Is anyone involved in a local atheist group?

[Mudhammam]

What's it like? How often do you meet? What kinds of things do you discuss/do?

I did a little research around my area but only saw one group like that. Looked like they met once a month. I'm curious about attending something like that, but I also would like a better idea about what it is atheist/secular humanist groups do.

[Chad32]

Unfortunately I don't know of any atheist groups where I live.

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

I have six friends who are atheists, they all live near me, and we get together and play poker on a rather irregular schedule. Not sure if that qualifies.

Boru

[Chad32]

That would just be a local group of atheists. An atheist group would likely be a group whose purpose is to spread knowledge of atheism and support other atheists.

[vorlon13]

The Unitarians would accept atheists with open arms.

And not proselytize to accept Jeebus . .

[Thumpalumpacus]

I'm not interested enough to have looked into it.

[Faith No More]

The area I live in is quite conservative and religious, so when I looked into it, the closest I could find was a two hour drive.

[naimless]

i got banned cause i kept rubbin ma wang on expensive thangz

[Elskidor]

My only groups are here, TTA, and I joined a couple on FB until I remembered why I hate FB and quit. I seriously doubt there are local live groups where I live.

[thesummerqueen]

I'm the VP of my local atheist group. We're 11 years old this August, I believe.

Originally the group started out as a social gathering. Currently, we also participate in street cleans for the street we adopted, we run charity fundraisers - most recently for the only secular AA group in our locality - and various other volunteer efforts. We keep our members busy with side items - like book clubs and goofy holiday celebrations. Three years ago I started a tradition of going to brunch for Darwin's birthday and all of us wearing weird hats. Recently some of us participated in a 5k whose proceeds went to a non-profit which has donated hundreds of thousands to women's shelters and anti-abuse campaigns. We have our annual summer picnic on Sunday. We'll have a booth at Pride Charlotte and we're hoping to march in the parade this year. We organize speaker series - we've had several people out to give talks, including Hemant Mehta, Greta Christina, and Seth Andrews (I didn't get to meet Greta, but Hemant and Seth really are palpably nice people.)

We discuss just about everything. Whatever we feel like. Some people like philosophy and they go off and talk about that. Some of us are obsessed with Skyrim and gaming in general, and we talk about that. Some of us also like beer - we have several home brewers - and we do a lot of drinking AND talking. It's like having a forum in real life.

I really care about this group because I had NO ONE when I moved down beyond my ex's family. I was so lonely for a very long time - lonely enough that I didn't even realize quite how bad it was. Having a safety net of people who cared about me just because I seemed nice and needed a friend was one of the factors that helped turn things around for me during a rather depressed part of my life. I met my boyfriend there. We have several very good friends out of that group.

The group also participated at the DNC a couple years ago, giving speeches about the separation of church and state. Dave Silverman (American Atheists) was there and I got to meet him. We try to keep our thumbs in the community to let people know we're here and ready to help and that we don't eat babies.