The Astral Log

Presentations in the main hall quickly resumed that afternoon, and one of the highlights was Mary Anne Franks of the University of Miami. The focus of her presentation was fighting fundamentalism...by deconstructing its features and putting ourselves within the minds of our opponents. She then extended her discussion beyond religion alone into matters of "legal fundamentalism" exercised by gun nuts and online harassers, and even touched upon the Mizzou protests...unintentionally highlighting the holes in the previous speaker's premises in the process.

Since my lunchtime had been pre-empted by Schierbecker's bitter screed, I was hungry for something huge. Food trucks were parked outside and I wasn't in the mood for pasties, so I ordered a tasty pizza. While I ate, it struck me that I still hadn't once stepped outside the premises of the hotel since coming to Springfield...Skepticon was a world within a world.

And speaking of that world...

Hiba Krisht spoke of her experiences as an ex-Muslim from Lebanon, and went into depth about the implications of her country's long-lasting sectarian conflict and civil war. Superimposed in the background was a picture of the speaker herself, cloaked in the armaments and garb of her younger days...a reality that she escaped from upon emigration at the age of 23. At the end, an audience member gave an impassioned outcry: "What can we do about this?" Hiba's answer was both succinct and sobering: "Nothing."

Finally, we got to see a presentation by Destin Sandlin. He was an odd choice for Skepticon: A Christian who produces YouTube videos about cats and chickens, cites Psalms 111:2 while doing so, and repeats self-deprecating comments about himself and his Alabama upbringing into oblivion. On stage, he demonstrated a backwards-steering bicycle that he used as an analogy for differences in theistic belief: Once you're used to riding one way, you can't easily ride the other. Not sure what I thought of that; though at least the physical antics were somewhat entertaining.

I never attended my high school prom, but I had the option at the end of the day to go to the Skepti-Prom...a visually-stimulating ordeal with pounding music that reminded me why I don't hang out in nightclubs very often. I poked around for five minutes, then elected to spend the evening in the pool instead...ending Day 2 on a relaxing note.

After a restful night, I managed to snag breakfast with a few acquaintances and made my way to the main conference hall. What would happen in Skepticon's second day? I was excited to find out.

The first speaker of the day was Muhammad Syed, who shared his knowledge and experiences (by way of Pakistan) in a presentation titled "Islam: A Primer for Atheists." Syed is the founder and president of Ex-Muslims of North America.

Following him was Fallon Fox, a transgender mixed martial artist (MMA) fighter. A tense moment came in the Q&A afterwards when some guy in a Tapout shirt prompted Fallon with a rude question about her "manhood"...and the convention organizers responded to the person with a cut-off and dismissal. I was impressed by how well and how quickly the incident was diffused.

I was ready for lunch, but I stayed seated in place: Word had gotten around that the conference organizers had made a last-minute addition to the schedule, and we would have a back-and-forth question-and-answer session about the racist incidents and surrounding protests at the University of Missouri. It was a current event of pertinent significance in the state of our conference, it made perfect sense to have a discussion about it, and I looked forward to seeing what information and engagement the next hour would bring.

The clock struck high noon, and the session got under way. It struck me that a few things were amiss: There was only one participant...a white self-described photojournalist by the name of Mark Schierbecker...and his "dialogue" turned out to be a monologue. Mark wasn't involved with the protests themselves, but shared recollections of his attempts to brazenly film them...notably, without articulating the participants' motivations or gaining confidence around them to reduce their suspicion.

He shared a sample of his footage (that came off as minutes of chaos, shedding no insight whatsoever on the situation) and spent the remainder of the hour making points of entitlement...letting loose that his objective wasn't to end the racist harassment and chancellor conduct at Mizzou prompting the protests, but rather to lobby for the firing of a Mizzou staff member who turned him away when he violated a safe space. Then...whoops! Out of time! Guess this wasn't a Q&A after all.

Fortunately, the audience wasn't silenced easily. An observer in the second row raised her hand and challenged Schierbecker's privilege and audacity in inflating his indulgences as a white journalist above years of anti-black oppression. Several others joined in, pointing out his obliviousness to privacy, the backwardness of his priorities, and the regular record of journalistic coverage being used to spin and lie about protests. On the final front, Schierbecker's reputation preceded himself: His coverage of the Mizzou protests was latched onto by Breitbart and fucking Storm Front as "evidence" that protesters were thugs, and he had done nothing to withdraw the footage or stop them from using it to their ends. I looked back near the end, and saw four or five of the people that I knew storm out of the room in disgust. I was pinned near the front, and waited through to the end. That end came with a whimper, with the disgraced photojournalist offering up "autism" as the excuse for his behavior...thus throwing people with neurological conditions under the bus. I tried rejoining my acquaintances at the lunch table afterward, but they shooed me away so they could process what they had just experienced among themselves...so I was left to cope by myself.

