Advancing Secularism in Australia

On 21 March, I’ll be appearing at Macquarie University on a panel about “Advancing Secularism in Australia” – along with Sean Faircloth, Max Wallace, Jane Caro, and John Kay, chaired by Stephen Mutch. If you’ll be in Sydney that day, please come along. I’m looking forward to the discussion, and particularly to meeting Sean Faircloth, author of Attack of the Theocrats!, and Director of Strategy & Policy for the US arm of the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science. I’ve corresponded with him, but we’ve never met in person. Of the others, I know Jane Caro best (along with Tamas Pataki, we formed a team in a nationally televised debate about atheism, back in 2011). In all, it is fine line-up of speakers with different emphases and areas of expertise.

The topic relates to something that has been a pet interest of mine for some time now: the question of what a truly secular Australia would look like. For a start, it would not have religion classes, taught from a devotional viewpoint, in public schools! However, there is far more to say, and I imagine that there will be a certain amount of controversy even among these speakers.