So, I've finally joined the 21st century by buying my first ever 3G smartphone, a Motorola Droid 2. I've been getting a lot of use out of it and I'm happy with the network coverage and connection speed so far. There's also the Android Market, which lists thousands of user-developed applications you can download, everything from games and news readers to compasses and metal detectors (no kidding).

I do have one important complaint, though. There aren't nearly enough atheist-themed apps!

The Market is aswarm with Christian apps: Bible references, daily devotional readings, Christian chat rooms and bulletin boards, phone wallpapers, streaming apps for Christian radio and TV stations, and so on. But atheist- and skeptic-friendly apps are few and far between. Just about the only ones I've found are a pocket debater's guide from the anti-climate-change-denialist site Skeptical Science and an amusing quote database from FSTDT.

So, where are all the atheist app developers? Are they all iPhone users? Or do any readers know about ones I've somehow missed? We need some parity here!

• President Obama signs a law to fight British libel tourism by barring such judgments from being enforced in the U.S.

• My esteemed guest author, Sarah Braasch, has an article in the latest issue of The Humanist on the French burqa ban.

• After a scary brush with mortality, everyone's favorite squid-loving atheist professor is back in action. Visit his blog and leave some get-well-soon comments!

• Did a Catholic priest carry out an IRA bombing? And if so, did the church help cover it up and shield him from justice?

• Susan Jacoby contemplates the theodicy of the bedbug.

• And last but not least, An Apostate's Chapel has this outstanding example of the eloquence, wit and wisdom of Robert Ingersoll, written in response to a Salvation Army-organized vigil of several thousand Christians praying simultaneously for his conversion. (Spoiler: It didn't work!)

• Despite the good sense shown by the British Medical Association in lambasting homeopathy at their annual conference last month, the UK National Health Service has announced that it will still pay for water and sugar pills passed off as medicine.

• A court in Utah has thrown out the rape conviction of Mormon cult leader Warren Jeffs, due to a legal technicality, and ordered that the case be retried. Texas is still seeking to have him extradited to face similar charges, so it seems likely that he'll ultimately face justice.

• I was shocked to read of some ultra-Orthodox Israeli communities that are so extreme, they demand that their women wear burqas so as not to arouse the passions of men.

• A Liberty University graduate defends the separation of church and state.

• In more welcome news, the U.K. education secretary has said he's interested in proposals for atheist schools, after Richard Dawkins made such a proposal in response to a law allowing faith-based and community groups to open their own publicly funded schools. And why not? If every church in England has its own schools - the article mentions Anglican, Catholic, Jewish, Muslim, Sikh and Hindu - why shouldn't there be atheist schools that teach students rationality and critical thinking?

So, let it be known to all that I plan to attend the 2010 annual convention of the Freedom from Religion Foundation, which will be in Madison, Wisconsin the weekend of October 29-31. Ayaan Hirsi Ali will be the featured speaker, and since it's Halloween, I'm sure she'll have some scary stories to tell us all...

If you're an FFRF member (and if you're not, why aren't you?) and you're also planning to attend the convention, let me know - I'd be happy to meet up at some point during the weekend. If you're just a godless person who lives in or near Madison, we can probably arrange a meetup too - but see my earlier parenthesis about supporting the FFRF!

If you're a regular reader, you probably know that I got married last month. Until now, I haven't said much about the event itself on Daylight Atheism. But now that I'm back from my honeymoon (slightly sunburned, but happy!) and I've had some time to reflect, I wanted to put into words some of my thoughts on what marriage means to me, as an atheist, and explain why I chose to enter into it.

But first of all, let me address the most obvious question: Should an atheist even want to get married? Isn't marriage an intrinsically religious ceremony? After all, weddings usually take place in churches (yes, ours was in a church) and are conducted by clergy (yes, we had a minister - more on this in a minute). Doesn't that mean that a committed atheist should refuse to enter into one?

I do acknowledge that, for most of Western history, marriage has been performed in a religious context. However, I don't concede that this makes it an intrinsically religious ceremony. Rather, it's because organized religion has always tried to take exclusive possession of whole areas of human life, and proclaim that it alone owns these experiences which are common to everyone. Just so in this case: marriage is fundamentally an expression of love, and religion doesn't have a monopoly on love. Atheists seek companionship, fall in love, and pledge our commitment just as theists do. Why, then, should we not mark the occasion with a marriage ceremony? Why not take the ritual, strip out the religious trappings we don't accept, and reclaim it as a secular, human rite of passage that nonbelievers also participate in?

