Indiana roads have become a little more godless thanks to Jason:
I have to say, I’m a little disappointed in him. He could have racked up a thousand irony points for putting it on our free In God We Trust license plates:
Seriously, I think these are more common than the standard plate. Makes me sad.
At least it seems Jason is living in a more liberal part of Indiana (Marion County is home to Indianapolis). If my car has survived living in West Lafayette with a Darwin Fish & Obama sticker, he should be fine.
(Via Friendly Atheist)
Send an Atheist to Church: Final results
The results are in! During our Send an Atheist to Church event, the Society of Non-Theists at Purdue University raised…
$362.95 for Food Finders Food Bank!
That is so amazing! I wasn’t sure if we’d even raise $100, but we blew past that goal!
And for those of you who are wondering about the more competitive side of the event, here are the donation results per denomination:
The Episcopalians had the highest amount, just barely beating the Baptists by six cents! Representatives from both of those denominations stopped by and made big donations, which helped put them in the lead. $37.34 was also donated to just a general fund that didn’t represent a specific denomination – some people didn’t want to send us to any religious service, haha. I guess the Episcopalians and Baptists will have a lot of atheists coming their way soon…
Thanks so much to everyone who donated and to everyone who helped organize the event. I would call this a huge success!
I’m just a stupid undergrad, apparently
I stopped by our Send an Atheist to Church event between my classes to see how it was going. A professor (I won’t say from which department, don’t want to identify him) was debating with club members working the table. He had initiated the discussion, and I wasn’t paying much attention until the topic turned to evolution.
It was a bit odd. He mostly accepted evolution, but believed that Intelligent Design was a better explanation for what guided the process. He argued that atheist philosophers and scientists outright rejected ID, and it never gets a chance to be debated or discussed.
(Not exact quotes, but fairly darn close)
Me: That’s because ID isn’t scientific.
Him: Yes it is.
Me: No it isn’t. Name one testable prediction for ID.
Him: Well there a many, but the complexity of structures like flagella.
Me: First of all, it has been explained numerous times by numerous people how the flagella could evolve in a stepwise natural fashion. Second of all, that’s not a way to support or falsify ID. It would falsify evolution, but that doesn’t mean God is the answer.
Him: Well all the great scientists were religious. Newton’s religion helped him figure out physics.
Me: …You can be religious and be a scientist. That doesn’t mean your religious beliefs are correct too.
Him: Well, how about Francis Collins? He was the head of the Human Genome Project and is the head of NIH.
Me: That’s just argument from authority. He’s brilliant at genetics, but that doesn’t mean he knows everything about evolution.
Him: Are you head of the NIH?
Me: No, but I study genetics and evolution.
Him: Do you have a PhD?
Me: I’m going to start working toward my PhD in the fall, maybe you’ll listen to me in five years.
Seriously, how demeaning. Yep, I’m just a dumb undergrad. Obviously I have no say on anything because I don’t have a PhD and I’m not the head of NIH, even though evolution is an easy enough concept for teenagers to understand.
I was pretty much done with him at that point. He may as well have said “little girl, go back to your corner and shut up.” What a disrespectful way to treat a student, especially when you are the one who has no idea what he’s talking about.
I would be sorry for anyone who was in this guy’s class. Disagree with him? Nope, you’re just dumb and immature. Come back when you have more letters after your name.
I'm just a stupid undergrad, apparently
I stopped by our Send an Atheist to Church event between my classes to see how it was going. A professor (I won’t say from which department, don’t want to identify him) was debating with club members working the table. He had initiated the discussion, and I wasn’t paying much attention until the topic turned to evolution.
It was a bit odd. He mostly accepted evolution, but believed that Intelligent Design was a better explanation for what guided the process. He argued that atheist philosophers and scientists outright rejected ID, and it never gets a chance to be debated or discussed.
(Not exact quotes, but fairly darn close)
Me: That’s because ID isn’t scientific.
