific consensus on any issue, which I wasn’t entirely convinced about. During the photo shoot, the Muslim announced that he was not permitted by his beliefs to touch a woman. There were a couple of group photos where we all had to factor this in to our positioning and during a shot where we all had our hands on top of one another’s the Jewish girl unknowingly put her hand in his, and he quickly withdrew his hand as if he’d been burned. There was very little animosity between the participants and a general air of acceptance and tolerance between all of us. Once each person’s faith was whittled down to its core beliefs it seemed that everyone there subscribed to a basically humanistic model, to which the believers applied a variety of unnecessary additions. The online clips
The first video released for the ‘Faith off’ was a teaser promo. It highlighted some of the more controversial positions, such as banning sex before marriage, god as a creator and reincarnation. My quote was “Heaven and hell are fictitious places”, after which I was more comfortable that my words wouldn’t be used out of context. The full set of clips was released soon afterwards, covering evolution, homosexuality, life after death, world youth day and fitting in. Throughout the clips, the common religious positions are supported. Sex before marriage is wrong, homosexuality is wrong, evolution is wrong, but their religion is right when it comes to theories of an afterlife, or promoting religion. The Buddhist had some interesting points to make about world youth day, evolution and sexual restriction, so I can’t claim to be the only source of reason, but I was hoping that some of the religious representatives would have tried to be a bit more progressive. As it happened, the religious views tended to seem quite out of touch with a modern society that is generally permissive of the things that they were prohibiting. I enjoyed a good response to the release of the videos, with many of my friends from online communities giving lots of positive feedback. All in all, I was happy with the way I was represented and was glad that my fears of being edited out of context were not supported. It was a great feeling to be given the chance to represent something that I feel strongly about.
The Kerry-Anne show 1st part
2nd part
Not long after the ‘Faith Off’ videos were released, the participants were all contacted by a popular breakfast TV show called Mornings with Kerry-Anne. They basically wanted us to speak about the same issues that we had for the Faith Off, but this time it would be a live group panel. We all arrived and met in the green room, but there were only two of us from the original interviews, the Buddhist and myself. The catholic was the twin brother of the one from the video, who couldn’t make it because he was with the Pope on the day (I’m sure nobody noticed). The Jewish and Muslim participants didn’t arrive until just before the show went on-air. While we were waiting for the show to start, we were all chatting about our various different opinions and had the opportunity to each explain the grounds for our positions, which led to a big discussion about the origins of the universe, whether the taxpayers should pay for world youth day, and the difference between and non-exclusivity of atheism and agnosticism. I was surprised that the others were happy enough talking about such subjects and that there was not much conversation about their reasons for belief. It wasn’t too long before we were all called down to the studio, miked up and sent on set. Kerry-Anne introduced us before starting with the questions which included life after death, religion’s responsibility for wars, suicide bombing, promoting tolerance, the roots of religion and ‘what if you’re wrong’. Of the panellists, the Buddhist was the most eloquent, the Jew seemed to be reciting lines and the Muslim girl didn’t seem very confident at all, which wasn’t surprising, since she was asked to explain about suicide bombers and the virgins after death. It was a tactless question, even for morning TV. The rest of the questions were met by fairly predictable answers, with nothing too shocking. It was breakfast TV though, so I wasn’t expecting Jerry Springer. I was amazed at how many people saw it though. As we were leaving the studio, I got a rush of text messages and phone calls from people that had seen it. Old work mates, friends, family, at least 6 people contacted me within the first hour saying they’d seen it and I hadn’t told any of them about it before hand. Even this week, months later, I was asked by someone at my work ‘Was that you on TV?’ There’s also been some pretty wide distribution of the video amongst the online atheist population since it has gone to youtube; I was even congratulated by the guys from the Atheist Experience podcast, which I listened to in preparation for the first interview.
Overall, I’m so glad to have had the chance to do this. To stand up for something that you feel strongly about and get recognition for it is a great feeling. After doing this, I am now much more confident in discussing and debating various topics whenever the chance arises. I still have much to learn about the finer points, but through a thirst for knowledge and a deep interest in the subject matter, I continue to learn and build stronger arguments. I would encourage all atheists to do the same.
There's a new Dawkins DVD out! It's called 'Appearances and Events'
On Thursday (16/10/08) I will be debating Mike Paget on the subject 'Which makes more sense; Atheism or Christianity?' The debate will be at 6PM in The Theatre Lounge, Level 3 Tower, UTS, Sydney. It is being presented by Credo, a campus-based religious group, so I am expecting the audience to be a bit slanted towards belief and it might be a tough crowd.
Then there's me, I simply haven't seen any convincing, objectively verifiable evidence to prove the existence of a god, hence I am an atheist. I am also ordained, so 'Reverend Alan vs Reverend Mike' might be an appropriate subtitle for the debate.
You can see the promotional material here, here and here.
Today the Sydney Atheists participated in the Junior Diabetes Research Foundation's "Walk for a Cure" we raised close to one thousand dollars for the foundation and had a great time in the process.
Thanks to all those who donated, and a special thank you to everybody that turned up for the walk.
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