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Blair Scott is the Affiliate Director for American Atheists, an organization founded in 1963 by Madalyn Murray O’Hair to fight for separation of Church and State and equal rights for Atheists in the US. He is also the Alabama State Director for American Atheists. Blair’s activism in the Freethought movement is not limited to his work with AA. He is also the Press Relations Director of the North Alabama Freethought Association, and has been a prominent figure in Alabama Freethought circles since he founded the organization in 2002. He uses the internet extremely effectively as a promotion tool, through social media such as facebook, twitter and myspace, as well as through his own website, alabamaatheist.org. Blair has been one of the most vocal Atheist activists in America and is widely recognized for his work in promoting Atheist and Freethought causes both online and off.

This interview covers everything from Blair’s early brush with religion and his experiences as an atheist in the US navy, to his current work in Atheist activism and his multi-dimensional approach towards promoting freethought. Blair Scott’s experience in Atheist PR makes him a valuable source of information for our quest to promote Freethought in India.

Nirmukta Radio is a production of Nirmukta.com. The host is Ajita Kamal and the music is Te Laudant by Cryptocrat

While it is not very difficult to be theoretical about one being or not being a Hindu, for those of us who are out in the field, sometimes faced by an audience of thousands, questions do get asked about what we are doing and/or whether we are the narrow end of the wedge being used by the missionaries to convert people to their religions. There are queries as to when we question the miracles and/or the articles of faith  of Hindus- which is not very difficult to do- and make them lose their faith, if there will be a spiritual vacuum into which the Christian missionaries would step into and convert the lot to their faith. While this would seem to be totally illogical to anyone who has an idea of what our movement is, it is also a fact that most of the audience does not know anything about our movement except the programs which are conducted for the public-generally the miracle exposure programs. So, this most popular face of the movement get projected as the only face of the movement visible to the people. Read the full story

(Editor’s note: The author of this article, Malgorzata Koraszewska, is associated with the Polish rationalist website Racjonalista.pl. According to the site, “RACJONALISTA.pl is currently the biggest center for publicizing free-thinkers and rationalists in Poland“. We are pleased to hear about the growing rationalism movement in Poland, and to publish Malgorzata’s report on a recent atheist event in Krakow.)

In the town of Krakow in southern Poland a few young people decided that just because in this country they are not allowed to ride on a bus with the slogan “There Is Probably No God”, it is not reason enough to not go by foot. They threw a call into cyberspace and asked the authorities for permission to go along a certain route through the town over which the spiritual power had been, once upon a time, in the hands of Karol Wojtyla, later known as Pope John Paul II. Read the full story

The Atheist Foundation of Australia, along with Atheist Alliance International, have announced a major upcoming convention for atheists from around the world. This will very likely be the biggest convention of it’s kind in the history of the atheism movement. Herding cats, once again, is the hardest thing ever.

The convention themed The Rise of Atheism, is being promoted as the 2010 Global Atheist Convention and will take place from the 12^th to the 14_^th of March in Melbourne, Australia.

According to Kristy Vensson, media and communications director for the event, the organizers are expecting nearly 3000 delegates. To register for the event, tickets can be purchased at the website.

The speakers include an impressive list of names: Richard Dawkins, Taslima Nasrin, Peter Singer, PZ Myers, Dan Barker, Stuart Bechman and many more.

The site proudly proclaims:

The 2010 Global Atheist Convention will be the biggest ever atheist event in Australia’s history.

Global co-operation between atheists is not new, but the scale of this event makes this very exciting. I, for one, wish I could attend!

I come from a Hindu Brahmin family and have had a moderately religious upbringing. As a kid I remember praying to god daily after having a bath, and here pops up the very first question I used to ask as kid….why should I pray only after having a bath? Why can’t I pray before even brushing my teeth? or immediately after I come back from play when I’m sweating and muddy? I remember doing ‘sandhya vandana‘ after my ‘upanayanam‘ once or twice. To this day I do not know what ‘gayatri mantra‘ means and why women are not supposed to chant it. And if women are not supposed to chant it how is it that T-Series makes a killing out of it by making Anuradha Paudwal sing it? Read the full story

Jan 5th, 2009.

Vijayawada, India.

The seventh World Atheist Conference began today in Vijayawada, India., and will end on Wednesday, the 7^th of January.

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This article first appeared here.

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