And that's just what my wife and I did with our wedding. We planned the ceremony to match our beliefs, keeping the traditions we accept, omitting or changing the ones we didn't. We've been attending a Unitarian Universalist church for the past year, an entirely dogma-free religion that emphasizes ethics and community and has no requirement that its members believe in God or anything supernatural. The ceremony was at Shelter Rock, a huge, gorgeous UU congregation on the north shore of Long Island, and was performed by our minister, Hope, a wonderful woman whom both of us respect deeply.

So then, back to my original question: Why did I, as an atheist, choose to get married?

First, there are the practical reasons. It sounds tactless to mention, but I'd be lying if I said I never thought of it: Marriage isn't just a religious rite, but a civil ceremony that brings considerable civil and legal benefits, including many that are impossible to obtain any other way.

Of course, these protections are held out as an incentive to couples like us, even as they're denied to gays and lesbians. That these civil benefits are denied to mature, consenting same-sex couples due to religious prejudice is something both my wife and I feel passionately is a grave injustice. That's why we chose the following passage to be read at our wedding. It's an excerpt from Goodridge v. Dept. of Public Health, the case where the Massachusetts Supreme Court ruled that it was unconstitutional to forbid marriage to same-sex couples. Even in the dispassionate language of the court, this ruling was full of poetry:

Marriage is a vital social institution. The exclusive commitment of two individuals to each other nurtures love and mutual support; it brings stability to our society. For those who choose to marry, and for their children, marriage provides an abundance of legal, financial, and social benefits. In return it imposes weighty legal, financial, and social obligations.

The union of two people is a coming together for better or for worse, hopefully enduring, and intimate to the degree of being sacred. It is an association that promotes a way of life, not causes; a harmony in living, not political faiths; a bilateral loyalty, not commercial or social projects. Yet it is an association for as noble a purpose as any.

Without question, civil marriage enhances the welfare of the community and is a social institution of the highest importance. Civil marriage is at once a deeply personal commitment to another human being and a highly public celebration of the ideals of mutuality, companionship, intimacy, fidelity, and family. Because it fulfills yearnings for security, safe haven, and a connection to our common humanity, civil marriage is an esteemed institution, and the decision whether and whom to marry is among life's momentous acts of self-definition.

But there was more to my decision than this. Although the civil benefits of marriage are non-trivial, even without them we would have gotten married anyway, and the last paragraph of that ruling hints at why.

I said that atheists feel love just like everyone else, but I want to say more than that. I believe that love is the quintessential human emotion, the one that most truly defines us, that inspires all our noblest endeavors, and that gives expression to what is best in humanity. But love, by its nature, demands to be shared. If kept secret, it stagnates into mere obsession; but if shared with others, it is multiplied. Like one candle lighting others, it spreads without diminishing its source, and brings greater joy to every person who partakes of it than any of them could have had alone.

This reasoning is both why I got married in the first place, and also why we had a ritual to mark the occasion. I believe that life's challenges are better confronted together, rather than alone, and a two-person partnership is the simplest and most stable way to accomplish that.

At the most fundamental, our marriage isn't a civil ceremony or a religious rite, but a mutual obligation, a promise given freely and in awareness of its weight and solemnity. We pledged to make our partnership an enduring one, to remain faithful and true to each other, to share our happiness and support each other in times of trouble. And it makes this pledge all the more weighty that we made it not to each other in private, but before our gathered family, friends, and loved ones. We invited them to be there because we wanted them to bear witness to our decision, but also because we wanted to share our joy with them!

My wife and I have both found much good in our partnership: we complement each other's strengths, we comfort each other in times of pain and sorrow, we challenge each other to grow and mature, and we've each found that the things we love separately are even sweeter when shared. And that, more than any other reason, is why an atheist like me got married: because when you're in love, you want to tell the world.

And it's in that spirit that I'll close out this post. We wrote our own vows for the ceremony, and if you'll forgive me, I'd like to share mine:

Dear MissCherryPi,

Before we say our vows, I want to tell you why I'm here today.

You know that there are some things I don't believe in. But today, I want to tell you about some things I do believe in.

I believe in sunrises and sunsets.

I believe in hikes in the woods and walks on the beach.

I believe in traveling the world and exploring places we've never been before.

I believe in good books, good conversation and laughing at shared jokes.

I believe in picking pumpkins in autumn, decorating the tree for Christmas and drinking champagne on New Year's.

