It was not by chance that Australia was chosen as the venue of the Global Atheist Convention. With the publication in late 2010 of The Australian Book of Atheism (edited by Warren Bonett), the signs are that local atheism is gathering quite a head of steam. As the book and the conference show, the emphasis in contemporary Australian atheism is less on philosophical arguments for and against the existence of God and more on the proposition that religion is always and everywhere detrimental to human flourishing.  In a piece entitled “Religion and Violence”, one of the conference speakers, Dr Tamas…