Godless day in San Francisco

This morning:

Philip Paulson gave a rousing acceptance speech as "Atheist in Foxhole" Award winner. He talked, emotionally and passionately, about being an atheist in the military, and an atheist veteran.

We did that. I've seen it. I was there.

He was followed by Wafa Sultan. What to say about her? "Freethought Heroine" indeed. We watched clips of her Al Jazeera debates, and because they were subtitled we felt free to applaud for her, over and over. Then she spoke... How she spoke.

I am here to say: I have divorced my monster god, and I will fight to save other innocent prey from his monster paws.

Mike Keefe followed, with a slide show of some of the cartoons that won him the "Freethought in the Media: Tell It Like It Is" award. Here's my favorite (more at intoon.com:)

This afternoon Michelle Goldberg talked about the rise of the Religious Right - sobering and scary.

I don't believe we're on the verge of a theocracy. I've been to theocratic countries, and we're nowhere near that. Yet. But that doesn't mean it's not time to do something: you don't wait till it's happened to try to stop it.

And then Mikey Weinstein (field general of the armies of Satan) made his first stop on his book tour for With God on Our Side, about the rise of evangelicalism in the US armed forces.

What we don't need is our armed forces placing their left hands on the Constitution and raising their right ones to swear to defend the New Testament.

This isn't a case of political right and left: this is constitutional right and wrong.

There is no more dialog. There is no more dialog. We are at war.

A good day. And tonight after dinner, Julia Sweeney!

Wow. More than two hours of the monolog and it doesn't seem like half that long. An aching, funny, beautiful, poignant telling of the tale of "Letting go of God" - the search from Catholic schoolgirl to 40-something atheist, past searching and Deepak Chopra and Buddhism and cancer and death and adoption to come, at last, to the understanding that if this is what there is and all there is, how precious it is. How truly wonderful. If you have the chance to see her perform this, by all means do it, I don't care what you might have to forgo. It's just that good. (Or buy the cd - it'll be for sale to the general public by the end of the month.)

All in all, a wonderful, wonderful day spent with kindred spirits - godless Americans - celebrating our right, and duty, to be Free From Religion. I'm glad I came.