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

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.