A few days ago, PZ Myers pointed to Atheist Day, a new annual event sponsored by Atheist Republic and a handful of other organizations. PZ didn’t care for the idea, and described Atheist Republic as
very 2005
Glancing at Atheist Republic‘s website I thought this description was apt. However, I don’t think it’s necessarily a bad thing for an atheist organization to be 10+ years behind the times. Let me expand that thought.
Last month I looked at some postmortems of the atheist movement, and there were two main themes: 1) atheists screwed up on social justice issues, and 2) atheism is simply declining in relevance as a personal identity. The atheist movement is dead to me, because I lived through the entirety of the atheist gender wars, and also because I live in a location where nobody cares that I’m an atheist. However, it stands to reason that this is dependent on your personal background and geographic location. A social movement doesn’t just go poof, and there will definitely be hangers-on for a long time to come.