It’s not exactly a Mecca for atheists, but the American Atheists have announced their speakers for the 2014 National Convention in Salt Lake City. It looks good!
American Atheists revealed details on Wednesday about its 2014 national convention in Salt Lake City, announcing that speakers will include NFL Raiders punter Chris Kluwe, Survivor®: Philippines winner and sex therapist Denise Stapley, and Grammy®-nominated Spin Doctors bass player Mark White. The convention will also feature an art show, workshops, childcare, and a comedy show the weekend of April 17-20.
“We’re thrilled to bring so many great nontheists to our convention—some of whom have never addressed our movement before,” said American Atheists President David Silverman. “This is our 40th annual convention and it’s going to be stellar.”
Early bird tickets will go on sale Wednesday, August 7 on the American Atheists website at www.atheists.org. The convention will take place at the Hilton Salt Lake Center hotel & convention center in downtown Salt Lake City, Utah.
Salt Lake City is famous for being the seat of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, also known as the Mormon church. American Atheists chose Salt Lake City in order to better reach out to the sizable ex-Mormon population there.
“We want ex-Mormons to know that there is this entire community of people here for them,” said Public Relations Director Dave Muscato. “Often when people leave the Mormon church, they continue to base their identity in it because they don’t know any other community they can identify with. The 2014 American Atheists National Convention will be the place where ex-Mormons know that it’s okay to take that step and start saying, ‘I am an atheist.’”
Other speakers include the Reverend Barry Lynn of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, Maryam Namazie, Matt Dillahunty, Greta Christina, PZ Myers, Marsha Botzer of the Ingersoll Gender Center, Faisal Saeed al Mutar, Sikivu Hutchinson, Brian Keith Dalton also known as Mr. Deity, and Vickie Garrison.
Chris Kluwe, whom the New York Times called “The Most Interesting Man in the NFL,” is also a gaming enthusiast, author, LGBTQ equality activist, and musician. His book, Beautiful Unique Sparkleponies: On Myths, Morons, Free Speech, Football, and Assorted Absurdities, features personal essays about religion and the Pope, his family, guns, and many other topics.
Denise Stapley is the $1,000,000 grand prize winner of the 2012 CBS show Survivor®: Philippines. She is also a sex therapist and lives with her husband and 9-year-old daughter in Iowa.
Mark White is the bassist of the Grammy®-nominated alternative rock band Spin Doctors, known for their hits “Two Princes” and “Little Miss Can’t Be Wrong.” He lives in Houston, Texas where he also teaches music privately.
I’m especially happy that they’re reaching out for speakers who aren’t on the usual roster of known atheists (although the ones they’ve got are good, no complaints there!). This is how we grow. I’ll be especially interested to hear Chris Kluwe talk.
That sound you hear in the background are Mormon heads exploding.
Ironically Salt Lake City itself has a nonMormon majority. At one time the mayor was a nonMormon feminist woman.
This is due to gerrymandering and residential self selection.
The massive suburbs around SLC are more or less a 100% monoculture of the LDS.
Yeah, not even known in their own community! I live in the same town as Denise Stapley and am somewhat active in the local atheist community here; I’ve never seen her involved at all. (Then again, maybe she’s more like regular FtB commenter Ace of Sevens (also a local resident to me) and is involved more online than in meatspace.)
A lot ex-mormons in the Salt Lake area are going to be very happy about this conference. They are pressured into keeping a low profile far too often (family concerns, job concerns, etc.). It will be fun for them to have the relative protection of a larger group, and lots of press coverage.
In the meantime, here’s some news about mormons getting into the cyber attack business:
Mormons can add all the names of the atheists attending the conference to their lists for:
– proselytizing
– love bombing
– as a last resort, necrodunking after the atheists die
The origin of proxy baptizing dead people (necrodunking in ex-mo lingo) into the mormon church has a shaky history, as does much of mormon dogma:
This info was posted on another forum by Steve Benson. He excerpted the quoted material from Dan Vogel’s Religious Seekers and the Advent of Mormonism [Salt Lake City, Utah: Signature Books, 1988], pp. 162-63.
