BibleName's Blog: Midwest Freethought Conference

Monday, July 16, 2012

Midwest Freethought Conference - coming up all too quickly

The Midwest Freethought Conference is coming up (all too quickly) on August 3-5 in Omaha, NE. We have a GREAT lineup of speakers, and, due to the OmahaCoR’s billboard invitation to non-believers (the first atheistic billboard in Nebraska), a huge amount of publicity. The speakers are, in (more or less) order of appearance: Brian Dunning, Adam Brown, Dave Muscato, Amanda Knief, PZ Myers, Amanda Brown, Hemant Mehta, Jerry deWitt, Sarah Morehead, AJ Johnson, Dan Barker, and Fred Edwords.

It promises to be a fantastic weekend full of great presentations, great conversations, and great fun! These sorts of gatherings are perhaps particularly important in the traditionally staid and conservative religious Midwest area, where being religious is more or less assumed, and the opportunity to gather and build community among nontheists is rare. The billboard and its reactions have proved this to us, with everything from people telling us to read Lee Strobel to notes from closet atheists thanking us for putting up the billboard, for letting them know that there is a community out there for non-believers.

A quote from someone who walked out of the restaurant that the billboard is located near: “Thank you so much for the billboard! My fiance and I have always wanted to be a part of an organization that supports our beliefs. We walked out of HuHot, I looked up and almost started crying. It really was a 'beacon of hope' for us. We're really excited to become a part of this community!! THANK YOU!!!!”

If you need or would like more information, please contact me at josiah.mannion5@gmail.com , or Sheila Cole at Sheila@OmahaAtheists.org, or William ‘Danger’ Newman at omahacor@gmail.com.

Also, here's a link to a short blog post from a friend that summarizes and provides most of the relevant links for all of the media response (both positive and negative) up to the date that it was written.