AAI: Russell Blackford

I've been very, very busy today, so I'm bringing you a few belated comments about the Atheist Alliance International convention. I have to be brief, unfortunately; tomorrow is another busy day, which will be starting with a session with Mr Deity, so I need to get some sleep sometime.

I met Russell Blackford! He's a very nice fellow, especially since he gave a talk I could agree with 100%. He was discussing the virtues of blasphemy; he actually made an argument that we have a kind of moral responsibility to blaspheme. He addressed a couple of ideas, actually; one was the issue of how we know whether religious beliefs aren't true (quickly dismissed; religion is incompatible with the results of rational inquiry), and spent more time with the question of why we atheists should regard it as urgent to loudly say that religious beliefs aren't true. He discussed the recent attempts by the UN to add special protections to religious belief, which actually contradict personal liberties, and also showed that existing UN guidelines already compromise free speech.

You people should be reading his blog, you know. Good stuff.