"What is there to respect in any of this, or in any of the crimes now being committed almost daily around the world in religion's dreaded name? How well, with what fatal results, religion erects totems, and how willing we are to kill for them." Rushdie is himself totemic; not simply an artist but a piece of history himself. If anyone knows what damage excessive religious zeal can do, it is he. Richard Dawkins was also to make the trip, along with a range of other commentators and scholars, including locals Leslie Cannold and Jane Caro. Alongside the thinkers, there was also going to be the "entertainers". Comic atheism is a particularly strong strand, and religious pomposity provides it with plenty of material. No doubt there was to be a feast of gloating about census figures. But it isn't to be. It's a great shame there's a lack of interest. I say that as someone who believes in God and thinks that it is the most reasonable thing to believe. I say that as someone who is very much in the sights of the Atheist Foundation of Australia as an active theist. I think faith, and in particular Christian faith, is good for Australia.

But I also think that the full and frank discussion of fundamental ideas is part of what a healthy culture promotes and enjoys. A Global Atheist Convention is to be welcomed, because every time people think about God and about the meaning of life is a timewe more deeply consider the value and purpose of human life. It makes us better citizens. At one level, this is just because it becomes competitive. One of the most difficult things for an atheist to describe is how, if there's no God, right and wrong have any meaning. Without God, how can we meaningfully speak of the ethical? The effort that atheists deploy to show that they are good, and love the good, surely promotes more ethical behaviour. But what really is the poison in the blood is not religion: it is apathy. Human beings don't need religion to be vile. We can be vile perfectly well without it. Even viler, I'd argue. But when we don't care about ultimate questions we are really at our worst. Even no faith is better than lazy faith. When we don't bother to care whether Manus Island is a monstrous policy carried out in our name; when we don't care whether indigenous people suffer discrimination and injustice daily in our nation; when we don't care about domestic violence in our community – these are our lowest moments as a society. And when we don't have a story to tell the next generation about the meaning and purpose of human life – a "reason to hope" – then we are only a hair's breadth away from barbarism.

At least the atheists were trying to offer something better than that. Dr Michael Jensen is rector of St Mark's Anglican Church Darling Point.