By MIRIAM COSIC - THE AUSTRALIAN
Added: Mon, 15 Mar 2010 00:00:00 UTC

Thanks to LWS for the link.
Original link

THEY came from everywhere, the true unbelievers: from Perth, Sydney, Brisbane, the Sunshine Coast, New Zealand and beyond. There was a honeymooning couple from North Carolina who had met on an atheist internet site; and two friends from rural NSW, both extroverted women who had been raised Catholics and were now seriously annoyed with it.

An Iranian man who had seen unspeakable things done in the name of religion asked a speaker, philosopher A.C. Grayling, how it was that humans could be so kind and yet torture and kill each other.

An Iraqi who migrated to Australia 40 years ago gave $4000 of his money to support this unusual gathering: the 2010 Global Atheists Convention, held in Melbourne at the weekend.

The idea of atheists congregating seems counterintuitive. After all, they are defined only by an absence, a belief they don't have. But congregate they did, their numbers reaching 2500 yesterday, at the Melbourne Convention Centre on a perfect autumn day.

"But what will you talk about - nothing?" someone had asked David Nicholls, president of the Atheist Foundation of Australia and co-convener of the conference. Far from it: most sessions ended before the audience was ready to let the speaker go. Nicholls had been asked, he said in his opening remarks, whether delegates were going "to worship the devil, or plot world domination", and it wasn't clear whether he was joking.
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TAGGED: ATHEISM, CONFERENCES