The Atheist Blobby Mass

There's been a lot of talk lately about closet atheists. Many atheists are very upset by this and I can see their point, how do we as a minority get stronger when our people are afraid of showing themselves.

I can see the other side too. If you live in the south, quite frankly, it can be scary.

I have an evolve fish sticker on the back windshield of my car and I continually wonder how long it will be before that window is shattered or in some other way defaced. My neighborhood is about the only place I feel truly safe and not on edge, to its credit it is one of the few open-minded areas in my home state.

I often feel ostracized. I’m treated differently at my workplace though they don’t seem to see it. Some of my Christian friends who I knew before becoming an atheist now act differently around me. My parents don’t discuss it.

It’s not an easy road being an atheist in this country, much less as a preacher’s kid in the south. It’s not a choice I’d make if I didn’t have conviction about it.

The biggest problem in my mind is the fact that those who want to see non-believers gone (by assimilation or other means) are highly organized. Christianity reaches countless millions of people every week and agenda has never been hard to mix with religion. It could even be argued that religion was born of necessity for agenda.

There is strength in numbers and let’s be honest, they’ve got numbers. But we’re not weak, we have enough to make a difference. We simply lack the structure to be heard. Because of that it can be easy to feel alien in this country if you’re not a Christian, hence the high number of non-believers who are quiet about it.

We have no way to organize, no way to unify on various issues. There is no real leadership. For all the atheist groups, meetups, movies, books, blogs, websites and everything else there is no head, only a massive body with no direction.

There is no unified message and no way to spread it if there were. For as intelligent, wonderful, charismatic, giving, kind, and upstanding a group as atheists and non-believers are, we fall well short of our potential because of our ineptitude in politics and place in this nation.

This must change, I still think an atheist “church” type organization that based Sunday morning “sermons” on history, science, and philosophy would do very well. It would provide a community of security as well as a little bit louder voice. I’d bet it’s amazing what we could do with a little more volume.

Does anyone else think this is a good idea? Do you have a different idea? Do you agree that we need more organization?