Him: Yes it is.
Me: No it isn’t. Name one testable prediction for ID.
Him: Well there a many, but the complexity of structures like flagella.
Me: First of all, it has been explained numerous times by numerous people how the flagella could evolve in a stepwise natural fashion. Second of all, that’s not a way to support or falsify ID. It would falsify evolution, but that doesn’t mean God is the answer.
Him: Well all the great scientists were religious. Newton’s religion helped him figure out physics.
Me: …You can be religious and be a scientist. That doesn’t mean your religious beliefs are correct too.
Him: Well, how about Francis Collins? He was the head of the Human Genome Project and is the head of NIH.
Me: That’s just argument from authority. He’s brilliant at genetics, but that doesn’t mean he knows everything about evolution.
Him: Are you head of the NIH?
Me: No, but I study genetics and evolution.
Him: Do you have a PhD?
Me: I’m going to start working toward my PhD in the fall, maybe you’ll listen to me in five years.
Seriously, how demeaning. Yep, I’m just a dumb undergrad. Obviously I have no say on anything because I don’t have a PhD and I’m not the head of NIH, even though evolution is an easy enough concept for teenagers to understand.
I was pretty much done with him at that point. He may as well have said “little girl, go back to your corner and shut up.” What a disrespectful way to treat a student, especially when you are the one who has no idea what he’s talking about.
I would be sorry for anyone who was in this guy’s class. Disagree with him? Nope, you’re just dumb and immature. Come back when you have more letters after your name.
Send an Atheist to Church: Preliminary results
About a week ago I mentioned how the Society of Non-Theists would be holding a Send an Atheist to Church event. Yesterday was our first day, and we exceeded expectations! We raised about 140 dollars, and the Exponent (local student newspaper) wrote up a nice article about us:
Non-Theists attend religious services to benefit food bank
By Katy Adams, Staff Reporter
Publication Date: 02/19/2010
“Save a soul, put food in a bowl” and “Donate to charity and spare our souls” are two slogans that the Purdue Society of Non-Theists is using to raise money for charity.
From 9 a.m. until 4:30 p.m. today, the Society of Non-Theists will raise money for Food Finders Food Bank of Tippecanoe County, which they hope will help to raise awareness of the club.
The idea for the fundraiser, called “Send an Atheist to Church,” was based off Hemant Mehta, an atheist who sold himself on eBay to attend any church service at $10 an hour. The winning bid, $504, went to a non-profit charity, and Mehta wrote a book on the experience titled, “I Sold My Soul on eBay.”
The fundraiser has set out paper cups to collect donations. The cups are labeled with different religions or denominations, including cups for Buddhists, Methodists, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints and a cup for general donations. A donor can donate to a specific religion, hoping that religion get closer to “winning.” All profits go to the charity and each domination will have society members attending their services.
As of Thursday, the Methodist church had the most donations.
Monya Anderson, a senior in the College of Liberal Arts and treasurer for the organization said that the club raised $135.31 for the Food Finders Food Bank on Thursday, and that the fundraiser has given them a chance to learn about other denominations and religions.
“It brings a lot of discussion (when people visit the table) … (we) met a lot of people, (had) varied reactions,” she said.
Kimberly Tricoche, a senior in the College of Liberal Arts, visited the table because of the signs. She said that the organization’s efforts are creative and are helping a good cause.
“They are saying they are open to going to other churches. It’s a creative idea to send themselves to church (for charity),” she said.
Elizabeth Almada, a junior in the College of Education, disagreed, saying that the list is discriminatory to others faiths, as the only non-Christian religions named on the cups are Judaism and Buddhism. She said that as a campus event, it should be campus-wide, with one for each denomination.
“I’m all for donation, but it seems like a battle of the churches, kind of shows who cares and who doesn’t,” she said. “‘Come to my church. We raise the most money.’”
Anderson said the organization e-mailed different people, but some didn’t respond or weren’t interested. She said that the organization will continue to do the fundraiser in the future, either every semester or every year, to continue to raise money.
