{"id":2794,"date":"2012-03-05T10:57:52","date_gmt":"2012-03-05T15:57:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.dangeroustalk.net\/?p=2794"},"modified":"2012-03-05T11:00:32","modified_gmt":"2012-03-05T16:00:32","slug":"taking-the-message-to-where-it-matters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.dangeroustalk.net\/?p=2794","title":{"rendered":"Taking the Message to Where It Matters"},"content":{"rendered":"

The audience of Dangerous Talk is almost always my fellow atheists with the occasional Christian or other fundamentalist believer. My Examiner articles<\/a> get a more diverse mix of people. Religious believers often read and comment on my articles there. But I want to reach out to more religious believers than I get through Examiner<\/a>.<\/p>\n

For a while now I have been trying to get published on Huffington Post for this purpose. While there is certainly no shortage of atheist comments on their articles, there are very few atheist articles on there and yet their primary audience is liberal religious believers with a few fundamentalists mixed in.<\/p>\n

One of the editors of the religion section of Huff Post told me that, \u201cWe don’t have many atheists who write on huffpost religion because most of them tear down other people’s beliefs and that is not what huffpost religion is about (we also don’t have Christians who tear down Jewish beliefs etc.)\u201d I had to call him out on this, so I wrote back, \u201cI want to point out that there have been a great many articles in the Religion Section usually written by Rabbis which primary function has been to tear down atheists. If you would like a short list, I can certainly provide that.\u201d Indeed, just today an article from a Rabbi was published<\/a> attacking atheism.<\/p>\n

Still, I submitted an article that didn\u2019t criticize religion. My article on atheists being spiritual<\/a> was accepted. Now I need your help. I need to you follow me on Huffington Post, spread my article, and comment on it there. I know a lot of my readers don\u2019t like the term \u201cspiritual\u201d and I understand that. But it isn\u2019t about the word, it is about the experience. More importantly, it is about getting me established there so that I can be more vocal down the road. This article is just my foot in the door.<\/p>\n

If my article does well I will be able to post new articles there. At first, they will be sanitized to accommodate religious sensibilities. I hope to publish articles that are supportive of the greater community of reason rather than criticize the ridiculous ideas of religion at first. The idea is to let liberal religious believers see what kind of people we are and to remind them that we exist. In time, I will be more vocal in my criticism of ridiculous religious ideas as my popularity as a contributor rises. Hopefully in my next piece there, I will add some minor criticisms of ridiculous ideas.<\/p>\n

Currently, there are a few other atheists on there, but they seem to be mostly from the extremely accominationalist camp like Alain deBotton<\/a>. So I am hopeful I can start to change that tone over time with your help.<\/p>\n

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