I have an awesome story to share today that will hopefully inspire you to be more visible with your lack of believe in deities and the supernatural. Atheists are organizing and our organizations are growing. This has political implications and will help foster critical thinking in society at large.
Yesterday, the Philadelphia Coalition of Reason (PhillyCoR) had our 7th annual Unity Picnic. As the head of PhillyCoR, I am responsible for getting the word out about this event and to organize our now 10 member groups to intermingle.
In one sense, I succeeded in that we had more people at this year’s Unity Picnic than we have in the last few years. Everyone who attended the event seemed to have enjoyed themselves. We even had Flying Spaghetti Monster rice crispy treats and American Atheist cookies.
On the other hand, I also failed in a way. Apparently there was a family picnic in a neighboring pavilion and some of our members accidently went over to their picnic looking for our picnic. What happen next was quite surprising. If I were a betting man (and I am), I would have bet that they would have been outraged that atheists were having a picnic so close to their family picnic. But that isn’t what happened at all.
One of the people from that picnic came over to our picnic and expressed a great deal of interest in our groups. He’s an atheist too! He didn’t know there were atheist groups in the area and he seemed eager to be a part of our growing movement. How awesome is that? Just by having a fun picnic in a state park, we were able to attract new people to our movement.
When atheists are visible other atheists see us and want to join us. Just by being seen, we are letting others know that it is okay for them to be seen too.
Related articles
- Theists Not Invited! (skepticink.com)
- Atheism 101: Atheism is not a worldview (examiner.com)
- One Type of Christian (skepticink.com)
- Approached On The Job (skepticink.com)
- Anti-atheist hate crimes will continue to be tracked by FBI (examiner.com)
