Blog of Norman Ralph

This post could be a long one if I included everything that happened at Atheist Society’s Rationalist Week 2008. A pretty good run down of everything that went wrong for us can be found here so I won’t include them in this account. I want to focus on the positive sides and more of the human interest aspects of the week.

Chris, the retiring president, wrote this account of the week, well worth checking out. My version of the week follows here.

The week got off to a bad start, the tent was late and the generator needed fetching, and we were late starting. There were hiccups during the rest of the week, not least of them me being ill, but in general the week got better. A lot better.

We signed up a lot of people, didn’t lose too much money and our events ran smoothly for an A-Soc event but the ultimate success came from within the society. We finally got people involved, found leaders from within our ranks, something we have been sorely lacking the past two years.

We reached a lot of people during the week, I would estimate that we probably developed our brand to over a thousand staff, students and members of the public during the week and that we physically spoke to well over a hundred (excluding all night debate) and signed up a quarter of those that came into the tent. The membership numbers now rival our competitors and should hopefully mean we can start playing with the big boys in terms of politics and campaigning as well as securing some decent funding for the year!

The highlights for me included the CU debate, where again we out argued the opposition and should have come away with the victory had the crowd not been partisan, and the internal debate on the Flying Spaghetti Monster where the key flaws in religious argument were highlighted and exposed. In fact, most of the events went well - especially the evening ones. Once again Mike Lake was excellent and converted some fence sitters.

My personal highlight however, was the friends and friendships that I forged and strengthened during the week. The improved ties we developed with the CU and other societies. The fact that I think our message got across. Atheist Society is not about religion bashing or telling people they are wrong, but to offer an alternative that wasn’t available.

It was a success that didn’t kill us financially.

We finally pulled off an event that was worthy of the work that went into it.

Well done all!