That the Government should promote atheism

On Saturday Night I dropped into the Australs – the Australasia university debating champs which have been hosted by Auckland University all week.

The Saturday night was not the normal teams, but a women’s night, with the top eight female debaters debating in four teams of two. The moot was “That the Government should promote atheism”.

The venue was, somewhat fittingly, the Holy Trinity Cathedral in Parnell – a magnificent location. Around 500 people attended the debate, and I enjoyed meeting a few of them afterwards. The MP for Auckland Central hosted the debate and spoke at the beginning, with her most memorable line being how ******* awesome it would be to be married to a hairdresser, as Aussie PM Julia Gillard is.

All teams did well, and it was an enjoyable debate. I especially loved the comment from the fourth speaker for the negative as she told the affirmative team they were going to lose, and pointed out that normally losing a debate just means you get ridiculed and hassled by your friends, but in this case it meant they were all going to hell 🙂

When listening to a debate, I always start imaging in my mind what I would say if I was taking part.

If I was debating for the affirmative I would have launched an all out assault on religion – detail the history of wars and torture stretching from 3,000 years ago to modern day religious terrorism. Go through all the current conflicts and point to the fact 95% of them have religion at their core. And then use that backdrop to say that promoting atheism is the best way to keep citizens safe.

If I was debating for the negative I would have attacked the proposition on two fronts. The first would be to point out that atheism is doing just fine by itself, and the last thing atheism needs is the Government trying to help it. It’s the oen thing which might kill off atheism. You’d have Royal Commissions trying to define it, government agencies fighting each other to be the lead support agency for it. a jungle of academic works talking about which strand of atheism is best, and frankly it would be a nightmare for atheists who really just want to be left alone, and don;t want the Government helping them.

The other front I would attack the proposition on is that the moment you go from voluntary atheism to state supported atheism, it turns into the very thing it is meant to be against – a form of religion – but with the Government as God, instead of God as God. Bring up examples of the USSR and China’s state promoted atheism which creates human rights abuses even worse than any religion has managed.

What do readers think? How would you argue for or against the proposition?

One amusing part of the debate for me, was the fact that the person two seats along from me (one of the organisers) kept clapping at the most inopportune times. At what appeared to be random intervals she would do a loud short clap, or a couple of claps. I actually thought she had ADHD or something until it finally dawned on me that she was the time keeper. I’m used to bells or buzzers – I’d never experienced a clap used to indicate time before. The other reasons it took me a while to catch on was that one of the claps occurred not at the end of the speeches, but one minute into them. I later found out that indicates that opposition teams are now able to interject.

All in all it was a very enjoyable evening. Watching a fun intelligent well argued debate is one of favourite activities.