CHARLES WOOLEY

Why the decision to cancel a convention for atheists has left him searching for answers

Iwas disappointed to read that the third Global Atheist Convention, planned for Melbourne in February, had been cancelled due to “a lack of interest”. I had been looking forward to it.

The courageous author Salman Rushdie was to have been the star attraction. He has described religion as “a poison in the blood” and anyone who has travelled to unhappy lands torn apart by sectarian violence could hardly disagree. From Northern Ireland to Lebanon, Sudan, Syria, Afghanistan and now Myanmar (remember when we all thought Buddhists were kindly), the Belief Business always presents as the prime global merchant of cruelty, intolerance, torture and mass murder.

Rushdie certainly saw it that way. In 1989, the self-appointed Iranian literary critic, the Ayatollah Khomeini, took such a dislike to Rushdie’s novel The Satanic

Verses he declared a fatwa against the author for offending Islam. I never much liked the book but to be fair, in it, Rushdie also took a shot at every other religion.

I met Rushdie fleetingly in London in the early ‘90s when he was ‘on the run’ and changing his lodgings virtually every other day. The fatwa threat to his life was serious, but the author struck me as surprisingly calm and so much braver than I would have been in those circumstances.

Confronted by murderous religious fanatics, I usually find their evil world view suddenly conveniently acceptable, at least until I leave their benighted countries.

An armed thug in Belfast once demanded of my film crew and me, “Are youse Catholics or Protestants?” I assured him we were whatever he was.

Again, in Kabul a few years ago, I was fully prepared to waver. Our embassies in the Middle East always advise that if you are taken by Islamists, you should declare yourself to be a Christian. “Atheism will get you killed immediately and is it really worth dying for?” They told me, although long odds, Christianity might be the better bet for my salvation. Of course, I could always buy a useful little publication called Islam for

Dummies and try to bluff my way. I am sufficiently conversant with Christianity from childhood indoctrination and could easily get away with that, but Islam would be a stretch. Would the Taliban really believe I was taking instruction at the Hobart Mosque? But anything’s worth a try because unless you are a fanatic, no faith is worth a painful death. But sometimes surely, in the safety of our own land, we should stand up for western liberalism, rationality and simple decency.

Though even here in Australia today, that comes at a cost, and so I’m already slipping on rubber gloves to open the expected deluge of demented and tightly scribbled grubby letters threatening me with locusts and a plague of boils.

It is 500 years since Martin Luther courageously nailed his thoughts to the door of the Wittenberg Cathedral and, in so doing, sparked the Protestant Reformation, the final collapse of the Holy Roman Empire, the rise of European nationalism and a good deal of sectarian nastiness. Luther meant well and the Catholic Church certainly needed to take a hard look at itself (as it does again today), but millions died in the religious wars of the ensuing centuries, and for what? Blind faith, persecution, intolerance and corruption still prevail in the modern world.

I planned to attend next year’s meeting in Melbourne. Now I’m left wondering what it says about the state of rationality and scepticism when even the atheists no longer have enough faith to turn up to a meeting of fellow nonbelievers.

Last week a leading Sydney Anglican, Dr Michael Jensen, was sensible, restrained and reasonable, as Anglicans so often can be, when he opined it was “a great shame” that the atheist convention had failed due to lack of interest because “the full and frank discussion of fundamental ideas is part of what a healthy culture promotes and enjoys”. Dr Jensen welcomed the idea of a Global Atheist Convention. “Every time people think about God and about the meaning of life, is a time we more deeply consider the value and purpose of human life,” he said. “It makes us better citizens.”

Dr Jensen was right. We should talk more about such matters central to human direction and maybe even survival. So I was very disappointed that the atheists failed to have the courage of their own lack of religious conviction. While I would expect attendees at an Agnostic Convention not to know where to convene, and those at an Apathy Convention most probably wouldn’t be bothered, I had expected so much more from the global sceptics. Really, it’s enough to make you lose your faith in atheism.