(I’m pretty sure the Baptists and Mormons are winning, maybe they weren’t when she interviewed everyone)
I’m always happy when our events get covered by the news, but it’s even more awesome in this situation. Hopefully even more people will stop by our table today and we can raise even more money. I wasn’t even sure if we’d make 100 dollars, so I’m already elated.
I was stuck on an airplane for most of yesterdays event, but the members who were at the table tried to fill me in on how it went. They said the most common remark was “Where are the Catholics?!” We tried so hard to get the Catholic church on campus to agree, but they kept being noncommittal and referring us to other people – thankfully most people understood that situation. Maybe now that they see how successful our event was, they’ll join us for next year.
We also had questions like the young lady in the article, about why there were so many Christian groups. Short answer: Purdue has a lot more Christians. We asked the Islamic Center and they declined (though they were very polite and nice). Someone from the Muslim student association came by later in the day and told us to sign them up, so at least we have them now! The Hindu student association never replied. Other than those groups, there aren’t really that many clubs or places of worship for non-Christian faiths. Someone asked about Taoism and Deism – show us where we can actually physically go, and we’ll go there!
And one of the funnier responses through the day was actually from random atheists who walked by, not theists. We got a couple of glares from (presumably) theists, but atheists would stop and be offended. They thought we were a religious group trying to force atheists to go to church, not an atheist group being a little silly! Once we explained the situation, they would laugh about it. I think that illustrates the religious environment at Purdue – it is totally normal, common really, for religious people to go around trying to save us heathens in public.
I’ll let you know how today goes!
Non-theist labels vs age
One of my readers asked if I would look and see if there was any correlation with age and the types of non-theist labels my readers used. Here you go (click it for a larger image):
Sample size:
<20 = 68
21-25 = 139
26-30 = 103
31-35 = 54
36 – 45 = 61
46< = 42
I’m not sure the best way to test for statistical significance, and I’m too tired from my trip to figure it out, so let’s just look at some general trends.
First, it seems like young non-theists use more labels than older non-theists. They had the highest percent of responders for every single term. One hypothesis as to why could be that young non-theists are still trying to figure out which labels best describe them, so a lot apply right now. It could also be that a lot of these terms have just recently become popular labels, and older non-theists don’t identify with them.
The most glaring difference that I see is that young people love to be silly and call themselves Pastafarians. Oh, and that pretty much everyone hates the term Bright equally. No big surprise with either of those.
I’m not sure if I feel safe to make any more interpretations without some stats. Any older readers want to throw in their two cents?
Guest post: Canadatheism: The Northern Perspective
This is a Guest Post by Jon, a reader from up North who wanted to shed some light on atheism in America’s Hat. Er, I mean Canada. He writes over at his fiction blog, Our Man Jonesy. Take it away, Jon:
Canadatheism: The Northern Perspective
(Or: “Fundamentalism in Canada has been cancelled due to snow”)
Greetings from the frozen wastelands of Canada! While Jen’s away, I’d like to give you a general feel for atheism as it exists in the land of hockey and maple syrup. Those readers actually from Canada: feel free to sit back and talk amongst yourselves while I toss off pearls of Canadian stereotype to keep the Yanks entertained. If you’re from elsewhere, just play along for now and you’ll be able to tell your cocktail/hookah/opium den chums about how much you know about about foreign cultures.
If you’re living in the ‘States, you’ve probably heard of us before. We’re the place that everyone threatens to move if the Republicans win another election. A lot of us speak French, we use the metric system, and if you ask us, it’s not actually that cold out. And how’s the religion like out there? Well, it’s pretty mild, actually . Fiercely mild. If general polling is correct, up to a third of us acknowledge ‘No Religion’, and in a country with the population the size of the state of California, that’s rather an accomplishment, if I may be so bold. It’s at the point that the leader of the opposition party (Michael Ignatieff) can say things like:
“Some people will have no difficulty thinking human beings are sacred, because they happen to believe in the existence of God the Father and believe He created Mankind in His likeness … Far better, I would argue, to forego these kinds of foundational arguments altogether and seek to build support for human rights on the basis of what such rights actually do for human beings.”
