Posted by Hemant Mehta in This weekend, for the fourth year in a row, the leaders of nearly all the major atheist/humanist organizations in the country will be meeting in Tampa, Florida to discuss ways to collaborate, share resources, and decide best methods to share our message with others.
Participating organizations include:
- American Atheists
- American Ethical Union
- American Humanist Association
- Atheist Alliance International
- The Brights
- Camp Quest
- Center for Atheism/NYC Atheists
- Center for Inquiry
- Freedom from Religion Foundation
- Humanist Institute
- Humanists of Florida Association
- Institute for Humanist Studies
- Internet Infidels
- Military Association of Atheists and Freethinkers
- Objectivity Accuracy and Balance in Teaching About Religion
- Rational Response Squad
- Richard Dawkins Net/RDFRS/Out Campaign
- Secular Coalition for America
- Secular Student Alliance
- Society for Humanistic Judaism
Already, the agenda features exciting ideas for collaboration. I’m hoping some will come to fruition and get support from the organizations’ representatives.
If you’d like to send this group of leaders a message or share some suggestions, leave a comment. I’d be glad to share them at the meeting.
[tags]atheist, atheism[/tags]
When is the Australian leg of the tour?
It would be nice to see some of the representatives of these organisations (and yourself Hemant, of course) visit our beautiful shores and do a lecture or two.
Please, don’t hear derision in this question. I really want to know for real, even though I am a Christian.
When you speak of “spreading your message,” shouldn’t this be considered preaching and inherently religious? I could be naive. It could just be like a motivational speaker getting out a message he or she feels is important. But, it seems many of the people who spread the “message of atheism” are militant about it, and just as passionate as their religious counterparts. Many even adopt historically religious language in order to make their argument. Thus the accusation “Atheism is a religion” has been thrown around so easily. Could you help explain this for me so I can better understand?
Every organization seems to have “spread our message” as part of their mission statement, so no, it’s not a religious thing. The message they are spreading is not about whether there isn’t a god; the message(s) (depending on which of the above organizations you are talking about) probably is more along the lines of: we’re here, we’re not evil, not being religious doesn’t make us second class citizens, a person can have morals without religion, there are atheists in foxholes, the separation of church and state is a good thing, that kind of thing. Individuals, of course, may have different and much more vehement messages. However, most (but not all) of those organizations listed above are more mellow than that.
Okay. Thanks for explaining. That’s fair.
Heads is more of a forum for the leaders of the groups to get together to collaborate with each other. It’s not open to the public. More of a tactical meeting to develop projects, etc than a convention type event.
Where will they be in Tampa and is it open to the public? I live near there and I would LOVE to go!
This particular meeting is not open to the public, but if there are any plans to have a small get-together somewhere, I’ll post something!
Fabulous! Thanks Hemant!
[...] the “meeting of the atheist leaders” on Saturday, there were several discussions about tactics and ideas for future [...]