The conventions are over the videos are all over the net and Reason Rally 2012 is a fond memory for those who attended. As I was reliving the rally on YouTube I was hoping to catch a glimpse of myself but soon learned god was in attendance that day. Evidently, he (she/it) frowned upon all us godless peoples and cursed us with a day of grey, gloomy, rainy weather any Seattleite would be proud of. At least that’s the story from some of the religious folks who were there. I just need to work out the confusion this creates in my simple secular brain. Here goes.

Texas Governor Rick Perry can have the whole population of Texas xtians praying for rain to help ease the worst state-wide drought on record with no results. Not even from an arena full of believers at “Prayerpalooza.” But you get 20,000 plus atheists, agnostics, and humanists together in Washington D.C. and god makes it rain most of the day. Allegedly, to punish those attending heathens for their sinful transgressions. I just don’t get it. First, I love rain and it was far from punishment and second, maybe god only goes for the big shows and doesn’t mess with anything as small and trivial as say…Texas. Or? Perhaps? Positively! There is no god!

The Northwest Free-Thought Alliance convention ended April 1, Sunday, with a full house listening in rapt attention to Dr. Liz Cornwell, Sean Faircloth, and Prof. Richard Dawkins at the Newport High School gymnasium in Bellevue, Washington.

“We would like to thank Dr. Dawkins, Mr. Faircloth, and Dr. Cornwell for their graciousness and expertise,” said Robert Sanford, director of the conference. “We had a packed gymnasium and it was a wonderful end to our conference. We truly appreciate the leadership and dedication of the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science, They flew in to Seattle past midnight on Saturday and were up early the next day. We were privileged to have them attend our conference and certainly would appreciate their being with us in a future conference!”said convention leader Sanford

Mr. Sanford, already preparing for next year’s Northwest Free-thought Alliance conference, at Portland State University on March 29 – 31, 2013, said that he especially wanted to thank the many, many volunteers who made the conference such a success.

For more information about the Northwest Free-thought Alliance, please go to “NWFA”

Follow this link for the most recent issue of “Freethoughts” the newsletter of The Tri-City Freethinkers. Click Here

Reason Rally 2012 was a great success. In spite of the rainy weather the National Park Service estimated there were 20,000 people that attended. The speakers were very passionate about the need for non-theists to get involved and stay involved in the movement. With an estimated 45 million non-believers in the country only about 5% are associated with any one organized secular group. Highlights of the day included speeches by Adam Savage, Penn Jillette, Sean Faircloth, and others. Very special mentions go out for performances by Tim Minchin and Eddie Izzard.

If you want to see more pictures and learn more about who was there, and what’s coming up in the future of the secular movement go to: www.reasonrally.org

And as the photo shows Jesus was very “Big” at the rally.

I’ll tell you what you did with Atheists for about 1500 years. You outlawed them from the universities, or any teaching careers, besmirched their reputations, banned or burned their books or their writings of any kind, drove them into exile, humiliated them, seized their properties, arrested them for blasphemy. You dehumanized them with beatings and exquisite torture, gouged out their eyes, slit their tongues, stretched, crushed, or broke their limbs, tore off their breasts if they were a woman, crushed their scrotums of they were men, imprisoned them, stabbed them, disemboweled them, hung them, burnt them alive. And you have the nerve enough to complain to me that I laugh at you.
–Dr. Madalyn Murray O’Hair

Yes, you read that correctly; it seems there may even be hope for industry manufactured teen idols. Miley Cyrus may be an atheist, or at least sympathetic to the underlying scepticism.

Although I hate the title* of  this editorial from the Tucson Citizen, can you imagine something like it happening 30 years ago?! Folks, progress is being made & I think the evidence strongly suggests that whatever acceptance has been achieved has not come from timid accommodationist atheists wringing their hands while trying to get along at the expense of everything else. No, whatever else you may think of the New Atheists (including the silly name), the recent punctuated acceptance success level trends directly with their audacity.

Hopefully Atheist/Freethinkers are starting to learn a thing or two from other civil rights movements’ success strategies. Racial minorities, women, & LGBT groups did not achieve a single thing by only being a passive voice. It takes all approaches, & for some, politely being tapped on the shoulder simply will not work; some people need the bull-horn.

*Letting the media continue to frame the issue by using phrases such as, “…converting from [pick a religion] to atheism…” — as is editorialized in the Bill Maher entry below – is the passive sort of mistake that has to stop. Non-belief in that which can not be verified is not faith; it is rational. It is the addition of the unverifiable that is faith. Absence of religion is not religion. I can’t think of any other way to make the ridiculousness of these “conversion” statements more obvious. Please…stop the madness!