Yeah, baby. That said, Canadian politics is a morass of apathy. Our parliament has been prorogued for the second year running, and our current head of government is a rather Christian individual. Nonetheless, we’ve really only got a few problems when it comes to openly displaying our ability to say ‘Godless’ in both official languages.
First, I’m going to blatantly appeal to stereotype here and point out the general level of pathological politesse present. We’re rather polite about others’ beliefs, and their prerogative to go on believing. We go so far as to apologize for how polite we are about it. One of the big reasons why religiosity is less of a visible factor in Canadian politics is that we’re a mostly pluralistic nation. It’s not just that we have the French Catholic crowd occupying Quebec, or the Spiritual traditions of our Aboriginals; Canada also has the largest immigration rate in the world. While a lot of it is from the East Asian countries- Vancouver, our Westernmost metropolis, has jokingly considered adopting Mandarin as its second official language- we also have a not-inconsiderable level of migration from the Middle East. The difficulty arises when the more hard-core religiosity they bring comes in conflict with our own “well, if you must, I suppose” social etiquette. We’ve shrugged off the attempts at Sharia law time and time again, but at the same time, we’re far from making minarets illegal architecture. One of the central reasons why we’re so at odds to talk against fundamentalist dogma in Canada is because we seldom talk about religion at all.
Another foot-hold for stronger theism in Canada is that our populace is scattered. We have a fraction-of-a-million people each in Montreal, Vancouver, and Calgary, as well as Ottawa and Quebec City; Toronto features an above-average population of 2.5 million. The rest is rural, and far from unreligious. Non-metropolitan religiosity is more notably strong in those populations living outside those few cities, to say nothing of the populated Maritime provinces. Even excluding that, only Vancouver might be said to be predominantly atheistic. Toronto’s comparative migratory draw results in a higher population of transplants from religious areas, and Montreal has, as one of its prime attractions, a huge frigging cross on its namesake hill.
But what, then, supports the noticeable secularism in Canada? I would strongly implicate the disenfranchised Anglicans that made up a lot of Early Canada. Come on- we founded a church on divorce. Why carry on the tradition if we’re on another continent entirely- though, in reality, we’re still technically headed by the British monarchy, and have a person appointed to represent it. Perhaps more relevant is that level of politesse I keep harping out about (sorry if it’s bothering you); perhaps one of the reason for the separation of church and state is precisely the ‘I’m okay with it’ pluralism that has such a hold on Canada; perhaps letting go of the gun-grabbing dogmatism that has infected other states just lets you see all the sides with equal fairness– and in the end, you get the conclusion that theism is a rather silly idea from the get-go.
…I mean, SURELY it can’t just be the [amazingly] good Canadian beer keeping everyone in a state of paralytic drunkenness, preventing extremism of any kind. The comparative poor quality of American beer might well be keeping you folks in the ‘boisterous’ stages of intoxication, thus giving rise to Megachurches, rednecks, and the frank need to satiate one’s pastorly urges with some crystal meth and pay-per-screw man-love. Just a theory. Get better beer, America.
For other Canadian Atheist Resources:
Center for Inquiry: http://www.cficanada.ca/
http://www.skepticnorth.com/
Nota Bene: The author will not, contrary to stereotype, apologize for a belief in the general superiority of Canadian beers. There are, however, some notable American beers.
Blag Hag 2010 Census Results
I want to thank everyone who participated in my Blag Hag 2010 Census! 467 people filled out the survey (before I closed it due to eagerness to crunch the numbers), which is absolutely amazing. I was expecting something like 50, but I guess you guys like data just as much as I do. Considering that I have slightly over 1000 subscribers (holy crap!), we did almost as well as voter turnout for the US Presidential elections! Feel special, or maybe depressed, depending how you interpret that.
