We've been busy putting the finishing touches to our line up for QED in 2012 and have a few more exciting announcements to make. Last year's attendees will remember that the main stage wasn't the only place in QED you could be enthralled, entertained and educated. Our second track in the Breakout Room was incredibly popular, featuring live podcast recordings, video screenings and bonus content from some of our main stage speakers.
The first session we have to announce this year is "A Question of God"–our version of Question Time, hopefully with less political obfuscation. Paula Kirby of the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science (UK) has agreed to be our David Dimbleby. She will be joined by DJ Grothe of the James Randi Educational Foundation, the noted human rights campaigner Maryam Namazie, and Ophelia Benson, author and blogger on the Butterflies and Wheels website.
We'd like our panel to cover a range of topics in this area and would therefore welcome your questions via email. Perhaps you would like to hear our panels views on accommodationism, creationism in British and American schools, the challenges presented by Sharia law or the prospects for secularism in general? Whatever your burning questions our panel will endeavour to answer them.
Paula Kirby is a former devout Christian who became atheist about eight years ago, when it struck her (belatedly, she says) that there was simply no good reason to believe what she had believed. Since then she has become an eloquent advocate of atheism, first coming to notice with Fleabytes, the review she wrote for RichardDawkins.net of four of the books of Christian apologetics written in response to The God Delusion, and going on from there to become a member of the Washington Post's On Faith panel, where she has become known for her clear and forthright challenges to religion.
A late convert to the joys of science herself, she is actively involved in initiatives to enhance public understanding of science, and runs the UK branch of the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science.