I believe in watching fireflies on summer evenings and stargazing on dark clear nights.

I believe in all the beauty, the mystery and the wonder of life, and I believe that these joys, like all joys, are multiplied when you have someone to share them with. And I'm here because I want you to be that person.

There's no one else I'd rather spend my life with. I love your shy smile, your sweet laugh, your sense of humor, and your adventurousness. And most of all, I love the way you make me happier than I thought anyone ever could. That's why I'm here, and that's why I'm marrying you today.

On the sidebar of this site, I have listings of atheist blogs and podcasts that I like and recommend. The one thing I don't have a good list of, however, is atheist web forums. I used to post on IIDB, but no longer, and I haven't been a regular on any bulletin boards in a long time, so I don't know what's out there these days.

So, I'm posting this thread to ask for recommendations. Do you know of an atheist forum that you'd encourage everyone else to go visit? Post a URL and tell us why you like it. I'll check them out and link to the most interesting ones.

Daniel Dennett recently published a fascinating study on nonbelieving clergy: pastors and ministers from various denominations, both liberal and conservative, who've either lost their faith or hold beliefs that they know their superiors would condemn as highly unorthodox. Naturally, these people remain in the closet, often getting up before their congregations every week to preach beliefs that they no longer hold to themselves.

It's easy to condemn this as hypocritical - and indeed, one of the ministers freely applies that word to himself - but I also feel sympathy for these people. Imagine how wrenching their dilemma is: in most cases, they went into the ministry with the best of intentions, starting out sincerely believing the things they preached. But over time, and usually very much against their will, their beliefs changed. Now what can they do? Admitting their doubts and resigning would mean losing not only their current job, but giving up the prospect of every job for which they're qualified. Ministers who live in a parsonage would lose not only their job, but their home. Even more, a pastor's entire social circle tends to be within their church, so admitting how they feel could mean losing all their friends and their community. In some cases, even their wives and families aren't aware of their changed views.

What I found most interesting about the study was its glimpse into the psychological defense mechanisms used by pastors in this position. Often, they make a conscious effort to avoid spreading their doubts to others:

And I said, 'One of the fears is that I'm going to sway you, and you're going to lose your faith. If I see that happening, I'll back off.'" [p.15]

"Well, I'm not going to go on a campaign to try to convince people to become an atheist. It's my journey.... Everybody has their own journey; and this is my journey." [p.20]

Another is that most don't openly apply the word "atheist" to themselves, even when it's clear that that's what they are. Or they still prefer to use the word "God" in some manner, often just as a poetic metaphor (even while they know that their congregation will interpret it very differently).

"I think my way of being a Christian has many things in common with atheists as [Sam] Harris sees them. I am not willing to abandon the symbol 'God' in my understanding of the human and the universe. But my definition of God is very different from mainline Christian traditions yet it is within them. Just at the far left end of the bell shaped curve." [p.3]

"The difference between me and an atheist is basically this: It's not about the existence of God. It's: do we believe that there is room for the use of the word 'God' in some context? And a thoroughly consistent atheist would say, 'No. We just need to get over that word just like we need to get over concepts of race. We quit using that word, we'd be better off.' Whereas I would say I agree with that in a great many cases, but I still think the word has some value in some contexts." [p.5]

As Dennett and his coauthor, Linda LaScola, observe:

The ambiguity about who is a believer and who a nonbeliever follows inexorably from the pluralism that has been assiduously fostered by many religious leaders for a century and more: God is many different things to different people, and since we can't know if one of these conceptions is the right one, we should honor them all. This counsel of tolerance creates a gentle fog that shrouds the question of belief in God in so much indeterminacy that if asked whether they believed in God, many people could sincerely say that they don't know what they are being asked. [p.2]

I think all these traits - the reluctance to persuade others, the desire to keep using the word "God" symbolically - are an artifact of a time before the atheist movement. Many of these pastors, even though they're nonbelievers, seem to still believe at some level that atheism is a bad or blameworthy position, which is why they try so hard to avoid spreading their doubts to other people they know. And without a philosophical and social framework to claim as their own, they express themselves by using the language they've always been taught, since that's what makes them most comfortable.

As part of expanding the secular community, I think we in the atheist movement should offer a safe harbor for these people. If we can provide a more fitting social and philosophical context for them to define themselves in terms of, they'll be more comfortable calling themselves what they are and not clinging to empty god-talk. And if we can make it financially possible for them to walk away from religion, they'll have more incentive to be honest with themselves and their congregations. There are already niches like this - running a secular community center, working for an atheist-themed charity, writing books that defend freethought views, or lobbying on behalf of secular groups - and as the atheist movement expands, there will be more. In many cases, these former pastors will have organizational and rhetorical skills that we need, so this will be a win-win deal. Just look at how much good it's done us to have people like Dan Barker!

