Atheism's True Believers Gather

By Jacqueline Maley - The Sydney Morning Herald

Something you will never see: an atheist boarding a plane with a bomb strapped to him, waving a copy of On The Origin Of Species, before he blows himself up in a violent attempt to further his cause.

So says David Nicholls, the head of the Atheist Foundation of Australia, the man at the increasingly pointy end of the reinvigorated and freshly vocal atheism movement.

Atheists, he says, oppose the extremism that sometimes characterises their religious counterparts. They do not believe in shoving views down throats. They mistrust group-think and are suspicious of institutions. Unlike their believer brethren, atheists are, by definition, not joiners.

''I am not really comfortable with the whole 'movement' thing, although I suppose there are other atheists around,'' Nicholls says.

How galling, then, that atheists have lately had to collectivise, organise and unite against what they regard as common enemies: religious extremism, the blurring of church and state, and the denial of the theory of evolution.

The new age of activist atheism, which began with the publication of bestsellers such as Richard Dawkins's The God Delusion (2006), and Christopher Hitchens's polemic God is Not Great (2007), has grown into a loose global coalition of civil libertarians, liberals and gay rights activists.

Australians, notorious for their political complacency, have begun to join up. Membership of the Atheist Foundation has increased since 2001, Nicholls says, although he refuses to release numbers.

Next month the incipient Australian movement will come together for the Global Atheist Convention in Melbourne. Speakers include Dawkins, the movement's supreme deity; the philosopher Peter Singer; and Dan Barker, a prominent American atheist activist and former Christian preacher.

Organisers say it is the largest such event to be held in Australia, and perhaps in the world. The 2500-capacity convention is sold out and there is even a waiting list.
''It started with the scandals of the televangelists in America, the [paedophilia] scandals of the Catholic Church, and then there were the attacks on the Twin Towers,'' Nicholls says of atheism's recent popularity.

''People began writing books that gelled with the population. People realised if they wanted change in society, they had to make it happen. Religion was getting a free ride.''


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