Jason’s CFI diaries — Day 6
22May. 09
So it has been about a month since my CFI trip, yet only now are dairy entries of my final days from my CFI journey surfacing here on the now thriving Young Australian Skeptics blogroll. Why? Upon returning to Melbourne I was hit by an avalanche of deadlines for numerous assignments. From an essay question on how the Australia-US relationship will change under the new Obama administration, to why the Global Financial Crisis heralds the demise of the neo-liberal project, and also an essay on the relevance of Plato’s account of memesis in respect to David Cronemberg’s sci-fi thriller eXistenZ. Thus is the life of a arts undergrad majoring in politics/film studies.
Day 6 was perhaps the most important of the entire trip (for me anyway), as this was the day I was to present a talk and powerpoint show on the rise of the secular student movement in Australia! I spoke on a student panel alongside three other amazing student leaders.
First up was Sarah Kaiser, founder of the Secular Alliance of IU which began only a year ago in April 2008. She is the current president of the group and has helped it grow from around 20 members to over 200 members in the past year. The group has hosted a number of successful events featuring major speakers including Eddie Tabash and Annie Laurie Gaylor. The group is currently getting huge press attention via their Indiana Atheist Bus Campaign. Check out their fantastic campaign video:
Sarah’s group is also well known for an excursion they took to the local creationist museum, the video of which was posted all over the web, including on Pharyngula!
Second speaker on the student panel was Michael Amiti, President of the Secular Student Union at the University of Washington. He was born and raised as a Latter-Day Saint, what we call Mormon, but he left the church in 2006 and has been active in the freethought community ever since. Michael is also the CFI campus coordinator for the Northwest region of the USA. The SSU’s website is a blog completely maintained by its members! Michael initiated a dialogue with a youth minister at the infamous Mars Hill Church (one of the largest mega-churches in the USA) called “Conversations with a Skeptic,” which involved five recorded discussions between Michael and the pastor on God, morality, belief, and religion. Michael is from Seattle, which is one of the most liberal and atheistic parts of the USA, and many of the challenges he has faced motivating people to be involved in the freethought movement are parallel to the ones I’ve faced here in Melbourne for the same reasons. He spoke passionatley for the need for atheists and freethinkers to reclaim the moral high ground on debates with religious persons. He has particularly focused on breaking down negative stereotypes about atheists as arrogant and rude, through hosting respectful engagements with different religious groups, including muslims.
Then me! I talked about the wonderful University of Melbourne Secular Society (UMSS), how we got started and why. I talked about some of our recent activities, notably our popular ‘quotes of reason’ campaign (see below), which acted to balance out the many constant scribblings the Christian Union, and most recently, Planet Shakers have covered our campus pavements with.
I talked of the healthy engagement UMSS has had with the Christian Union over the past two years, including holding two joint forums, attracting well over 100 students, the latest of which entitled ‘Is Faith Irrational’. Such engagement, I feel, is crucial to the education of not only the members of the CU but also our own members, who are able to hear from Christians directly about their views, therefore preventing anyone from making generalisations or assumption about what the other party believes in. Through such engagements the two groups have been able to not only flesh out where exactly our difference of opinion lies, but also find common ground on many issues. The Christian Union on many occasions seem delighted that we want to engage with these issues and create a dialogue, I believe they have as much trouble combating apathy in Australia as we do. I talked about our involvement in the Victorian Humanist Society’s ‘god-free’ ethical education curriculum which is offering non-religious parents and their children an alternative to the religious instruction classes that pervade our many state primary schools. I mentioned our successful Youth Against World Youth Day campaign that coincided with the Pope’s state funded ($187 million) trip to Australia in 2008, which we received national media attention for. If you don’t know much about it, check out our highlights clip:
Finally, of course, I talked about the awesome work the Young Australian Skeptics are doing, especially through the exploding popularity of our podcast, The Pseudo Scientists.
Final speaker was Derek Rodgers from the Dallhousie Atheist Community in Canada. Pseudo Scientist listeners will know Derek as our interviewee and guest panelist from Episode 11. Derek talked about the Canadian atheist bus campaign to which he was an official spokesperson. The campaign got major press coverage when it was banned in his home town of Halifax. Derek’s group is also well known as the team that infiltrated Silvia Brown’s visit with hundreds of ‘Are you being scammed?’ questionnaires.
The students are indeed the future of the CFI’s global freethought movement. I was so delighted to be a part of this panel. After some concluding remarks from Paul Kurtz the conference came to a close. Larry Moran, biochemist at the University of Toronto and blogger from the popular Sandwalk site, took Derek and I out to lunch. Moran, who I have previously written plenty about, was certainly one of coolest attendees of the conference that I had the pleasure of hanging out with.
I had one more night at the beautiful Hyatt Hotel before my trip home. A final blog post is yet to come detailing my last day were I traveled to the Center For Inquiry’s Washington DC office! Stay tuned!