Old news.
There have been Mormon computer criminals for at least a decade.
Someone hacked my computer to get my real name. The second time, a computer forensic expert isolated the highly illegal spyware program. The weak spot is that these programs have to send their output to their installers.
In one hour, we got the location of the program’s ouput and some names. They were in Provo, Utah and I recognized one of them. A vicious Mormon criminal hacker for hire.
The Latter Day Saints aren’t very saintly.
Thinking more about my comment @2, how did American Atheists know to get her as a speaker? I don’t watch Survivor and even though I knew there was a local resident competing, I didn’t bother to watch the show. Did she perhaps say something on the show to indicate non-belief? (To be honest, I’m feeling a little out-of-the-loop right now. Interesting stuff is going on in my figurative backyard and this is how I find out about it!)
How to “date” while one is in Utah:
I picked up Kluwe’s book and flipped it open at random to a terrific (if slightly precious) little essay on not believing in God. Roughly on par with something Penn Jillette might write. I was impressed, as I was when he and his band played at Hell’s Kitchen in Minneapolis in support of marriage equality. I have to think his unusual and high-profile advocacy was at least a factor in marriage equality become a Minnesota law. I will be very interested to see what his identification with non-believers amounts to.
Someone please do a filk of Scarborough Fair.
Grayling, Marx, Spinoza and Searle.
Oh I hear this Kluwe guy always punts on the tough issues…
Slightly off topic, but wouldn’t a Mecca for atheists be missing the point?
Having a convention in the spiritual center of the LDS church might be especially useful to the image of atheists to Mormon people due to their blatantly false theological beliefs on atheism. In one of my (many) forays into the minds of religious believers I did a Book of Mormon scripture study with a friend of mine who was Mormon. Her Sunday School had filled her head with all sorts of egregious lies the worst of which was that atheists worship Satan and that we tell everyone that we deny god as a cover. Let that one sink in. That was not just one silly rogue Sunday School, either, all Sunday School lessons are standardized, everyone in the LDS church learns from the same lesson plans. American Atheists has a lot of work ahead of them in Utah.
Credit for this joke goes to ex-mormons posting on Recovery from Mormonism.
Why did Joseph Smith cross the street?
To get to the other bride.
———
Background: Joseph Smith married 34 women and girls. Scroll down to see a list here. The list also shows the ages of the women and girls at the time of marriage, as well as listing the names of the husbands of those who were already married.
Mormons are going high-tech for their proselytizing efforts. (Maybe we will be spared the door-to-door visits from 19-year-old “Elders” in the future.)
This is exciting — this is a con I could actually get to, only 8 hours or so drive. I’d be coming from SW Montana, via Idaho Falls and Pocatello. Anyone else in this goddy wasteland who wants to go?
psanity @15, You might want to post your request for persons to share a ride here:
http://exmormon.org/phorum/list.php?2
Yes, sometimes a photo can stand in for a thousand words. Here’s a photo album of mormonism in Utah. I like the photo of the sports field/playground with a sign that says no one can use the area on Sundays — it’s owned by the LDS church. Sundays being a no-fun day. http://www.slate.com/blogs/behold/2013/08/07/michael_friberg_a_look_around_the_world_of_mormonism_photos.html
In the 1970s (and some say well into the early 90s), Brigham Young University was the site of aversion therapy that sometimes included electric shocks to the genital of gays.
How is the more “enlightened” BYU environment today? Slightly better, if you consider not shocking one’s genitals, but otherwise still in the dark ages. Here’s a quote from an ex-mormon [I corrected a few spelling errors]:
Sources for the electroshock therapy sponsored by BYU in the good old days, courtesy of ex-mormon “Tahoe Girl”:
More sources that document BYU’s involvement in gay aversion therapy:
http://www.patentstorm.us/patents/6050959/fulltext.html This link documents BYU professor Dr. Robert Card’s patent application for the electroshock device.
http://exposingmormonism.blogspot.com/2008/02/thomas-s-monson-new-president.html This link document the involvement of the mormon church leadership, including the involvement of Thomas S. Monson, who is the current President/Prophet/Seer/Revelator of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.