For the holiday season, some goodies this weekend:

• First up, some music for the season: the blogger Lirone, of Words That Sing, in collaboration with William Morris, composer in residence at the British Humanist Association (did you know the British Humanist Association had a composer in residence? me neither!), has written a humanist carol, Gathering Round the Fire. It's 99 cents on iTunes, and all profits will go to the BHA. I downloaded and listened to it, and I enjoyed it greatly. Check it out, support a good cause, and lend a little bit of humanist cheer to your holiday gathering!

• Next, CNN has a surprisingly sympathetic interview with Richard Dawkins on evolution and atheist advocacy.

• The Daily Mail's Andrew Alexander offers a "heartfelt plea for atheism", an eloquent essay only slightly marred by an ignorant passage about climate change.

• Hanna Rosin asks whether the prosperity gospel contributed to the economic crash.

• On Daily Kos, it's a shameful day for the Irish Catholic Church, as a long-awaited report is released about the complicity of the bishops in sex abuse by predator priests.

• And finally, from Time, an unsparing essay about the subjugation and abuse of women in Islamic countries. (Did you know a Saudi Arabian woman has no legal proof of her existence besides her name on her husband's ID card? I didn't.) This is the kind of thing that the New Atheists get called "shrill" and "strident" when we write.

Also, you may have noticed that posts on Daylight Atheism are now classified by tag in addition to the six major categories (also, there's a tag cloud). I implemented this as a result of suggestions in the reader feedback thread, and I've been working my way backwards tagging older posts. Before I go further with that, I'm interested if people have any opinions on it. Too many tags? Too few? Are some missing that you'd like to see included? Personally, I'm still considering whether to add the "Science" tag to the posts on Lee Strobel.

Although there's been plenty of good news for atheists in recent weeks, stories that showcase our growing influence and assertiveness, this is no time for us to become complacent. We still have significant work to do to shore up the foundations of our movement, as this Times op-ed by Charles M. Blow explains:

...a study entitled "Faith in Flux" issued this week by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life questioned nearly 3,000 people and found that most children raised unaffiliated with a religion later chose to join one.

That Pew study, here, confirms earlier work such as the ARIS in finding that the nonreligious continue to be one of America's fastest-growing demographics. It also notes that the vast majority, 79%, of the nonreligious were raised in a religion and later left, as opposed to being brought up with no religion, and most of those people explained their decision by stating that they did not believe or could not accept the teachings of their church. Interestingly, a majority of former Catholics say that they left Catholicism because they disagreed with its teachings on abortion, homosexuality and birth control, which confirms my earlier prediction that the Catholic church's archaic moral dogmas are a major factor in its continuing decline.

However, Blow points to another important finding: Many people who were raised nonreligious do not stay that way. Of those who were raised nonreligious (which, again, is just a small minority of the nonreligious as a whole), substantial percentages have since joined some religion, with the majority going to Christian faiths. Most of these people explain this decision by saying that their spiritual needs were not being met, or as Blow puts it:

As the nonreligious movement picks up steam, it needs to do a better job of appealing to the ethereal part of our human exceptionalism - that wondrous, precious part where logic and reason hold little purchase, where love and compassion reign. It's the part that fears loneliness, craves companionship and needs affirmation and fellowship.

As the Pew findings show, the heart of religion is community. Most of the formerly unaffiliated joined a religion not because they preferred its moral teachings (only 26% said that), but because they enjoyed the social and communal aspects: participating in worship services, interacting with other members, and taking part in rituals for major life events such as marriage.

Atheists can draw some important lessons from these findings. First of all, there's reason for optimism: we're still growing, and doing so at the expense of traditional religions. We're making significant inroads among people who have rational or moral objections to the teachings of their church, which shows that our rhetorical campaign against religion is having an effect. This gives the lie to those who complain that we're being "disrespectful". And best of all, we're growing by leaps and bounds among the younger generation.

But at the same time, we have a lot of work left to do. We've done a lot of good in creating a beachhead for atheism, making our voices heard where they were previously passed over and giving an airing to the arguments against religion. What we need to do now is supplement those efforts by creating a secular community - a set of institutions that provide the social grounding and sense of belonging that people usually associate with religion. We're not doing anything wrong; plenty of people are already hard at work on this. But we need to do more, to make further progress along the way we've already started taking.

