The Scathing Atheist

by Noah Lugeons

A few weeks ago I did a diatribe about the importance of community in the atheist movement.  It was really well received and we got a number of complimentary emails from atheists around the world telling us the stories of what they were doing to help build secular communities.

After reading a few of them, it occurred to me that I could be doing a lot more.  The podcast and all it’s ancillary media provide a bit of community, but it’s only a fraction of what we could do.  To be truly effective with our message it’s going to take more than a bunch of voices singing their own tune.  Once in a while we’re going to have to be able to agree on a song and to do that, we need strong communities.

So I decided to combine my passion and a hobby I’m pretty passionate about; fantasy football.

I know that people who don’t play fantasy football probably think it’s insanely silly, but it’s something I’ve been doing for a couple of years and both Heath and I are avid players.  It’s a fun competition among friends that keeps me engaged for months at a time and has helped me cement a lot of friendships.  It’s also something that can be done entirely online between people who have never met.

Which makes it perfect for a group of atheist podcasters.

So I reached out to every atheist podcaster I knew (which is starting to be a substantial list) and a bunch of them that I don’t know to see if there was any interest in an all-secular-podcasters fantasy league.  And as it turns out, there was plenty.  It only took a few days to fill the league up with 10 people representing a half-dozen podcasts (and a secular website because one person backed out last minute).

We’ll be drafting this Sunday and I’m really excited about it.  I’ll apologize in advance to any of our readers that could not possibly give a shit about fantasy football, because I’m sure I’ll be bringing it up again.

And at the risk of being accused of name dropping, I’ll satisfy the curiosity of anyone wondering who else is playing:

• Bill will be representing Bar Room Atheists
• Carl will be representing Post Rapture Looting
• Cecil will be representing Cognitive Dissonance
• Evan will be representing The Skeptics’ Guide to the Universe
• Heath will be representing,,, us.
• Mark will be representing BeSecular.org
• Sean will also be representing Bar Room Atheists
• Thomas will be representing Thomas and the Bible

And if you noticed that there are only 8 players listed, very observant.  I didn’t list me because there’s nothing to be gained from dropping my own name.  We also have an additional player who is playing for a podcast that’s no longer in production, but I’ll be updating this as soon as I have access to her archives.