Here's an interesting guestion. On Tuesday, March 27th 2,000 people showed up at Westminster Central Hall in London to hear Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, and AC Grayling debate Baroness Julia Neuberger, Roger Scruton, and Nigel Spivey on the subject "We'd be better of without religion." [Articles of Faith, We'd be better off without Religion]. I'm practically certain that you could never get 2,000 people out to such an event in Toronto. How about other cities; New York, Morris, San Francisco, Houston?Assuming that the answer is no, what's different about London and how can we copy it?
Isn't it strange that the "aggressive atheists" are getting so much positive attention? From what you hear on some of the blogs you'd think that the crowd would be throwing rocks rather than listening attentively.
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What's different about London? Hrm. Dunno for sure. Long term, what's different about Europe and general (w/ apologies to those Londoners who freak out being lumped in as Europe), though it's been said before and it's pretty bloody obvious, might be the fact that they once did have fairly aggressive, powerful state churches in many of those nations, religious wars, Catholics and Protestants offing one another, and a much more immediate and frightening resonance coming off Diderot's (ascribed) maxim about kings and the entrails of the last priest... Whoever said that, whether it was Diderot or not, had a good enough reason, at the time, I'd say.
Which, I suppose, doesn't really explain the US and the bizarre, crass piety currently so popular in certain parts thereof, considering they once had Salem and the Puritans... though, actually, now that I think about it, Massachussetts is hardly bible belt, now... must muse.
How do we get that here? If the way you get that is the aforementioned religious wars, I'll pass. But if all you're looking for is a lot less people buying into legends of magical sky men, I think generally staying visible, keeping 'I do not believe' a perfectly acceptable thing to say publicly, all that's going to help.
Mockery, too, actually. More of that. As much as you've got time for. Religions cloak themselves in sanctimony, insist upon being treated as respectable. Reminding folk regularly that you don't get respect for really spectacularly silly ideas just by saying 'I believe this (for no good reason), thus you must not mock this belief', reminding them of that, I think, contrary to all those folk carping on and on and on and on about mockery just creating needless friction, actually, I think keeping mockery like that current and acceptable is valuable. Keeps a valuable perspective out in the open, where it can do the most good.
I would guess you'd easily get a couple thousand for an event like that in New York or any of a reasonably large number of other major U.S. cities, given appropriate publicity.
There are also many major U.S. cities, particularly in the South and Midwest, where tens or even hundreds of thousands pack churches every weekend.
The upward trend here across the last few decades would belong to church attendance rather than interest in atheism, IIANM. OTOH, the belief of the non-church-going and even some of the church-going among some denominations is sufficiently watered down and apathetic that it would be barely distinguishable from atheism with regard to opinions on many social issues.
Guess I just don't get the importance of a couple of thousand folks meeting in one of the larger cities on Earth to listen to a discussion that interests them. I'd feel the same way if a couple thousand showed up for a discussion on global warming, endangered species, or any number of other issues - unsure it means anything at all with regard to the chances of those issues making sociopolitical headway.
You could get 2,000 people out to an event on that subject in Toronto. You just need names that are recognizable.
You could probably get 2000 to show up to such a debate in Toronto, especially with an all star lineup of Dawkins, Hitchens, etc.
In fact Hitchens did speak at a debate at U of T's Hart House last fall (audio available here, video available here.
If RD came to TO ... I don't think there'd be a problem getting a few thousand people out. So long as we advertised it a little -- something we forget to do frequently when it comes to academic/scientific events here.
Case in point would be Al Gore coming in during Reading Week. Apparently, all the tickets on uofttix.ca were snatched up in hours...
I don't think the lectures by Gore or Dawkins are analogous. What happened in London was a debate between intellectuals. The level of discourse was way beyond the talk by Al Gore or the standard Dawkin's lecture.
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