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Was that directed at me, Occasional? If so, I don't see how it addresses what I said. I agree that there's no particular reason for an atheist speaker to be on the program, and have already said more than once, starting on page one, that I'm not concerned about no atheists having been invited to speak.
If religious folks want to have an interfaith gathering to talk about the role of religion in society, they're more than welcome. Frankly, I think those kinds of conversations need to be happening in particular between Christians and Muslims in the United States. No pressing need for atheist or agnostic involvement there, I don't think.
Posts: 10886 | Registered: Feb 2000
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quote:Originally posted by Occasional: ... Including atheists would have been irrelavant and in fact counter-productive.
I may note with some amusement that Buddhists were present at the interfaith meeting and thus there is a high chance that an atheist already spoke at the meeting. Buddhists are sort of "messy" in that many consider themselves atheist or agnostic. On the other hand, not *just* atheists are excluded, the meeting also leaves out people like agnostics.
Rather, it is more accurate to say that the meeting is for religious speakers (including atheist Buddhists) and excludes non-religious (including non-atheist agnostics) speakers.
Posts: 7593 | Registered: Sep 2006
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quote:Glenn, if your question is "What was the assignment", then clearly one of the requirements, as reported by you, was to talk about an actual religion and not atheism, which you seemed to have failed to do.
Nope. The assignment was to come up with a topic for a speech (relevent to the class), and have it okayed by her. There had been no stipulation that I "was not to talk about atheism" only that she didn't accept that atheism could be the topic of the speech. She had agreed that secular humanism could be the topic of the speech, despite the fact that she didn't consider it to be a religion, but that it played a similar enough role for an atheist.
If she had stipulated in the assignment that we couldn't mention atheism in our speech, I would have taken it to the deans. As it was, I took it to the deans when she lowered my grade, but since the one grade didn't prevent me from getting an A in the class, they didn't get too excited about it.
As an aside: She was an adjunct professor, and to my knowledge, she has not taught there since.
Posts: 3735 | Registered: Mar 2002
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