A Quote For Atheist to consider :

[Whateverist]

I'm not sure why some folks don't think you have any business here. Without you .. what else is there to do here? Preach to the choir? Congratulate ourselves. Vent against institutions and individuals that tried to impose a medieval mindset on us when we were young and vulnerable. <rest cut>

There is also organising your defence against those that say that "atheists should not even be citizens of the USA" (such as GW Bush). And with people like that who would take power and strip atheists of their basic citizenship rights, and people like Sarah Palin who only feel that Americans even have rights, us poor pagans are just f----d.

On a different atheist forum, my wife, who actually is an atheist, not a person who just happens to be on the same side of the fence most of the time like me, is holding forth against someone who is insisting on the "Christian values of our nation," and why the "Arab spring" people shouldn't be allowed democracy because they are not "civilised" and do not have an "education in democratic institutions" (like our nation did when it was a colonial dominion of the UK, or Turkey after the fall of the Ottoman Empire after WWI, or Spain's dispatching of fascism after the death of Franco, ad nauseum.)

James

We live in weird times and in a country I am often not proud of. Hopefully there will not be witch trials to root us out. Thank god (pun intended) for the establishment clause. It is a political reality that no one who openly espouses atheism will get elected to a prominent public office in the US in the foreseeable future. Unfortunately I don't think rational arguments are going to change many minds. Having grown up during segregation and having seen women's rights and gay rights win more general acceptance, I'm actually hopeful that, in time, religious bigotry may also go out of fashion to some extent.

Any how, you're right. I hadn't thought about political activism as a use for the forum.