Three times more than you-oo
Good old Beeb – make sure not to be too polite to atheism, won’t you. Yes of course you will.
Headline: ‘Atheists meet in Melbourne to celebrate lack of faith.’ Subhead: ‘More than 2,000 atheists from around the world are gathering in Melbourne, Australia, to celebrate their lack of religious belief.’ They couldn’t be there to talk about it, to explore issues related to it, to meet people who are interested in it; no, they’re there to celebrate it, and the thing they are celebrating is a lack, which makes them doubly stupid and pathetic.
All 2,500 tickets were sold out earlier this year, but a religious gathering at the same venue in December attracted three times as many delegates.
So there! Everybody hates you, you poxy whiny lacking stupid celebrating unpopular faithless losers! Neener neener neener. The Beeb had space to mention that, but not to mention that the ‘religious gathering’ got state funding while the atheist gathering did not.
There is a determination to avoid what one session calls Atheistic Fundamentalism, says our correspondent. Participants will be urged to avoid “missionary zeal” in their determination to promote their non-religious message to the world.
Same old atheism, the Beeb says with a sneer. Only people who don’t ‘lack faith’ are allowed to show missionary zeal, one gathers.
This is even more egregious because the organizers have stated many times that, with sufficient state funding to dilute the financial risk, they certainly would have chosen a venue with a capacity much greater than 2500.
I’m not sure that criticism of the Beeb is entirely fair here. The state funding was surely for the organization of the religious event, not for travel expenses. The state funding could have been mentioned, but I’m not sure that it should have been mentioned.
Apart from not mentioning the state funding, the coverage sounds fair enough. (Much fairer than in some of the other recent things that you’ve criticised.)
> The state funding was surely for the
> organization of the religious event,
> not for travel expenses.
In fact, the funding was surely for things like staff and other facilities. These are the things that really limit the number of possible attendees. Travel expenses for speakers are insignificant in comparison. Also, nobody mentioned travel expenses, did they?
The BBC was deliberately comparing apples with singularities and it should be ashamed of itself. Always be suspicious of the word “but” when it is used to link two statements. Atheist conference sells out in minutes BUT a completely unrelated conference with entirely different funding and a different characteristic of likely audience can afford more chairs….
I apparently showed a suitable amount of zeal.
And at least you mentioned hope, which other speakers had apparently neglected to do, the swine.
The ABC faithy reporters are a demanding bunch, in their way!
To understand this story,you need to understand that the largely catholic BBC Religion and Ethics Board is a law unto itself.Secularists have complained to the BBC board of Governors for many years about their religious bias.The response has always been the same-“Nothing to do with us.”
So the very pro-catholic “religion and ethics” (why are those two even banded together?)people can get away with what they like-spending license-payers’ money on religious propaganda.I can’t remember the idiot’s name,but their head has boasted of his contacts with the Oh-Not-Me-Gov head of the Peadophile Church.
The Parliament of World Religions received around $5 million from governement funds, just to put a figure on it for those who don’t know. And yes, the GAC got $0.
Why should the GAC have received Government funding, Emily? On what grounds, that religious conventions get funding? Hmmmm.
I like that the GAC didn’t receive government largesse. To the same degree that I dislike that the PWR did.
‘Hmmm’ and ‘I like’ – well that’s compelling.