Because I got a decent sample size, I actually felt safe doing some statistics and trying to interpret the results. Now, as a warning, it’s been a couple of years since I took a statistics class. It is highly probable that I screwed something up, that there was a more appropriate test to use, that one of the first five commenters will correct me, etc. I think we can see some interesting trends here, but it’s no scientific study. Also keep in mind these results don’t necessarily apply to atheists as a whole, just the atheists who read my blog and like to take surveys. Take it with a grain of salt!
Before we get started, here is how I indicated statistical significance on graphs:
* P-value less than 0.05
** P-value less than 0.01
*** P-value less than 0.001
**** P-value less than 0.0001
As always, click the images for a larger, nicer version.
We had 335 males, 135 females, and 7 transgendered readers. This actually surprised me a bit. As you can see, male readers vastly outnumber my female ones. People always ask “Where are the female atheists?” and I usually reply “We’re out here!” I know a lot of female atheists aren’t outspoken enough to want to go to club meetings or be visible, but I would have thought there would be more equal ratios on a blog written by a female atheist that often talks about feminism. My ladies are still drastically outnumbered!
I have a couple of hypotheses.
- Females hate filling out surveys (unlikely)
- Male atheists currently do, in fact, outnumber female atheists.
- Male atheists currently tend to read blogs more than female atheists.
- My blog is new, so more females haven’t found it yet.
- This is a better sex ratio than other blogs. Who knows, maybe blogs like Pharyngula and Friendly Atheist have a 9:1 ratio.
Oh, and to my transgendered readers who thanked me for including that option, you’re welcome! Can’t forget you guys. Though I am going to apologize now – most of my analyses look for differences in responses between males and females, and your sample size was too small to work for any of my statistics. Sorry! Please don’t take it personally.
Not surprising that most of my readers fall close to my own age (22). The one bit that surprised me was that I was expecting to have a grand total of two readers over the age of 30. Nothing against my older readers – I just still feel very young and immature in many respects, and I was surprised that so many “adults” would enjoy my blog. So, thank you! There we no difference in the age distribution of males and females.
Now, onto the cool stuff!
I think this result was so cool because it didn’t surprise me. Many studies (and anecdotes) point to females having more fluid sexual orientations and more bisexual tendencies. Our results follow that pretty nicely, with the vast majority of guys considering themselves exclusively heterosexual. Or at least, that’s how they reported their sexual orientation on the survey. Who knows how honest people are even when it’s anonymous.
Oh, and one fun observation: My friends who responded tend to be gayer than my readership as a whole. I think I’m a bad influence on people. Maybe we should see how that chart changes once I get another year to recruit blog.
Favorite open responses:
- “Science nerd” – The best sexuality ever.
Here readers were allowed to respond with as many answers as they wanted, hence the use of percentage instead of raw numbers. Unsurprisingly, “atheist” was the most common choice. The popular choices seem to be the positive labels – skeptic, humanist, secularist, freethinker – with terms with negative connotations not doing so well. And this supports my opinion that “Bright” comes off as a kind of douchey label that not many non-theists like, since it came in last.
The gender differences here are interesting. Men are significantly more likely to call themselves skeptics, freethinkers, and anti-theists. Anti-theists sort of makes sense, since I think some men are more likely to be aggressive and in your face about things (this does not mean aggressive female anti-theists don’t exist). The other two completely baffle me, though. Women aren’t using skeptic as much, even with the delightful pun of the Skepchicks? And…I have no idea about freethinker. Feel free to come up with your own hypotheses in the comments.
Another interesting thing to note is that men tended to list more labels for themselves than women did. Men used an average of 4.4 labels with a variance of 9.3, and women used an average of 3.7 levels with a variance of 5.7 (p less than 0.01). Of course, this could entirely be from the couple of terms that men like to use a lot more than women.
