It was meant to resemble the Royal Institute lectures. It has ended up more like the Royal Variety show. That's how host and organiser Robin Ince describes his "rational celebration for Christmas", an alternative festive cabaret that expels the angel and puts science at the top of the tree.
For us devout non-believers, it's a satisfying idea, but as the evening goes on - and on - it feels as though our faithlessness is being tested. God made the world in seven days, I hear. It takes Ince and co almost as long to argue that he didn't.
The comedians, scientists and musicians assembled by Ince come bearing gifts of varying relevance to this newborn event. The coup is Ricky Gervais performing new material, but his funny, tasteless jokes about paedophilia and gerontophilia are beside the point.
Elsewhere, there are plenty of gags that make religion look moronic - which, ironically, has one longing for a more nuanced position. Step forward physicist Simon Singh, telling us that the progenitor of the Big Bang theory was a Belgian priest. And Stewart Lee, whose argument runs: "When I look at something as intricate and detailed as Professor Richard Dawkins, I think, surely that can't just have evolved by chance."
To prevent his second act heaving with surplus performers, Ince could learn from John the Baptist, who "gathered his wheat into the garner; but burned up the chaff with unquenchable fire". The point of a Christmas celebration of rationalism must be to demonstrate that science is as full of comfort and joy as fairytales.
That's what Dawkins does, with his reading from his 1998 book Unweaving the Rainbow, about time travel and the stars. Likewise Aussie minstrel Tim Minchin, who reprises his beat poem about new-age credulity, which asks: "Isn't this enough, this beautiful, complex, unfathomable, natural world?" In this instance, it's more than enough.
