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Atheist who wants to travel.

I live in Melbourne, and I’ve been an atheist most of my life (Anglican for the rest of the time). I’m semi-retired, and I now have the chance to travel to all the places that I have longed to see.

But I’ve discovered that, in all too many places, the guides concentrate on the religious buildings and art. I can admire them, but they don’t mean anything to me. Enough Madonnas, say I. So I’m especially interested in discussions about places which are special to atheists and secularists.

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Permalink Reply by Stephen Stallebrass on August 31, 2011 at 1:45pm

If you're ever in the UK check out Down House in Kent: Darwin's home. xXx

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Permalink Reply by Linden Salter-Duke on August 31, 2011 at 2:47pm

Yes, that's on my Must Visit list. What's it like?

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Permalink Reply by Stephen Stallebrass on August 31, 2011 at 2:58pm

Awesome, spent the whole day there and still didn't have time to chill out around the grounds.

I also fancy the LHC at Geneva.

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Permalink Reply by Linden Salter-Duke on August 31, 2011 at 4:31pm

I was in Geneva, but missed the LHC. I did go to Voltaire's chateau, though, which is special for free-thinkers. Although it's in France, you can get there on Geneva's regular public transport -- it's fun going through an international border on an ordinary bus service.

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Permalink Reply by annet on August 31, 2011 at 4:00pm

I can think of a lot of nature based places to visit all over the world that don't involve religion. Do pyramids count as secular? Modern art and science museums are good destinations in big cities. The Darwin house sounds lovely, might as well visit the Bard's house while you're in England. What are the places you've longed to see? I did an atheist search on tripadvisor.com but not a lot came up.

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Permalink Reply by Linden Salter-Duke on August 31, 2011 at 4:29pm

You’re right: there are plenty of secular places to visit, and also ex-religious places like the Pyramids and the Parthenon, and at last I’m getting to see some of them.

I’ve just come back from a holiday in Eastern Europe (a river cruise down the Danube). I think that every excursion took us to at least one orthodox church, and, while staring at the umpteenth icon, I got wondering about the atheist equivalent.

Are there places which are more meaningful to us atheists than they would be to the theists? Down House is a good example.

I really want to go to Florence. And I will skip one more Madonna-filled gallery so I can get to the Museo Galileo.

I guess that Eastern Europeans were a bit wary of showing off Communist art. There was one excursion in Budapest to a park full of Communist statues – the Hungarians didn’t want to destroy them, but they also didn’t want to see them in prominent places any more, so they moved all of them to a park outside the city. A good idea, and I’d like to have seen more.

(I did a search for ‘Atheist’ in Trip Advisor too, and I got asked “Did you mean ‘Athens’?”. Sigh.)