Richard Carrier at the Society of Biblical Literature Conference

In 2009 I spoke at the SBL conference by standing in for Bill Maher in defending his mockumentary Religulous. I enjoyed it. Recently Richard Carrier was there and he's telling us in some detail what it was like right here. I especially liked what he forgot, which we need reminded of again and again:

Carrier said:

The Future of God Seminar

The concurrent seminar on God and the human future was about contemporary theology rather than ancient history...But what I found myself in the middle of here were dozens of established experts, both professors of theology and pastors of major churches, who were decidedly not conservative.

I usually only deal with conservative and centrist Christians because liberal Christians are so wishy washy and mushy void of substantive beliefs beyond the ethical and political sphere, and their ethics and politics usually mostly align with liberal secularists of various stripes and thus are less of an urgent threat to society. At least in respect to their religion, as their religion really doesn’t provided any basis for their views, whether friendly or toxic. As I’ve often said of liberal Christians, they have no text. They’re just making it all up as they go along. So arguing with them is never any different than arguing with a secular philosopher. They don’t resort to citing Scripture or the Holy Spirit or “historical facts of faith” for authority on anything they espouse. So really, they are just atheists in practice, who dress up as theists.

Consequently I often forget how many of them there are.

Never forget it. The evangelicals make noise, lots of it. But they are routinely ignored by a great many other theists and Christians.