I've known for a while now that the Atheist community in Michigan has been far too quiet. This recent turn of events just goes to prove my point:
Richard Dawkins was barred from a planned
speaking engagement for being an atheist. Apparently, the country club in Rochester Hills where he was going to speak discovered his lack of belief at the last minute and stated that they wanted nothing to do with him. Their source of information? Fox News.
They may not be as loud and proud as the wingnuts in Texas or Kansas, but there are definitely pockets of religious nuts of all stripes in my home state of Michigan. The difference between here and Texas is that there, they have the likes of Matt Dillahunty and Aron Ra to oppose the champions of wingnuttery. Michigan really is not a bright light on the map as far as the movement is concerned. This needs to change.
Clearly, if an intelligent, eloquent and well qualified scholar is barred from a scheduled lecture because of his atheism, we have problem.
One thing I am glad for, however, is the fact that not all hope is lost here for Professor Dawkins. He'll be doing a book reading on Saturday:
I'm happy to say that I'll be there volunteering for the U of M Secular Student Alliance. My hope is that we'll be able to give RD a much warmer welcome and become more aware of the fact that we as an secular group need to become more active so that things like this incident don't happen again.
