Rebecca Goldstein on mattering

Now enough kvetching, it’s time to say how great the conference was, and why.

As I mentioned on Saturday morning, Rebecca Goldstein’s talk was brilliant. Miri did an incredible job of liveblogging it, so you can just read her post to learn what RG said. Ditto Jason and his post.

From Miri’s:

In preparation for this talk, I polled some very prominent women and asked them if they ever feel that their gender undermines them professionally. Virtually all of them reported saying something in a discussion or meaning and being completely ignored–until the comment is picked up and reported by a man. Then, suddenly everyone jerks to attention. [Read more…]

Do you thank the lord? I said, DO YOU?

Good old mass media and conformity and assuming everybody thinks the same thing. Wolf Blitzer chats with a woman who just barely escaped the tornado and simply assumes that a lot of god-blather will be welcome.

 At the end of the interview, Blitzer told her, “You’re blessed. Brian, your husband is blessed. Anders is blessed… I guess you got to thank the lord, right?” When the woman shrugged off the question, he repeated it, asking, “Do you thank the lord for that split-second decision?”

“I–I’m actually an atheist,” she responded. After the awkward laughter that followed, she added, “We are here and you know, I don’t blame anybody for thanking the lord.”

“Of course not,” Blitzer replied.

Awkward!

Not. Why should it be awkward? Unless awkward for Blitzer – that would be good.

And I do blame people for thanking the lord, because why couldn’t the lord just divert the tornado to a fallow field, instead?

In the lobby

I had no idea anyone was taking pictures. Candids!

Photo by Beth Zucker

I was talking to Michael DeDora about Imad and Waleed and the Bangladeshi atheists, or rather he was talking to me about them, since his office (CFI’s Office of Public Policy) works on these issues.

Just grab it

But we don’t want to let all this mishegas overshadow the brilliance of the actual conference, do we. No we don’t. So time to post some happy place stuff. Like pictures for instance.

Monica Harmsen took this. She’s a friend and a CFI intern.

Photo

I really don’t remember what I was saying to Dave Silverman that could be illustrated with a throttling gesture.

I know what we were talking about though: Rebecca Goldstein’s magnificent talk, and mattering, and the implications of mattering for atheism –

Maybe that’s where the throttling gesture came in. I was talking about the fact that for people who don’t feel as if they matter there is one obvious remedy, which is theism. Even if nobody else thinks you matter, God thinks you matter. God’s eye is on the sparrow. Maybe that’s actually an eye on the sparrow gesture.

Anyway, that’s the reception on Friday evening, after dinner with a bunch of friends and before a long talk with Michael DeDora in the lobby about all the threatened atheists all over the world and how his Office of Public Policy works on their behalf. Maryam arrived at the hotel while we were talking. I jumped up to give her a hug and then she went off to take care of her cold-and-cough.

#RDFbullies

Update May 21 see update below.

Oh good god. Really?

dawks2

Three posts on CFI about the Women in Secularism Conference – May 17-19

That’s on the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science website.

But we’re the bullies. Never forget that. We use our immense ruthless power as bloggers to argue with other bloggers, while poor tiny powerless meek obscure humble shoemaker Richard Dawkins simply tries to stamp Rebecca Watson into the ground a little bit more by re-posting Ron Lindsay comparing her to North Korea.

We’re the bullies. How does that work again?

And no those are not “three posts about the Women in Secularism Conference” – that’s false advertising. They’re three posts about Ron Lindsay’s dislike of feminism and then his fury at uppity women who dislike his thrusting of his dislike of feminism on a conference that wasn’t meant to be about his dislike of feminism. Those posts aren’t about the conference at all. You won’t find out by reading them that Maryam Namazie was a speaker and on a panel about leaving religion. You won’t read anything about Rebecca Goldstein’s talk or Katha Pollitt’s or Susan Jacoby’s. You won’t see anything about Debbie Goddard or Jamila Bey or Amanda Marcotte. The posts are not about the conference! They’re about spite and anger.

There’s nothing about the conference on the website. Do a search and the above item is the only one you’ll find.

Brilliant. I guess Ron was so pleased with the results of his three blog posts at the conference itself that he felt it would be even better to trash the conference afterwards with the help of Dawkins. What’s he going to do for an encore? Post photoshops of all the speakers? Is it heads on goats time?

Update May 21 No, that last para is not right, because Ron didn’t ask RDF to publish those posts.

Also, I of course know perfectly well that he wouldn’t actually post photoshops of all the speakers. On the other hand – if you had asked me, I would have said he would never attribute “the most intellectually dishonest piece of writing since the last communique issued by North Korea” to one of the speakers, either. I would never have guessed beforehand that he would write a thing like that about a speaker at a CFI conference. So, yes, in a sense I know he wouldn’t post photoshops of us, but in another sense, I don’t really know that I do know that. Yet I feel as if I do know it, hence phrasing it as “I know perfectly well that” he wouldn’t.

At any rate, I freely admit that was hyperbole. But then so was North Korea, and I’m not the CEO of anything.