Something that’s been occupying the backburner spaces in my
mental kitchen over the past year or so has been the place of groups and
activities within an atheist community that are not specifically related to
atheistic activism. There’s been a growing number of these popping up in our
local community lately, and I’ve been loving it. Not only do I think that there
is a place for these sorts of groups, I think that they are necessary.
The example I usually use is book clubs. I really want to be
a member of a book club, I love talking about books and what I’ve read. Almost
all of the book clubs I’ve found around here and taste-tested are full of very
nice people who inevitably assume in every single participant a deistic belief
system, and freely sprinkle that assumption into the conversational cookpot. I
want to be able to have conversations about books, whether they be literature,
scientific, philosophical, fantastical, young adult, whatever, without that
assumption being made. Or rather, where the opposite assumption can be made
explicit (and, thus, not really an assumption, I suppose).
I think that this is important and not something to be
lightly swept aside as not really having anything to do with freethought, atheism,
and atheist activism.
