What Happens At An Atheist Convention?

Do they worship Satan? Run around naked? Try to outlaw apple pie?

http://www.atheists.org/convention/

Naw, we don't have a problem with apple pie. Anchovies, though, are an abomination in the sight of Darwin. Come the revolution, it will be a hanging offense to put them on pizzas.

"Atheist convention" strikes me as a somewhat oxymoronic phrase such as "moral Christian Republican" or "military intelligence." A gathering of people defined in their individualism as not being like minded could make for interesting field anthropology and brings to mind the herding of cats. I wonder if the hard-core naysayers are those who are incapable of membership in this or any club and thusly would take a pass on this convention. As Groucho Marx said: "I don't want to be a member of a club that would have me as a member."

We're not that way by definition. It's just a contingent fact owing to the narrowness of the definition. The set of all atheists is just the set of all people who don't believe in a god. It could have happened that we lacked that belief because of something else we have in common, but it didn't happen.

Similarly, you have the set of all left-handed people. Their diversity is equal to that of atheists, and for the same reason.

There are subsets of atheists (and left-handers) who do have something in common besides their definitive characteristic and who are not so individualistic as the others. Members of American Atheists, I assume, have a little more in common with each other than with atheists like me who prefer not to join. Analogously, there is an organization of left-handed golfers. I doubt that I'd want to join even if I played golf, though I am left-handed, but it's there for those who do think they have something to gain through their membership.