To their credit, the Skepticon organizers publicly apologized for this fiasco of an event, and Danielle Muscato resigned as Schierbecker's public relations manager afterward. Unfortunately the stench remained, and what was done could not be undone. It also didn't help that a pack of regressive assholes tried spinning the incident on social media afterward as a tale of how mean ol' Skepticon had supposedly bullied a pitiful, autistic boy for no reason at all.

Several of the people who were in attendance at the Q&A subsequently wrote about their experiences there. For further insight, I recommend reading the pieces by Alex Rudewell, Jason Thibeault, and Feminace.

One way the conference organizers strove to make everyone comfortable was to establish gender-neutral washrooms. The hotel actually accomplished this by covering over the urinals and allowing everyone the privacy of a toilet stall; whether cis or trans; male, female, or nonbinary in gender.

Skepticon 8 extended its accommodations to people with hearing loss disabilities by providing an on-stage sign language interpreter, and captioning on the fly.

Tables were set up in the corridor surrounding the workshop rooms, and various organizations and vendors were there. One of the more unusual sights was the Satanic Temple: I don't believe in devils any more than I believe in gods, but the Temple could best be thought of as a parody religion that "poisons the well" by waging "religious freedom" challenges against Christian-nationalist lawmakers on their own terms.

There was a Pinto in the parking lot...a 1975 Runabout, to be exact. No one would tell me who drove it, though.

Oh...and there was a dinosaur loose in the hall. A picture is worth a thousand words.

Me on Twitter: "How much of your conference happens on Friday? I'm trying to figure out which day I should drive there."

@RealSkepticon: "We have workshops from 10am-4pm, speakers from 6-9pm and then a tabletop gaming night!"

And so, the first day of Skepticon 8 came to be. After a hearty breakfast near simulated waterfalls, I made my way to the registration table, obtained my lanyard badge and "strategy guide" brochure, and quickly felt at home. If there were any protesters aghast at the hordes of heathens in their midst, they were out of sight and out of mind.

Trouble was, I wasn't sure what was going on. The bulk of the first day's events consisted of small "workshops," but they were marked in the "strategy guide" as a single nine-hour block with no further detail. Different things were going on in different rooms concurrently, I scarcely knew which things were where, and any signage on the rooms was limited to the name of the current workshop and nothing else. For lack of any better guidance, I picked a room at random and sat down inside.

What followed was a dialogue by Thomas Essel and Christopher McDowell of the Original Motto Project on their battles against the "ceremonial deism" of the post-McCarthy era and the reprehensible trend in Missouri of local police and sheriff's offices emblazoning "In God We Trust" across the flanks of their cars. It makes you wonder if LEOs can ever serve and protect their communities when they show open contempt for a portion of them on their sleeves.

Essel and McDowell were quickly followed by Stephanie Zvan (who I also had the good fortune of seeing in Winnipeg a couple months earlier), and Danielle Muscato. Unfortunately while all this was going on, I discovered that I accidentally missed a workshop going on in another room devoted to the subject of busting anti-abortion myths. I was miffed...that had been the one workshop I had been looking forward to more than any other...but there was still a lot of conference left.

Next up was Cindy Cooper, president of Camp Quest Oklahoma. Camp Quest is a growing nationwide network of secular summer camps focused on combating the isolation of non-religious children and allowing them the opportunities to partake in activities without the fear of religious indoctrination and think for themselves.

As you might expect, doing a secular summer camp program in Anita Bryant's home state has carried a list of challenges: Finding a facility to use was very difficult as Camp Quest was illegally turned away by many Christian campground owners, and the group had an Oklahoma restaurant owner pull out and refuse to honor a fund-raiser while it was happening.

I was a little surprised to hear that the camp included BB and rifle activities in its repertoire: When I was a kid, my summer-camp opportunities were stymied just as much by guns as a deterrent as by God. It was quickly reinforced, however, that these activities were optional and no kids were forced to partake.

To fully demonstrate the breadth of activities that they do, we were invited outside to build and launch paper rockets. Quickly I learned a thing or two both about aerodynamics and the way paper seams react to being pressurized without reinforcement! My rocket was in tatters, but the fun and satisfaction of the experience made my day.

Much later that day, the workshops ended and we retreated into the main auditorium for the first main presentations. Every time I get dejected by reactionary factions and impotence within the atheist movement, I have to remind myself that there are people like Sikivu Hutchinson in the world: Her hour was an absolutely stunning speech on racial justice and intersectional advocacy; combating racism and misogyny within civil-rights movements, finding ways humanism can improve the disposition of disenfranchised people of color, and moving activism beyond "low-hanging fruit" like Confederate flags and 10-Commandments monuments to bigger and greater challenges for the benefit of mankind. Hutchinson helped found Black Skeptics Los Angeles, and spoke in brutally honest terms.

Several other speakers followed, but the spirit was set for the rest of the weekend. This was a going to be a conference to be reckoned with.