Women in Secularism II has been a remarkable conference with an amazing group of speakers.
This is Day 2, which started with an interesting panel of women who have left religion. The four articulate speakers each had a very different experiences. There was Pittsburgh-native Jamila Bey (who noted that African-American women as a group are the most religious demographic in America), Vyckie D. Garrison who was a former member of the Quiverfull movement (new to me and very scary), former evangelical minister Teresa MacBain (the only female member of the Clergy Project to come out publicly), and Maryam Namazie from England, who left Iran and Islam.
The first day of the meeting included both fun and serious talks. The fun came from a panel with Rebecca Watson and others talking about faith-based pseudo-sceience complete with homeopathy demonstrations and quizes with prizes.
On the serious side, Rebecca Goldstein ended the day with fascinating talk on “matter-minding” that I want to re-listen to when the video comes out. Rebecca started with the examples of how we want to matter and ended with how the Greeks were responsible for replacing religion with reason. It was a tour de force talk that was remarkable.
Katha Pollitt (The Nation columnist) is next. Rising atheist singer-songwriter Shelley Segal from Australia performs at dinner tonight. For those that couldn’t attend, the talks are being recorded and will up on the Center for Inquiry website in the near future.
