Alt.atheism

alt.atheism is a Usenet newsgroup within the alt.*hierarchy that discusses atheism.

Discussion matter

According to the alt.atheism FAQ, the purpose of the group is to discuss atheism and atheist topics such as the following:

*Whether it is reasonable to pretend to be religious in order to avoid upsetting your family
*School prayer
*Discrimination against atheists
*Blue laws
*The Satanic ritual abuse of children myth
*Whether you should be an overt atheist or 'stay in the closet'
*How religious societies prey on new college students
*How to get rid of unwanted proselytizers
*Whether religion is a danger to society and/or the individual
*Why people become atheists

There are five other Usenet newsgroups loosely associated with alt.atheism:
*alt.atheism.holysmoke
*alt.atheism.moderated
*alt.atheism.illogical-fuckwits
*alt.atheism.satire
*(the misspelled) sic|alt.athiesm

Of the groups, alt.atheism sees the greater share of message traffic; alt.atheism.moderated appears to have been abandoned.

Opponents

The group receives a lot of trolling from Christian fundamentalists, and occasionally from members of other religions. One way that the group deals with these is to employ satire, such as worshipping the "Invisible Pink Unicorn" or the "Flying Spaghetti Monster", and openly discussing the "Evil Atheist Conspiracy", all of which have entered popular culture. Since 2002 there are also many political flame wars, usually cross-posted with other Usenet groups. Because of these factors, alt.atheism has long been one of the most active discussion newsgroups in the USENET hierarchy.

Alt.atheism numbers

A Christian fundamentalist once claimed that only a few actual atheists posted to and/or read the newsgroup. In response, a voluntary numbering system was formed. As of this revision, there are over 2300 atheists or agnostics that have applied for such a number.

External links

* [http://groups.google.com/group/alt.atheism/topics alt.atheism on google groups]
* [http://www.alt-atheism.org/ alt.atheism newsgroup website]
* [http://web.archive.org/web/20050227001657/alt-atheism.org/article_view.php?c=&id=1 alt.atheism FAQ] as sourced by the Internet Archive on February 11, 2005.