I don’t really get it. Why should thinking for yourself and knowing your own beliefs depend on the support of others? The group-think of fundamentalists who depend on the reinforcement of their tribe is what we have to confront with reason. You don’t have to come out of an atheist closet to do that.

And the comparison of atheism - a way of thinking which depends on the ability to change - and homosexuality - an orientation which resists change - is specious at best.

I can understand how adolescents and young adults feel a need for emotional support, but thinking critically is always difficult and never gets easier. If they are going to form atheist groups, they had better be prepared to challenge each other’s assumptions at every turn.

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What you believe does not depend on the support of others, but, how you feel about yourself when it becomes apparent that you are not the only person to feel that way. There are also people that never really questioned the stories that they were told on their mother’s knee, and had no reason to ever get around to doing that because it seemed like everybody around them held similar beliefs. They might disagree on points of doctrine, but, nobody seems to be calling the whole project into question. Sometimes the best thing to do doesn’t benefit you personally at all, but, can be helpful to others. It isn’t always about improving your own situation.

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add ‘occasionally does’ to the end of that first sentence. Sometimes my mind outruns my fingers.

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I think the underlying message here is that humans are social creatures by nature.  Your “tribe” is whatever you believe it to be and the support of that tribe is comforting, regardless of controversie or origin of an idea.  It’s evolution.

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@ebrann: No, you truly do not get it. The point is to support atheists who are either afraid to “come out” and be who they are to the people around them, and the ones who are already “out” but who feel isolated and marginalized. The issue is not so much in support of atheism as in that of the right to be an atheist.

If you don’t understand what it is like to feel marginalized because of your beliefs, well count yourself as lucky. I do, and movements like this and Richard Dawkins’ “Out Campaign” mean a lot to me.

You say “[T]he comparison of atheism - a way of thinking which depends on the ability to change - and homosexuality - an orientation which resists change - is specious at best.” You are wrong. First of all, not all atheists had to “change”. The man who owns this very web site was not indoctrinated into religion. Some people luck out that way. The ones who don’t—like me, unfortunately—understand how homosexuals feel, because, like them, we face bigotry and discrimination. Again, if you can’t understand that, you are lucky. Or blind.

The only reason that movements like this need to exist is that theists are often bigoted ignoramuses. If atheists were not constantly derided and discriminated against, there would be no issue; no need to “come out” at all.

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Realistically a campaign as such can only work for certain people in certain parts of the world. Any individual living in the middle east as most will know would need a great deal of courage, knowing he/she could lose their life’s with such a confession.

If this idea at it’s best can just get people thinking a little further to make them take that step to openly say, “I do not believe” and to bring like minded people together, then I am for it.

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While I agree with the ethos of this “out” project because I do believe that challenging the hold of religious beliefs is necessary to bring out society forward, I’m not really sure that I think the “atheist” moniker is particularly helpful.  Theists tend to think of atheism as another belief system.  It’s not.  Nobody has to assume a label for not being an astrologer as Sam Harris is well-known for saying. 

Good for everyone for having a common rallying cry.  Sad for everyone that theists can deal with it in broad strokes by advancing propaganda against “atheism.”

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