Fort Bragg Atheist Celebration APPROVED

Weaver · #1 by **Weaver** » Aug 02, 2011 12:29 pm

http://rockbeyondbelief.com/2011/08/02/ ... nd-belief/

On March 31st, 2012, Fort Bragg will be hosting Rock Beyond Belief with the full support it was promised. This just might be the turning point in the foxhole atheist community’s struggle for acceptance, tolerance and respect. It’s an amazing time to be a non-believer in the U.S. Military on the cusp of a major break-through.

The public is invited, free of charge, to see this revolution begin to bear fruit. Our key-note speaker, Richard Dawkins regularly draws crowds in the thousands, especially in the so-called Bible Belt. On the rare occasions where his lectures and speeches are free, he sells out the capacity even faster than usual. None of this will be a problem for us, as our venue – the Fort Bragg Main Post Parade Field is home to the annual 4th of July celebration, with tens of thousands of attendees. The rest of our equally solid lineup may fluctuate slightly, and details will emerge in the next week or so.

Weather permitting, the Fort Bragg’s prestigious Golden Knights parachute team have been requested for an epic jump. I can’t say much more at this point, but some atheists may just be falling out of the freaking sky (with parachutes).

A talented singer and foxhole atheist volunteered for the honor of singing the National Anthem. Let us know if you are interested!

Child care is being worked out, and a ‘kiddie land’ will be available with bounce houses and face painting. Vendors are going to be hawking godless books, stickers, t-shirts and of course food and drinks. No word yet on ‘ceremonial beer‘, I’ll get back to you on that! And you can bet on a large presence from just about every large secular organization.

A mystery-celebrity is vowing to throw an unforgettable warm-up party a few days beforehand. (Sorry, can’t talk about fight club.)

.... more

chairman bill · #2 by **chairman bill** » Aug 02, 2011 12:35 pm

Godless commie homosexualists. You'll be claiming they evolved from decent Merkins next, yet we still see decent gawd-fearin' Merkins, don't we?

You do realise the next soldier killed in Afghanistan will be blamed on God hating atheist soldiers & blaming the US military for allowing it?

trubble76 · #3 by **trubble76** » Aug 02, 2011 12:36 pm

Good for them! I'm pleased that this battle was won, rightly so.

Any god-botherers planning protests against the godless heathens?

Weaver · #4 by **Weaver** » Aug 02, 2011 12:38 pm

@ Chairman Bill: Only by the Westboro Baptist Church - and they'll blame the US anyhow, especially since DADT is ending.

I could show you what I personally think of the WBC types, but my wife made me promise to stop shitting in my hand and flinging it at people.

Haven't heard of any protests - but I doubt it, being on the installation and all.

DoctorE · #5 by **DoctorE** » Aug 02, 2011 12:47 pm

Well, christians need lot's and lot's of atheists + sin, or Je$u$ won't be "back"

chairman bill · #6 by **chairman bill** » Aug 02, 2011 1:17 pm

Well I just hope all goes well, and that the attendance from US servicemen & women is substantial. A potential poke in the eye for the military chaplaincy, and all those 'no-atheists-in-foxholes' wankers.

jaydot · #7 by **jaydot** » Aug 02, 2011 11:09 pm

harumph, another bloody bouncy castle and more sodding face-painting. don't these grownups know anything?

kennyc · #8 by **kennyc** » Aug 03, 2011 1:16 am

Wonderful!

Darwinsbulldog · #9 by **Darwinsbulldog** » Aug 03, 2011 1:43 am

Very bad...more athiests more casualties. Believers only lose their material bodies.

AlohaChris · **#10** by **AlohaChris** » Aug 03, 2011 2:14 am

Hurrah!

keypad5 · **#11** by **keypad5** » Aug 06, 2011 1:08 am

This is good news.

And I think an event like this is a much more positive expression of non-religion than all these WTC cross lawsuits, or billboards, or planes pulling atheist slogans on Independence Day, because an event like this is about human involvement. It's about people showing solidarity and just having some fun together. This is good because it makes atheists/agnostics/irreligious folk visible, instead of being these mysterious "others" who put up billboards and lawsuits.

I read an article recently that discusses a study of attitudes towards atheists. The findings suggest that peoples' perceptions of atheists are largely influenced by how many atheists they believe are around.

In one test, subjects were assigned one of three readings: a neutral reading about food, a passage from The God Delusion in which Richard Dawkins argued that supernatural belief is nonsensical, and a text describing the rising number of atheists in the United States. This selection mentioned that among Americans ages 18 to 25, at least 20 percent are atheists. Here’s how Rees sums it up: “For the religious, reading that atheism was rather more common than they previously believed had a remarkable effect: it effectively abolished their distrust of atheists.”

In another test, student subjects read either an essay claiming 5 percent of students at their university were atheists, and another pegging the figure at 50 percent. (The true number was midway between them.) Subjects who read the essay with the inflated figure were significantly more likely to rate atheists as trustworthy than those who had read the deflated figure.

Gervais also noted that in countries where atheism is more openly prevalent in the population, voters -- even religious voters -- are more willing to vote for atheist candidates than they are in the United States. That helps explain why Australia’s Prime Minister and the U. K.’s Deputy Prime Minister reached their high positions even though both are open atheists.

In other words, people who believe atheists are numerous -- in simple terms, people who know they know atheists and know first-hand that many of the negative stereotypes about atheists are wrong -- tend to abandon their prejudices against the nonreligious. That phenomenon worked for LGBTs and it can work for the nonreligious. I think it’s working already.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/on- ... _blog.html

So, the Rock Beyond Belief concert is an event that, I think, will help to bring atheists into the light a bit more, and it may well dispell some prejudice.

Onyx8 · **#12** by **Onyx8** » Aug 06, 2011 5:04 am

Good news, well done.