Atheist holiday.

[Golbez]

I thnik the idea of an atheist holiday is terrible.

I can imagine billions of religious people who would agree with you. I would expect this and yet have little reason to consider their feelings on the matter. Can you explain what makes it terrible?

Rearwin_Day. Thanks. This is definitely something I need to start tracking and promoting. But again, I think his significance specifically supports science/evolution. I think that's a great start, but I want to broaden the theme to include the ways in which religions are bunk.

Re:religious onslaughts. Relevant, but kind of morbid for my liking. I feel like the way in which this can best appeal to on-the-fence moderates is by not overtly, or at least actively attacking the things they might hold dear. That might be too hot-button/contentious to gain their trust. So I'd personally wish for something a little more passive.

Just kind of thinking aloud here. If the idea of this is to celebrate reason/evidence/secularism, then I think something symbolic of that would be a massive evidential discovery that maybe was at odds with something the church had previously made claims against. The emphasis would simply be on the evidential breakthrough, but there could be passive undertones that we should abandon faith-based claims that have no evidence. Examples include:

*Copernicus discovering that the Earth travels around the Sun (and again by Galileo soon after that).
*The age of the universe is 14.6 billion years old.
*Galileo discovers gravity affects all objects equally (versus Aristotle's belief that the heavier object would be faster.)
*Luis Pasteur discovers the germ theory of disease, disproving spontaneous generation.
*Charles Darwin publishes On the Origin of Species.

In contrast, the church and/or many of its members believed (and might still believe) that the earth was 6000 years old, was immovable and the center of the universe, and Adam and Eve were the first humans, and that we didn't evolve.

I think examples like these show a stark contrast in support of evidence, reasoning, and science vs. dogmatic, superstitious beliefs. We could pick a date associated with case that yields the biggest contrast and most significant discovery. I'm not sure I've thought of them all, so I was hoping to compile a list of this sort, and choose from the contenders. But again, the "holiday" would support more than just the discovery. It would support all secular, rational thinking. This would just give meaning to the date to reenforce the celebration, rather than picking a random day, or a hostile one (National Day of Reason).

Other interesting discoveries:
http://listverse.com/2009/01/19/10-debun...-the-past/