More Atheists Shout It From the Rooftops

[sledgehammer]

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More Atheists Shout It From the Rooftops

CHARLESTON, S.C. — Two months after the local atheist organization here put up a billboard saying “Don’t Believe in God? You Are Not Alone,” the group’s 13 board members met in Laura and Alex Kasman’s living room to grapple with the fallout.

The problem was not that the group, the Secular Humanists of the Lowcountry, had attracted an outpouring of hostility. It was the opposite. An overflow audience of more than 100 had showed up for their most recent public symposium, and the board members discussed whether it was time to find a larger place.

And now parents were coming out of the woodwork asking for family-oriented programs where they could meet like-minded nonbelievers.

“Is everyone in favor of sponsoring a picnic for humanists with families?” asked the board president, Jonathan Lamb, a 27-year-old meteorologist, eliciting a chorus of “ayes.”

More than ever, America’s atheists are linking up and speaking out — even here in South Carolina, home to Bob Jones University, blue laws and a legislature that last year unanimously approved a Christian license plate embossed with a cross, a stained glass window and the words “I Believe” (a move blocked by a judge and now headed for trial).

They are connecting on the Internet, holding meet-ups in bars, advertising on billboards and buses, volunteering at food pantries and picking up roadside trash, earning atheist groups recognition on adopt-a-highway signs.

They liken their strategy to that of the gay-rights movement, which lifted off when closeted members of a scorned minority decided to go public.

“It’s not about carrying banners or protesting,” said Herb Silverman, a math professor at the College of Charleston who founded the Secular Humanists of the Lowcountry, which has about 150 members on the coast of the Carolinas. “The most important thing is coming out of the closet.”

Polls show that the ranks of atheists are growing. The American Religious Identification Survey, a major study released last month, found that those who claimed “no religion” were the only demographic group that grew in all 50 states in the last 18 years.

Nationally, the “nones” in the population nearly doubled, to 15 percent in 2008 from 8 percent in 1990. In South Carolina, they more than tripled, to 10 percent from 3 percent. Not all the “nones” are necessarily committed atheists or agnostics, but they make up a pool of potential supporters.

Local and national atheist organizations have flourished in recent years, fed by outrage over the Bush administration’s embrace of the religious right. A spate of best-selling books on atheism also popularized the notion that nonbelief is not just an argument but a cause, like environmentalism or muscular dystrophy.

Ten national organizations that variously identify themselves as atheists, humanists, freethinkers and others who go without God have recently united to form the Secular Coalition for America, of which Mr. Silverman is president. These groups, once rivals, are now pooling resources to lobby in Washington for separation of church and state.

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http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/27/us/27atheist.html?em

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[Warpy]

1. Being soured on organized religion

is not nearly the same thing as admitting one doesn't believe a word of any of it.

I don't think our ranks are growing. I just think we're just the next wave of people who are sick of being despised over nothing by people who have no idea what they're talking about.

[walkaway]

2. I've been a proud and open Atheist since I was a child.

No one has ever been mean or exclusive about it. Sometimes people try to convince me that I really do believe in their god and all I need is a little savin'.

It's great for the door bell ringers. I just smile and say "sorry sweetie, I'm an Atheist" and they leave looking confused.

[valerief]

3. Me, too. Whenever I tell people that, they say stuff like, "But you

believe in spirituality, of course." I say, "No," and they're stumped. They just don't get it.

These, of course, are people who are not themselves atheists.

[Demeter]

4. "Spirituality" Is Driving Me Away from the Unitarians

My local congregation underwent a complete changeover. The staff all retired, the board all died or moved, and now the leadership is so touchy-feely it makes my skin crawl.

I was attracted by the hard-nosed reality and political advocacy of post-christian, ecumenical Unitarian Universalism. I am repelled by this exact opposite.