Indiana News: Religious skeptics believe their voices will be heard

[Synnical]

http://www.indystar.com/article/20090912/LOCAL/909120367/1007/LIVING/Religious+skeptics+believe+their+voices+will+be+heard

Nice, long article, see link to read in its entirety.

Spirited secularists hosting seminar reach out to the unaffiliated

City buses in Bloomington and South Bend carry ads telling passengers "You can be good without God."

A billboard going up on Indianapolis' Northside will ask commuters to "Imagine No Religion."

And a local group of atheists, agnostics, secular humanists and others is hosting "Religion Under Examination," a three-day conference this weekend seeking to show the Bible and the Quran, Islam's holy text, are fiction.

. . . .

"I get the impression that they have just sort of had enough of the Taliban and Jerry Falwell and people like that saying, 'I've got the word of God in my pocket, and you better do this and not that or you are going to hell," said Robert M. Price, a former fellow with the Jesus Seminar who will speak at the conference.

. . . .

About 15 percent responded "none" when the American Religious Identification Survey asked people in 2008, "What is your religion, if any?" That's nearly twice the number who gave the same answer in 2001.

It is the "nones" whom the Center for Inquiry is trying to reach by increasing its visibility.

. . . .

It is enough for Dan Barker, a former minister and co-president of the Freedom From Religion Foundation, to envision an America that looks much different from today's. With the help of a local anonymous donor, his group bought billboard space on North Keystone Avenue, near 52nd Street, for an ad featuring a stained glass window and the words "Imagine No Religion."

He can.

"It kind of looks like what happened in Europe after centuries of devout religion and religious wars. It just sort of organically, naturally became secular without any concentrated effort," he said. "They have these gorgeous but empty churches all over the place, sort of artifacts of a bygone era. We think that is happening here."

Join CFI Indiana & the IUPUI Freethinkers for a
special session of the CFI Institute!

September 11-13, 2009

Center for Inquiry Indiana, 350 Canal Walk, Suite A, and
IUPUI Campus Center, 401 University Blvd.
Indianapolis, IN 46202

http://ga1.org/center_for_inquiry/notice-description.tcl?newsletter_id=26179663

-Cindy in Fort Lauderdale