Favorite open responses:
- “Awesome”
- “Belief challenged”
- “Human” – Two people said this, I liked it!
- “Depends on my mood and whether I want to be annoying”
- “Too lazy to be a secular humanist” – Ditto
- “Shiny?” – I don’t know, are you shiny? Do we have a Twilight vampire amongst us?
Moral of the story: get PZ to link to your blog repeatedly. Seriously though, it seems being linked to by other respected, popular blogs is the best way to get new readers and to retain them. To put this in perspective, Reddit usually gives me as many hits as a Pharyngula or Friendly Atheist plug, but those people don’t tend to stick around. Getting linked to by a great blog is a level of quality control, since that blogger is saying that they like your stuff.
I wasn’t expecting to see any differences here, but there they are! Is this because Pharyngula does have more of a male bias? And what’s up with the ladies liking Google Reader suggestions so much? I have no idea, but thank you, Google Reader!
Favorite open responses:
- “Girlfriend read occasional blog posts to me” – Aw, oddly sort of cute/cool!
- “Divine Ordinance, a.k.a. Holy Handgrenade (I don’t remember. Shhh..don’t tell Jen)” – Divine Ordinance is an acceptable answer.
Women like posts on feminism a lot more than men – absolutely shocking! You guys better learn to love them, because they’re not going anywhere, haha. On the flip side, I have no idea why men like posts about me attending local atheist and theist events more than women. Hmmm, maybe because I tend to post a lot of photos when I go…
Other than that, the topics don’t surprise me. Politics is my least favorite topic to blog about since I don’t feel as well read in that area, and apparently my readers don’t love it either (not that they hate it, just that it’s not a favorite topic). Everything else I enjoy blogging about equally, and readers seem to enjoy them equally. Lesson: write about what you like!
Favorite open responses:
- “Reading about Jen’s boobs” – Got this from multiple people, almost all of them from my friends. Can’t exactly get annoyed, since I am the one writing about my boobs (seriously though, thought this was funny)
- “The review of those wretched sex scenes were read aloud at a party I threw. Good stuff.” – This is made of ultimate win.
A lot of the free responses said that they loved the blog the way it was and to not feel like I needed to drastically change anything to improve. I didn’t consider this question an ultimatum or some drastic overhaul. I mainly wanted to know if 1. I should increase the attention I put on certain things that I already enjoy doing or 2. if I should start doing things I was thinking about doing. A couple of things:
- Apparently you guys like my art! Thanks! It’s something I always want to do more of, but a piece of artwork takes something like 6 hours, compared to a short bout of writing. You’ll probably see a lot more art this summer, when I’ll have a lot of free time.
- On the flip side, you guys don’t care about me making any money. Sadness. A gal’s gotta eat, you know.
- I’ve avoiding rigid Daily features (like PZ’s Friday Cephalopod) mainly because that takes planning and I’m lazy. However, I may start doing a “List of all the random cool stuff I saw this week but didn’t have enough of an opinion to blog about it” thing. But with a better title. Anyway, I amass awesome links on Google Reader, so it wouldn’t be too hard to post them here.
- Yeaaah, don’t hold your breath on the videoblogging. I don’t own a webcam/videocamera and I hate watching myself on video. Oh, and apparently Australians have a raging hate-on for videoblogging since their internet service is so shitty, as multiple responders explained. Don’t want to ostracize my readers down under!
Oh, and of course “More sexy pirate outfit photos” did really well, with men wanting them a lot more. Mind blowing. Maybe I can combine that with community building and contests, and make you send me sexy pirate photos of yourself! Much better than photos of me, right? …Right?
I’m saving the final open response suggestions for the next post, since this post is already getting massive enough. What do you guys think of these findings? Have any comments or hypotheses? Do you have any other things you want me to look at (if certain terms are correlated with each other, etc)? Just let me know, and I’ll crunch some more numbers! Data is fun!
Happy Darwin Day!
