Phillips and Zwartz explode over the Global Atheist Convention

The past week has been mightily busy, so sorry for not writing on Homologous Legs at all. But I have a good excuse – the Global Atheist Convention was held in Melbourne from the 12th to the 14th of March, and I was one of the volunteers. This meant that I had to hold up signs telling people where the ends of lines were located, register attendees, hand out programs, command the microphones for Q&A sessions, set up the Saturday night dinner tables, not to mention watch the talks and presentations… and if I wanted to tweet/blog in the little time I had left, I would have had to buy Internet access from the Convention Centre with my non-existent credit card.

So, yeah, I was a bit busy.

But the convention was excellent and everyone involved had a good time and was extremely tired by the end of it. The organisers thought it went very well, and their long year of work leading up to the weekend paid off. Great, it seems like everyone was happy, hmm?

Not so. The religion editor for The Age newspaper, Barney Zwartz, wasn’t too impressed by the whole thing, and throughout the weekend and the days afterwards wrote opinion pieces in the paper and online about how he wasn’t thrilled about the convention and the speakers that presented there. Here’s a bit of his latest diatribe on his blog, The Religious Write, entitled “Atheists’ ridicule won’t win friends and influence people”:

Evaluating the convention depends on what one considers its purpose.  If it was to validate hardline atheists to themselves and give them confidence, it was a triumph.  If it was to take a mature look at how to advance the cause of secularism, politically and socially, the speakers should probably have spent less time ridiculing religion and more on positive and practical ideas.

It was superfluous for speaker after speaker to point out that believers are deluded fantasists who believe  in a magic friend who does magic tricks, because for almost everyone at the conference that was an article of faith already.

Many there would be horrified at how similar it was to evangelical meetings I have covered, down to the bouffant-haired televangelist prototype in Atheist Alliance International president Stuart Bechman, who was master of ceremonies. Every jibe brought a burst of  applause — all that was missing was the “hallelujahs”.

Of course, Barney Zwartz is by no means unbiased – but it’s clear that he didn’t understand the tone of the convention. I won’t go into a counterargument against his points, they should be obvious to anyone without the preconception that atheism is a religion (it’s not) and that the convention was a bunch of sermons (they weren’t). Just look at the frequent use of emotive terms like “deluded”, “horrified”, “jibe” etc. I could go on, but I won’t.

Another piece of anger that was written in response to the convention was by Melanie Phillips, writing for The Australian newspaper. Her piece, entitled “Dawkins preaches to the deluded against the divine“, is even worse than Zwartz’s:

The fact is, however, the shine has come off Dawkins. For sure, he remains a superstar for the legions who loathe religion. But, nevertheless, a strong feeling has developed in less credulous quarters that he has gone too far.

While he was writing about the “selfish gene” and the “blind watchmaker”, he received a respectful reception even from those who might have disagreed with him but were nevertheless impressed by the imaginative brio and dazzling fluency of his argument. But then he left biology behind and became the self-appointed universal crusader against God. Flying the flag of Darwinism, he went to war against religion on the grounds that any belief that did not follow the rules of scientific inquiry was prima facie evidence of imbecility or insanity.

He became the apostle of scientism, the ideology that says everything in the universe has a materialist explanation and must answer to the rules of empirical scientific evidence; to believe anything else is irrational.

A second’s thought tells one this is absurd. Love, law and philosophy are not scientific yet they are not irrational. So it is scientism that seems to be irrational.

I could swear here, in astonishment, but I won’t. “Scientism”? What is this, the Discovery Institute? “Self-appointed universal crusader”? Could you have a more loaded and emotional, yet patently-ridiculous, assertion about Richard Dawkins? Others have critisised religion before him, and many will do so after him. He’s not our deity, he’s not the best thing since sliced bread – he just makes a damn load of sense when he speaks. Atheists and people who like critical thinking and the scientific method respect that. And so they should.

Check out both of these articles, if not just to see what people will say when they let their emotions get in the way of actually thinking about the topic at hand. Religions sure do bring out emotions in both camps, but sometimes it’s clear to see who’s approaching things more rationally.