'WE ARE ATHEISM' CAMPAIGN

ATHEISTS LAUNCH CAMPAIGN
TO COME OUT OF THE CLOSET

USA (RNS) - The young man in the video pulls in close to his computer camera with the trappings of a typical college dorm room. Alex Fiorentini isn't talking about girls, beer or football. Instead, it's a coming-out moment of sorts. "Is it acceptable to the majority of the population to be an atheist?" he asks the camera. "Nope. Are all of your friends going to accept you as an atheist? Probably not all of them. And yeah, those things are gonna suck. But the real question is, 'Is it OK to be me?' That is the real question if you are an atheist." For Fiorentini, a student at the University of Illinois, the answer is yes. He and scores of other atheists, young and old, have made similar videos for a new campaign designed to build community and support among nontheists around the world. Dubbed "We Are Atheism," the campaign was launched this fall by three students at the University of Kansas. About one or two videos come in each day, and daily traffic to the We Are Atheism website has climbed as high as 6,600.


"It is time for us to put up our videos and change the face of atheism. We want people to see we are normal people who have children and lives and do good in the community," said Amanda Brown, 25, one of the co-founders. Brown has heard from atheists ranging in age from 15 to 75 who say watching the videos has made them feel less isolated and, in some cases, given them courage to come out as atheists to family and friends. Brown was inspired to start the campaign with her husband and a friend when she attended a talk by Jessica Ahlquist, a teenage atheist who was taunted and bullied after she objected to a "school prayer" banner hung in her Rhode Island high school. "To those of you who are watching this video, you should know that you are not alone," says David Silverman, president of American Atheists, in his self-made video. "You should be an out atheist because it feels great. To be a closeted atheist is to tell a lie to your loved ones."

Reaction  in the atheist community to "We Are Atheism" campaign has been favorable. The Richard Dawkins Foundation, which has its own campaign encouraging atheists to go public, is supporting it on its website. "If the polls are correct, there are literally millions of nonbelievers in America," said Richard Haynes, president of Atheist Nexus. "However, many atheists feel all alone. This is the primary reason we must come out of the closet. Coming out is the only way to change the public perception of nontheism." Although atheists do not want to admit a life without God is unbearable.

WHAT DO THE VEDIC TEACHINGS TELL US?

The tendency to want to eliminate humanity’s sources of illumination and to exclude them; to pretend proposing that God does not exist and that all kind of revelation simply is an invention of the human intellect mixed with lies – shows what atheism is.  For this kind of atheistic thinkers, the mystic is something mundane or some kind of psychological sickness. They think, ... the technical and sociologic development, etc., is the maximum one can get in this world, … and that the cult of God, the myths distorted to mythology, are expressions from primitive people.  And this atheistic reality has infiltrated the educational ministries; media, communication and trade are used as justification to introduce the system on the free market. This can also be called “the law of the strongest”, which tries to impress the idea that there is no higher rule or order in this world, that nobody exists whom we have to obey, and that there is no authority, nothing “absolute”.

Śrīla Bhakti Aloka Paramadvaiti Mahārāja : 
"Conscious Art" - "A Culture of Divine Love"
"Atheistic thinking"
http://www.vrindanews.com/nectar/conscious_art.html