Happy Darwin Day, everyone! This year the Society of Non-Theists had a fairly simple event, since we have so much other stuff going on. We just had our annual Darwin Fish fundraiser selling cool evolution oriented merchandise.
We sold a lot throughout the day, and made about 150 dollars! Woot! Now we can spend even more money on pizza. And the club members rejoice.
Of course, I’m not too surprised that our fundraiser did well. It does well every year, especially since we hold it in the LILY, the biology building.
I mean, can’t you just tell that’s the biology building, with that artwork in the background? The hands of God coming out of clouds and creating the first cells is totally a biologically sound theory…right?
Regardless of artwork that annoys the biologists, it was a good day for evolution. I saw a random person wearing a Happy Birthday Darwin pin, which made me super happy. I also got to briefly teach my honors freshman class about evolution! We’re learning about mutations and selecting bacteria that can survive in certain environments, so it was somewhat relevant. The professor asked if I would explain evolution to them, since I like it so much.
I have to say, I was really impressed. Everyone already understood the basics of the theory without the misconceptions. I specifically wore my Darwin Athletic Club: Survival of the Fittest t-shirt and asked them why it wasn’t really correct, and they got it right: that strength and endurance doesn’t necessarily mean an individual is fit – it’s reproduction that matters. They also asked extra questions about epigenetics and kin selection. I was really impressed for freshmen! The intro biology class has been updated since I last took it, and is a lot more evolution heavy – looks like people are actually understanding it now!
Not sure anything can make Darwin Day better than teaching our future scientists about evolution.
Send an Atheist to Church
Next week the Society of Non-Theists at Purdue University will be having a fun charity event: Send an Atheist to Church. People will have the opportunities to raise money for charity and save our souls at the same time! How neat is that? Here’s all the relevant information, which can also be found on the Facebook event page (please spread the word!):
Thursday 2/18 & Friday 2/19
9:00 am to 4:30 pm
UNION ground floor tables (by Zia Juice & Starbucks)The main goal of this event is to come up with a creative idea to raise money for a charity that everyone can agree is very important in our community. We also want to show that non-theists are open minded about religious ideas, and that we’re willing to learn more about other people’s faith. The way it works is as follows:
1. Make a cash donation – ALL proceeds go to Food Finders Food Bank of Tippecanoe County.
2. Choose what denomination of religious services you want us atheists to attend.
3. The more money donated in a denomination’s name, the more visits it receives.Currently participating denominations include:
Baptist (Faith Baptist Church)
Episcopalian (Chapel of the Good Shepard)
Orthodox (Saint Alexis Orthodox Church)
United Methodist (Wesley Foundation)
Judaism (Purdue Hillel)
Buddhists (Purdue Buddhist Society)If you see certain religions missing from our list and you know a place of worship (in the Lafayette area) that would like to participate, please let us know before Thursday and we will ad them to the list! The more, the merrier! It doesn’t have to be a Christian denomination – “Church” is used just for a catchy title.
Inspired by Hemant Mehta‘s book, I Sold My Soul on eBay
Anyone can donate, regardless if they’re a Purdue student, a member of a participating church, etc. If you can’t physically come to make a donation during the listed times, you can also make a check out to Food Finders Food Bank (be sure to note what denomination it’s going toward!) and mail it to:
The Society of Non-Theists
Stewart Center, Box #566
128 Memorial Mall
West Lafayette, IN 47907-2034
So if you really want me to go visit the Baptist church or something, send a check! Not only will it tickle me pink because it’s going to a good cause, but you’ll get a blog post out of every church service I have to attend.
This is our first year trying out this event, so I hope it goes well. We’ve had a little trouble getting churches to participate – a couple outright said no, but most are unresponsive. Hopefully if this is successful this year and we prove this isn’t some nefarious plan to interrupt their services, more places will trust us next year. I have to say, I’m really excited. I’ve never really been to church, and I’m curious to see what it’s like.
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