I would first like to express my sincere gratitude to the Center for Inquiry, particularly Debbie Goddard, for providing me with a travel grant to attend the conference, and to the other conference organizers and sponsors for putting on such an amazing event. The travel grant I received paid for 70% of my air travel between Salt Lake City and Orlando, without which I would have been unable to attend the conference, given my meager graduate student stipend. Having attended several Secular Student Alliance conferences over the past couple years, I was accustomed to the youthful energy that can be very inspiring at such conferences, so I wasn’t sure what to expect at this conference, given that the memberships of the Center for Inquiry and the Council for Secular Humanism have a somewhat higher average age by comparison. I wasn’t in the least disappointed, however, as this turned out to be the most overall inspirational and profound conference I’ve attended thus far! What follows will be a summary of my experiences at the conference that led to the unexaggerated statement I just made.

My first night at the conference was marked by a delicious free dinner catered by the hotel and paid for by the conference organizers, during which I met several other attendees who were different from me in age but quite similar in terms of our passion for embracing and promoting secularism, humanism, and freethought. The humanism and generosity of the first attendee I met at the dinner, a retired radiologist, was demonstrated when he insisted on purchasing a beverage for me after we discovered that beverages were only available by cash purchase and that I was a dollar short of the minimum charge. It was also nice to see at the dinner and during the rest of the conference that there was a decent number of younger people attending the conference, with several secular student groups from local universities represented. The dinner that Thursday turned out to be the inaugural event of a fantastic series of talks given by some very brilliant and admirable speakers over the following days.

There were too many talks given during the conference to mention them all, so I will highlight a few of the ones that made the biggest impression on me and just touch on others. Friday began with some talks given by Tom Flynn on ending faith-based funding, Dr. Steven Green on the Blaine Amendments that exist in many state constitutions to strengthen the separation between church and state, David Silverman about the then upcoming Reason Rally, and EllenBeth Wachs about her personal story of horrendous treatment by higher-ups in Polk County, Florida for her atheist/humanist activism and about the then coming Florida vote to rid the Florida constitution of its Blaine Amendment. Later on Friday, some talks were given by members of the elite International Academy of Humanism, including Nobel laureate Sir Dr. Harry Kroto and acclaimed anthropologist Dr. Lionel Tiger, who caused quite a stir in the audience over his talk that was perceived by some to be rather sexist. I thought the drama would end on Friday after Dr. Tiger’s surprising talk, but I was mistaken.

Saturday began with a session on outreach and advocacy strategies, and included talks given by admirable young activist Jessica Ahlquist, who gave a summary of her legal battle with her school over a prayer banner that was hung in its cafeteria, and by the polemic attorney Eddie Tabash, who gave an incredibly inspiring and fear-inducing call to take atheism to the general public and avoid the reversal of secular progress by a possibly soon-to-be conservative-dominated Supreme Court. The second session on Saturday featured a fascinating and unique panel on the different major political views held by prominent humanists/atheists. The panel included speakers holding political views ranging from libertarian, to liberal, to conservative, to progressive. As someone who is very open to and interested in the different views of others, I found this panel to be completely fascinating and a very unique contribution to the conference. Not surprisingly, the question and answer session got a bit heated when the deeply held political convictions of some audience members clashed with those of the speakers on the panel. The day ended with a keynote talk given by renowned philosopher of mind Dr. Daniel Dennett, who talked about whether theists truly believe what they claim to believe and whether we can even answer that question from a philosophical standpoint.

The conference ended on Sunday with a session on what our objectives are and should be as secular humanists. Bill Cooke discussed his experiences with secular humanism around the world as the director of international programs at the CFI and provided the conference’s first definition of “secularism.” Drs. Paul “PZ” Myers and Victor Stenger talked about how we can improve the world through science and how religion stifles such progress. This session was a great way to end the conference, as it left members of the audience with a focus on what secular humanists should be doing and how to best do it and promote their agenda.

Overall, I was very impressed by and pleased with the talks given by such great speakers over the course of the conference. In addition to making new friends, gaining new knowledge and inspiration, and talking one-on-one with some prominent figures in the secular movement, I also got a number of books signed that I brought with me to the conference. I left the conference feeling very satisfied, enlightened, and motivated-what more could one ask for when attending a conference on moving secularism forward?