The Atheist Blogger

Yesterday, I attended the launch of a new UK charity, the National Federation of Atheist, Humanist and Secular Student Societies (AHS). They are similar to the international charity Secular Student Alliance, an organisation of which my student group is affiliated.

The plan was to travel up to London by catching the 8:23am train, a feat that was made immediately impossible for me, as I slept through three alarms and woke up at 8:40. Literally running the 2 miles from my house to the train station, I arrived only to find that all the self-service ticket machines had gone faulty (even the cash ones). Finally on the train, I mused over the frequent saying that when something goes wrong, everything else seems to go wrong as well, but eventually resorted to shoving this highly irrational thought to the back of my mind to get beaten into a pulp by psychological projections of Daniel Dennett. Instead, I concentrated on trying not to throw up as the train hurtled along to London (being England, there were of course no seats available).

Arriving in London, I met up with the only other member of our group who had bothered to turn up (or perhaps he was the only one who woke up on time), Jack. We were already running late, but I was assured by a quick phone call to the President of the AHS, Norman Ralph, that everyone was just mingling for the first hour. We arrived at Conway Hall, the “headquarters” of the South Place Ethical Society, the oldest surviving freethought organisation in the world, and were met by the Norman Ralph and introduced to a few members of the organisation.

The hall was filled with students, and organisations like the National Secular Society (NSS) and the British Humanist Association (BHA) had set up tables packed with information. I took the opportunity to join the BHA for half-price (we’re in a recession y’know), and to talk to members of the Council of Ex-Muslims of Britain, who are planning to protest Sharia Law courts in the UK on March 7th.

At that moment, Richard Dawkins walked into the room. While officials went to greet him, Jack and I were reduced to giggling schoolgirls, whispering “That’s Richard Dawkins…3 feet away from me” to each other. We eventually regained our manly composure, and I decided I’d go talk to the professor, something which Jack decided was “too much”. Richard Dawkins was standing on his own, a banana in his hand, when I snuck up on him and introduced myself, saying how I was a fan of his work, and how it was just amazing to meet him. He said he liked my t-shirt (“There’s probably no god…”) and that he’d been seeing the colour scheme being used in various places. I finally told him that my friends would kill me if I didn’t get a picture taken with him, and he happily obliged.

Richard Dawkins shows he is not afraid of the atheist's nightmare.

In his speech, which was preceded with talks by Polly Toynbee and Professor A C Grayling, Dawkins pledged to support any student group that wanted to start up, and to write to his charity (The Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science) if we ever needed money to organise events. The audience rightly applauded the pledge, and Dawkins ended his speech with a few highly amusing anecdotes.

So the Royal Holloway Secular Students will be joining the ranks of the AHS, and hopefully be running numerous events throughout the next year, especially with the support the AHS, SSA, and RDF!

A few photos I took of the event are available in my photos section.