Southern Perspective

Hello Lana -

I'm sorry you haven't gotten any other responses to your post: I think it's important for atheists around the country to exchange information with each other to get an accurate perspective of the national religious climate.

I was born and raised on Long Island, NY and moved to NYC after college in Virginia. I lived in Manhattan for 10 years, then moved to Orlando, FL 4 years ago. I was very surprised with the level of religiosity in public life here in Florida. Never before had I seen business functions opened with an "invocation", or had so many people invite me to their church. When I first moved here, the first question everyone asked is whether I had joined a church yet. My experience in New York had been to have religion treated as a personal matter, not worn on one's sleeve. That might be because there are more Catholics in NY: they tend to proselytize less than Evangelicals, who are more numerous down here.

I eventually joined an atheist group here, which I would never have done in New York. I'm moving back to NYC next week - I look forward to attending an atheist meeting there and comparing notes. Please post more about your experiences in Tennessee. I think you're very brave!

I'm sorry I didn't see Lana's message before. Life is very different in the New York City area. I belong to the NYC Atheists and the Secular Humanist Society of New York and a lot of groups which are science-oriented (not limited to people who are professional scientists!) There are also discussion groups among people who are raising children in a humanistic, rational environment. What you would find here are a lot of friendly people, comfortable with being what I would call naturalists, rather than looking for imaginary supernatural explanations of things. Most people I've met consider themselves agnostic, nontheists, humanists, naturalists and they apparently take it so for granted that they don't even see the need to join a group like this. In your case, searching for freethinker groups is an excellent idea so you won't be so isolated. There is a New Jersey Humanist Group which has developed lovely programs for adults and children built around secular rituals in place of religious holidays. You might check them out for ideas. I do a little tv program on a public access channel MNN in NYC. Those of us living just outside of Manhattan can get it in live-streaming video (kind-of low tech that they're trying to improve.), MNN.org at 7:30pm every Thursday night. For the next week or so they're running presentations authors gave to the NYC Atheist groups, but then they'll go back to my regular stuff, which is discussing the ideas of a book in detail. It's full of interesting stuff. Stay in touch.!

Meetup.com is blocked at my office, so sorry for the late response. I was born in NYC and lived in the area until 1990. From 1990-2005 I lived, for the most part, in the deep south. The last 10 years of that I was in west central Louisiana in a "city" that has the most churches per capita in the US. I have been back in NY (Long Island) since late 2005. It is much easier being an atheist in NY. An atheist in the the south is constantly bombarded by religious zombies every waking moment, many times in small towns where just about "everybody knows everybody." Lack of education is actually championed by many as a sign of superiority! The tolerance level I have experienced in NY is much higher even though it is non-existent is some circles. I actually had my car defaced in a government parking lot because of my richarddawkins.com bumper sticker (please don't start on a bumper sticker vs. no bumper sticker tirade - I have my reasons). This is nothing compared to the treatment I received in the south when I decorated my back windshield with the motto "No god, no master". My advice to Lana is, if possible, move. The LBGT community does it with great success. Your life is there to be enjoyed, not to defend it at every turn.

There's a big atheist / humanist / secular community here, too many activities for any one person to keep up with. Most people, however, are unwilling to come, declaring oneself and atheist, or even showing up at a meeting, is too intense for most people.

Conservatives are the ones who are outnumbered here. I wonder why Ann Coulter chooses to live in this city?

Most of my friends here in NYC are nonreligious. I'd even call them atheist, but few call themselves that and none are interested in joining or hanging out with secular organizations of any kind, unless that's where I met them in the first place.

This is a very secular and diverse city, and it's very easy to live without religion in our lives. It can it be hard to pick from competing freethinkers groups' offerings. It can be even harder to commit to even a single group's activities when there are several competing events on the same night, the entertainment any big city offers.

We take that for granted here. Sometimes I think we'd support freethought groups more, and depend on them for more, if we lived in the Bible Belt.

Politically, I find more conservative people in atheist groups than I do in humanist groups. As a relatively lefty liberal, I have more in common with most humanists' politics. But I don't share humanism's enthusiasm for explicitly positivist philosophy. I'm also more critical of religion/religious behavior than many humanists. The "nontheistic" churches of Ethical Culture or Unitarianism have many goals in common with secularists, but their members enjoy creating so-called spiritual environments. That only works for me in yoga, where the chants are incomprehensible to me and where I enjoy the strengthening and meditative exercises without taking seriously the superstitions about bodily energy.

NYC is lucky to have many organizational options for heretics. I don't know much about southern cities, but if I was living somewhere with just one option, I'd support it even if it didn't match my own ideas that closely. I'd be unhappy if the best or only social or charitable outlets were limited to religious groups.

I'm a member of the New York Atheist, and I'm the assistant organizer for the Tulsa Atheist meetup. I split my time between NYC and Tulsa. I feel I can say that without a doubt there is a difference in a 'Southern' Atheist and a 'Northern Atheist'. In the North, Atheist are treated with more equality than an atheist from the South. Like the person who wrote he/she had a bumper sticker on there car promoting Richard Dawkins, I too have a couple of Atheist bumper stickers on my vehicle in Tulsa. Fortunately no one has vandalized my vehicle, and I have been trying to get the members of the Tulsa Atheist to add a bumper sticker promoting Atheism to their cars, but fear of the Christians will not let them.
I find this to be sad. And very un-american for anyone to live in fear of persecution for their personal belief's and the expression of it. But that is how life is in the South. We've always had double standards and the powers that be will always allow double standards because the people vote en-mass for those kind of politicians.
Until Atheist in the South speak up -or to use the Gay community's call; 'Act Up', the ignorant will never know we are here, we've always been here, we're your neighbors, your teachers, your coaches, your friends.
We MUST speak up and BE SEEN in order to be recognized.