Can an Atheist Unity Convention Happen?

Great idea! Although, as many have pointed out, the only thing that unites atheists is our varying levels of unwillingness to swallow the strange notion that the whole universe is being secretly masterminded by an invisible sky-zombie named God who suffers from a chronic three-level identity crisis called a Holy Trinity. Other than that, our beliefs span the gamut of human thought.

I would attend.

Who else?

I’m in. PZ was talking about DC, and it seems like a good-enough idea.

Plus, it seems like it would be great to be able to go to a bunch of groups’ national meetings.

They say it’s tradition to host their yearly convention, or it’s a moneymaker for them so they can’t give it up, and then the idea just dies.

It is fallacy to use an argument of tradition…especially among rationalists! One has to deduct that the only reasoning left for the repeated death of the proposal for a Unity Convention is the latter.

Surplus should not usurp missions. I understand orgs need funds to continue their missions, but the date of this convention allows plenty of time for orgs to have some foresight, and creatively find ways to raise new funding for that that year. Hopefully leaders will see the overall benefit of a Unity Convention and exert the little bit of extra effort to show some secular solidarity.

I think it would be great if the presentations could be webcast, and/or have interactive panel discussions as part of the conference for people who are not able to go to the conference itself.

I do think a more central location, especially for something as large as this is supposed to be, should be chosen, like Chicago, so it is cheaper for people to get there.

My Vote would be somewhere central…Chicago in the summer would be nice. I know a guy who knows a guy in Chi Town

Count me in as well. It’s a superior idea!

Like a fleck of calamari from his beard, dropped Washington DC as the location, which in turn, got everyone on the comments thread pumped, because they live in DC, or near it. Then after so many people in the DC area became aware of each other, someone thought it would be a great idea to form a Drinking Skeptically group in NoVA, despite there already being over a dozen different groups in the area, with plenty of them offering drinking nights!

I’d say that is one of the problem of organizing atheists, people don’t look for the groups as hard as they could, for example, on Meetup.com, or Facebook. There isn’t a great clearing house of all atheist groups, because the national groups, like American Atheists and AAI have affiliations, but not all small groups want affiliations, so remain unlisted.

Slight complication: many groups use their convention to also hold their AGM. Not that this couldn’t be worked in somehow, ie. set aside a block of time and block of conference rooms within the larger event.

Other question: Where do we Canadians fit in? Sounds so far like a USA event. Guess we should just throw our own party….

I think it would work, as long as you don’t expect us to all show up at the same time.

I agree that it should be held in D.C. If you want to challenge the notion that the USA is a “Christian nation,” that’s the best location to make your stand. Fill as much of the mall as you can, and speak from the steps of the Capitol (or as close as you can get to it). Holding it anywhere else could be construed by some as a concession to the opposition. There’s also something to be said for doing it in 2012, right before the next presidential election.

And as far as Fox News is concerned, since they used footage of large crowds to falsely inflate the size of the religious right’s “take back the Capitol” rally a few weeks ago, they can just use the real footage from that rally to downplay the attendance at the atheist gathering… provided they use a little digital magic on the protest signs. 😉

JD, by going to conventions like this, or even on the local level, you can make connections you wouldn’t otherwise have the opportunity to make. This, on a whole, is a completely positive thing.

They say it’s tradition to host their yearly convention, or it’s a moneymaker for them so they can’t give it up

Couldn’t the various organizations combine efforts to put on one big unity convention that serves as “the” convention for each of them? A little math would help here, but I don’t have any of the orgs’ numbers. I’m guessing that the membership of any given org would turn out in roughly equal numbers to the unity con as would’ve turned out to their own org’s (separate) national convention. That would bring up the problem of overlap (people who are members of more than one of the orgs), but how many of those people are there, and how many of them would’ve gone to more than one national con anyway? And perhaps some people who are unlikely to attend any one org’s national con could be lured to a unity con, so we could actually see a net gain in total attendance. Costs and profits could be allocated proportionally to the participating orgs, and the total cost of one unity con is probably less than the combined costs of various individual orgs’ national cons, so it might even be more profitable on the whole. And of course, any org that needed a membership meeting could get its own side room for part of the time, or there could just be a single side room that all of the orgs take turns using for that purpose. Sounds like it could be a winner all around.

Creepy. Do we all march in lock step to the “brights” too? Chant the Secular Humanists mantra and agree to their fucking retarded commandments to live by or we aren’t real atheists/freethinkers?

Why do we have to copy religions? Religion’s creepy.

I’ve been dreaming of actually getting to FFRF’s traditional convention for years. Maybe, with luck, I’ll get to one before I die though, given my finances, it’s dubious.

But if they’ve got to hold it along with the Secular Humanists and American Atheists, count me out!

Sorry, Hemant, but I’ll be doing the opposite and writing them to please not do this unless they can do both.

Hemant, it would force me to support two groups I cannot. I also cannot support anything as stuckup as the notions of “brights”. I’m sorry but I cannot support this.

Why not have the groups agree to go ahead and hold their own annual convention, but just hold it at the same place and at the same time? They could coordinate on space, share registrations, etc. Members would register, but upon registration they would declare what organization they represent, and the money would go to that organization.

I’m sure there are flaws with this idea — I can already think of a few — but might moving in this direction ease the worries and objections of the groups who don’t want to give up their annual convention?

As mentioned in the article, conventions are a big moneymaker for non-profit organizations.

Simply put, some atheist organizations would seize to exist without this income. People don’t join organizations and membership fee income is not enough for anything.

I like the idea of unity convention, but eliminating other conventions is impractical for organizations.

They got bills to pay and work to do.

The unity convention should happen, but shouldn’t replace all others. I enjoy having few conventions during the year, no time or money for them all but at least you have a choice.

It’s happening in Australia 🙂 PZ and Richard Dawkins and a host of Aussie Athiests are going to be there.

http://www.atheistconvention.org.au/

Richard Dawkins talks about how powerful athiests could be if we could get our act together like other lobbys.