Another link to backup the claim that mormons sponsored electroshock therapy for gays:
http://www.connellodonovan.com/abom.html#shocking
http://abcnews.go.com/Health/mormon-gay-cures-reparative-therapies-shock-today/story?id=13240700
I’m delighted this will be in my hometown next spring. I’ve been looking forward to it ever since the first news broke. It will be a big expense, but we should be able to manage it without hotels/travel expenses, saving starting now.
What I find funny is how many comments on Twitter have been concerned with liquor stores or religious anger from locals. Our liquor stores are middling in terms of inconvenience compared to other places I’ve visited in the US. (We certainly have no dry counties; that would cut into the state budget.) As for religious anger, devout Mormons are in the minority in Salt Lake.
I also find comments like Raven’s a bit misguided & definitely inaccurate:
I’ve lived more than half my life in these massive suburbs in Salt Lake County. (The remaining time was living in Salt Lake City proper.) They are not a Mormon monoculture, nor are they all-white. My neighborhood in West Valley City (the 2nd largest city in the state) has diversity in religion, ethnicity & sexual orientation.
The annual neighborhood breakfast was organized for years by a gay couple who happily organized a secular fundraiser every year alongside religious people without incident. The first person to welcome me to the neighborhood is Latino & he is a wonderful advocate to local government. There are multiple same-sex couples and gay single people living here. My representation in state government is of East Asian descent. My next door neighbor was born in Mexico City; he & his wife are ex-Mormons. Other neighbors are agnostic. There is a large mosque on the drive between my house and office. There is a new Buddhist temple by my grocery store. The nearest Catholic parish predominantly serves Latinos in the area.
There are absolutely sections of self-righteous intolerant white Mormons in & around Salt Lake, and I have more reason to be angry about them than people who don’t live here. The disproportionate influence that LDS church policies and Mormon culture has over my life through state & local government is nothing short of infuriating. But nothing is served by ignoring the actual demographics here.
We have major problems in our suburbs: abuse, racism & corruption. And I suspect they occur in similar incidence to other fucked up places in the country.
I am concerned about this kind of inaccurate sweeping statement because it’s the same kind of language that makes otherwise kind & progressive people talk about writing off the entire population of states with regressive policies as deserving the harm their legislatures cause. (Ever heard someone shortsightedly say we should just let Texas secede?) We can’t or have good reasons not to move away, so please try to help us make things better instead of writing us off as a lost cause.
Steve Benson provides a concise history of polygamy within mormon history, dogma and culture. He then goes on to document the genetic catastrophe caused by endogamous polygamy (breeding within one’s limited group).
http://exmormon.org/phorum/read.php?2,983084
Excerpts below:
In reference to the discussion up-thread about a monoculture of mormonism, yes there is some diversity in Utah, and the percentage of non-mormons is slowly increasing, (holding steady recently, but the trend over time is inching toward diversity). However, Provo, Utah (“Happy Valley” just south of Salt Lake) is 88.69 percent LDS. See http://www.bestplaces.net/religion/city/utah/provo
Overview of mormonism in Utah: http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/home3/53909710-200/population-lds-county-utah.html.csp (dated April, 2012)
Excerpt below:
Speaking of mormon monoculture, take a look at Rexburg, Idaho.
White alone – 23,151 (90.8%)
Hispanic – 1,435 (5.6%)
Two or more races – 320 (1.3%)
Asian alone – 301 (1.2%)
Black alone – 156 (0.6%)
American Indian alone – 44 (0.2%)
Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander alone – 44 (0.2%)
Other race alone – 33 (0.1%)
Percentages above are from 2010. Rexburg now has about 30,000 residents, with most of the increase coming from a larger student population at BYUI, and from babies born to mormon families.
More info here: http://www.hcn.org/issues/40.19/prophets-and-politics/print_view
To add to the discussion up-thread of Utah’s liquor laws, this excerpt is from an article in the Salt Lake Tribune, dated August 7, 2013: