Atheist Revolution: Promoting Atheism on Facebook

Tuesday, March 17, 2009

Promoting Atheism on Facebook

I am posting the following announcement at the request of a reader, Neil. He is organizing a Facebook event this Friday (March 20, 2009), "I am an Atheist." It seems like it might be an effective way to do some consciousness raising for those who are open abut their atheism on Facebook. I'll just let him tell you about it:

This virtual event is titled "I am an Atheist", and it's goal is to function as a sort of online "Pride Day" for nonbelievers. All day on March 20th, participants will set their profile picture to the Scarlet "A", and change their status message to read "I am an atheist" or some other similar proclamation of (dis)belief.

I and Danny Piccirillo, the creator of this event, have worked to ensure a positive attitude would surround this day; we're not looking at it as an opportunity to start fights or awkwardly alienate our colleagues--nothing like that. Instead, we hold the hope that some of the Facebook users out there with ill-informed impressions of the atheist community will see their friends list colored scarlet for one day, and maybe begin to realize that atheists are more diverse than our stereotype, and that we are often in fact productive, caring, ethical people that believers already interact with every day.

The event's page, which does require you to have a Facebook account, can be found at http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=88239290014&ref=mf