DangerousTalkDangerous Talk » Atheist Support Network

Atheist Support Network

Posted on November 18th, 2010 by Staks

Unlike Christians, atheists have no support network. If an atheist is suffering emotional, financial, or even physical distress, they have no one to turn to. Christians on the other hand can go to any church and get help. We need to start building an atheist support network.

Earlier this week, the President of the Freethought Society gave a speech. In part of the speech, Margaret Downey talked about how when she was young, her family was poor and her mother changed religious based on what they needed. If the Baptists were giving out food, her family was Baptist. If the Methodists were giving away clothing, her family was Methodist, etc.

Now I am not expecting the atheist community to use food and clothing to de-convert people like Christians use charity to convert people, but I do think that we should have a support network to help out other atheists.

Every time I bring up this issue I get people telling me that the only thing atheists have in common with each other is a disbelief in deities. This may or may not be the case, but it has nothing to do with the issue at hand. We can be the lone wolves if we choose, but the Christian pack will destroy us. It is more reasonable to band together and help each other when we can.

Earlier this week, an atheist online friend of mine sent out a message about someone in the atheist community who had lost his job and had his ex-wife and still close friend kill herself. So aside from the emotional distress, he was left to pay for her funeral arrangements and is now in desperate need of money to help him keep his home.

Now as a community we should all help him. Even though I lost my job in 2009 and am strapped for cash these days, I realized that I still could donate a little bit to help someone else in the greater atheist community. I’m not asking you to help out this one person necessarily, but I am asking you to start helping out other atheists (whether it is Jeff Randell or someone else) that need help. We need to support each other. We need to really start building a community and an atheist network of support.

This isn’t going to happen overnight, but we need it to happen. If we are going to get more people to leave religion, we need to have a community (similar to Church) to fill those functions for those people who need the community services that Church provides.

And now for my shameless plug: Support The Spread of Reason