I’m off to the Freethought Alliance Conference in Irvine, CA this weekend, so I’ll be a little slow with blog posts for a few days.
This should be an interesting event, with a Who’s Who of atheist speakers—Michael Shermer, Robert Price, Phil Zuckerman, Aron Ra, Richard Carrier, Brian Dunning, Mr. Deity, Dan Barker, Eddie Tabash, and others. I’d like to put copies of my book into the hands of some of these speakers. I’m sure that most won’t read it, but I want to add to my collection of positive reviews and hope that this increases the chance that someone will open doors for the book.
As an aside, has anyone noticed that there are more atheist/freethought conferences lately? I’m fairly new to this game—the first conference that I attended in this category was The Amazing Meeting 2 in 2004. But this could simply be my being more aware of them. Let me know if you sense that conferences have changed in the last decade, either on the freethought side or the Christian side.
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Galileo Unchained 
The Internet is our ally.. When http://www.meetup.com came along (and now FB) was the first I noticed atheists meeting in small real people groups with faces I’ve never seen before. I don’t remember yagoogroups leading to more real life meetings).. My guess is the interner, with ll the atheist groups and blogs reached critical mass by the time FB and meetup came along..
For 20 years before this all I remember is the same 2 local groups, and the UU.. And the freethought newspaper, CODESH, and a few other national groups..
I believe the Internet is bringing atheists/freethinkers out of the woodwork so the speak..
It’ll be fascinating watching this from a longer time scale. Your point makes sense that the internet is enabling connections between atheists. My own view is that the startling rise in the Nones (“none of the above”) is not because people are rejecting Christianity much more but that these are closeted Nones who feel that they must pass in society as Christians.
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