I went to see Dawkins and Julia Sweeney last night...

[PassingFair]

Delightful sit-down type talk. Over 1,000 people in attendance.
They took questions from the audience for over an hour.

One person asked if there were stealth atheists in congress.
Sweeney said there definitely were...then practically outed Al Franken.

"I know Al Franken, come on Al!"

They were pushing November 15 as Openly Secular Day

http://openlysecular.org/osd/

By the way, Dr. Dawkins looked marvelous, no signs of disability from his stroke.
He looks to have mended completely. And Julia was so genuine and open.

Nice night!

[rurallib]

1. I am jealous.

[A HERETIC I AM]

2. Sweeney is wonderful.

Her TED Talk is great and her show "God Said HA!" is funny as hell.

Link to her TED Talk;

https://www.ted.com/talks/julia_sweeney_on_letting_go_of_god?language=en

[Ron Obvious]

3. Glad to hear it!

That he's apparently fully recovered, I mean. We saw him on a book-signing tour here in Seattle shortly before his stroke, which is one of the very few times we've ever attended such a thing. He was on stage being interviewed by someone (I don't think he ever identified himself) and talked about his early life, as the book was the second volume of his autobiography. There was at least one incident of someone in the audience shouting at him (even in Seattle), but nobody understood what he'd shouted and he was ignored, but Dawkins himself was as calm and soft-spoken as ever.

I'll never understand why that man riles up so many people, even many of our fellow atheists. There's really very little to disagree with what he actually says.

[PassingFair]

4. He is very mild-mannered.

He was thanked many times for taking the heat for so many of us.

I was AMAZED by how many people from the middle east were there to
speak up! They view him as a liberator of sorts. One mentioned that
"The God Delusion" translations have been downloaded millions of times in the middle east.

It was heartening!

[mountain grammy]

5. Seems like a lifetime ago.

Lucky you. I'll be watching for such events in my state.