Our Saturday lunch speaker was Dr. Faye Girsh of the Hemlock Foundation, the nation's most established right-to-die organization. Here she is being presented with a set of "Wipe your sins away" handi-wipes, presented by AAI co-president Marie Castle.

Faye's presentation covered the entire right-to-die gamut, from Oregon's attempts to pass death-with-dignity legislation that is being battled by mister state's-rights himself, John Ashcroft (who apparently thinks states should only have rights with which he agrees), to the "Caring Friends" program, which seeks to pair up people who want a dignified death with volunteers willing to help.

Two of D/FW's pre-eminent skeptics were on hand to do presentations. John Blanton (left) was the partner for the creationism debate, while Andrew Laska gave a presentation on Holocaust denial and how it relates to history denial in general.

Margaret Downey was on hand Saturday afternoon to present a variety of topics, the most important of which being the foundation of the Anti-Discrimination Support Network (ADSN), an organization dedicated to tackling discrimination against one of the very few organizations left against which it's still "politically correct" to discriminate, atheists.

As an example, Downey showed a recent clip from "The View" in which host Star Jones stated that she could never vote for an atheist because their values were incompatible with hers. Now then, what would've happened if she had said such a thing about a Jew or a Christian?

The afternoon's main attraction was a debate, "The fossil record is more compatible with the model of creation than the model of evolution.", between creationist Don Patton and Skeptic John Blanton. Patton had a very polished presentation but, like most creationists, his entire presentation revolved around his problems with evolution rather than how well Biblical creation supports his claims.

John Blanton showing examples of the fossil record. He also did some creation-bashing, about which Patton complained loudly.

A rather odd moment happened when Patton criticized Blanton for bringing up problems with the Genesis accounts. Patton stated that, although he could and did not mind debating theology, the debate was specifically about the fossil record. It was odd because when we originally approached Patton regarding debate topics, he stated that he absolutely would not debate a theological topic.

Here's your weary emcee John Hattan. Before every presentation, he tried to elicit an enthusiastic "HOWDY" out of the largely non-Texan crowd. By Saturday night, most folks had gotten the hang of it.

Before the final presentation of the night, AAI's co-presidents, Marie Castle and Bobbie Kirkhart, presented awards to their most helpful members and activists.

The final presentation of Saturday night was "Toons 'n Tunes", by Dan Barker and Steve Benson. Dan's an accomplished pianist and composer, and Steve's the editorial cartoonist for the Arizona Republic. While Dan played, Steve illustrated the songs with several of his past cartoons, covering such topics as the Boy Scouts, priestly pedophilia scandal, and other hot-buttons.

Steve Benson makes last-minute preparations prior to "Toons 'n Tunes". Steve turned out to be quite a personable guy, and he spent some time hobnobbing with the party-goers up in the Minnesota Atheists' hospitality suite.

Metroplex Atheists member Ginny Barnett takes an opportunity to get her book Losing Faith in Faith signed. Mr. Barker's a bit of a legendary figure in freethought circles, having spent much of his life as an evangelical minister, writing Christian children's musicals. He later did what many of the attendees did --he looked more closely at his holy-books, found their claims to not hold water, and stopped buying into gods. Since he was so wrapped up in the ministry, his story's more of an adventure than most.

The convention was very well-received by the attendees. They liked that there were more humorous bits than in previous conventions.

Hey, if you can't have fun, what's the point of going to a convention?

Big thanks to. . .

Our Speakers:
Dr. Faye Girsh of Hemlock Society
Dan Barker of Freedom From Religion Foundation
Steve Benson
Rob Sherman of www.robsherman.com
Tim Gorski MD
Danny Barnett
Pastor Harry Hardwick of Landover Baptist Church
Andrew Laska
John Blanton
Don Patton of Mazada Corporation
René Hartmann
Margaret Downey
Rebecca Hale & Gary Betchan

Our Volunteers:
Rick Carey
Randy Gorman
Carolyn Holland
John Nicholson
Sammi Ruth Fowler
David Penn
Colin Sewards
John & Shelly Hattan

Our Vendors:
evolveFISH.com
Emmet Fields Bank of Wisdom
Heresy House

Hope to see you at the next one, folks!

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