As well, I think we ought to redouble our efforts to make the case for atheism more widely known. I suspect that many of the unaffiliated, rather than hardcore atheists or freethinkers, simply grew up without thinking much about religion. As a result, they were blindsided when they heard evangelists' apologetics for the first time and ended up being drawn in. We need to do more to equip people with a toolkit of answers to common theist arguments, and to distribute this freethought vaccine as widely as possible, to ensure that the nonreligious will not be taken off guard in their first encounter with proselytizers.

To strengthen the atheist movement and expand the secular community, our strategy must be twofold. We need to hold and build, keeping the allegiance of people who've already come over to our side, while creating the institutions that will be ready to receive the future wave of freethinkers we can confidently expect. Debunking religion continues to be an effective strategy, but for atheism to truly expand and become influential in its own right, we still need to offer positive, appealing vision of what life can be like when free of superstition.

If you're an American freethinker who's envious of the success of the atheist bus campaign in Europe, this is your chance. The Freedom from Religion Foundation is launching its own campaign to put pro-atheist messages on buses and trains in America, with six ads already designed that feature quotes from famous freethinkers both historical and modern. The ads are already up on buses in Madison, and if enough donations come in, the FFRF plans to take the campaign to major cities like New York.

If we're going to counter the outsized influence of religious interests in politics and popular culture, we need to fight back and speak out, and with this campaign, you can help. The FFRF has done fantastic work, both defending church-state separation in court and promoting atheism in the media, and they deserve our support. Donate today - even just a few dollars, if that's all you can afford - and help bring this message of freethought to cities across America! You can even vote on what the ads should say.

With all that said, I want to add a few words about what our media strategy should be, and what we can hope these ads will accomplish. There are many people, especially religious fundamentalists, who haven't grasped what atheists are setting out to achieve. Their lack of comprehension can clearly be seen in the pro-religion response ads that have run in several cities where atheist messages have aired:

Three separate pro-God advert campaigns on the sides of London buses are set to hit city streets.

Buses adorned with the slogan "There definitely is a God" are from the Christian Party, while the Trinitarian Bible Society chose a Biblical verse.

In response to the arrival in Calgary of an international bus ad campaign questioning the existence of God, local pro-religion forces have raised about $12,000 to buy ads on eight Calgary Transit buses and two transit trains. The ads, which will start appearing Monday, will read, "God cares for everyone... even for those who say He doesn't exist."

Two Christian-based groups have purchased advertisements with Washington D.C. Metro buses to counter the atheist "Why Believe in a God?" bus campaign with their own pro-God Christmas ads.

...The pro-God ads will read: "Why Believe? Because I created you and I love you, for goodness' sake - GOD."

Clearly, these religious groups assume that persuasion is merely a matter of who can speak at greater volume. If they can "balance" atheist ads with an equal number of theist ads, the thinking goes, they will cancel out any impact of the former and ensure that the atheist ad campaign doesn't make any converts.

With traditional ad campaigns this might make sense, but it's the wrong paradigm to use here. As I wrote in my post about the 2008 ARIS, the number of Americans who self-identify as atheist or agnostic has more than doubled, to 3.6 million, since 1990. But the number of Americans who are atheists, based on their stated beliefs, is far higher - as high as 12% of Americans, over 36 million people.

What this shows is that there's still a broad gap - tens of millions of Americans - who agree with our position, but haven't taken the step of formally declaring themselves atheists, much less joining a group like the FFRF. It is these people whom we can expect to reach with these ads. For nonbelievers who thought they were alone in the world, we can show them that there is a community that shares their views; for people who doubt religion but are wary of atheism because of the negative stereotypes spread about us, we can persuade them that being an atheist can be a positive and praiseworthy decision. Our primary goal, at least in this stage, shouldn't be to convert the religious, but to unite nonbelievers and to bring all the loose and drifting atheists into the fold. These people are eminently reachable, and if we can reach all or even most of them, we'll have a formidable platform from which to further promote our message.

By contrast, I doubt the pro-theism bus ads will accomplish much. Our culture is saturated with religion, and it's safe to assume that anyone who wants to join a church has already done so. They, unlike us, do not have low-hanging fruit to reach. Their presence is abundantly obvious; if they want to spend yet more money broadcasting it, let them go ahead! We can get on with the important work of building a secular community while they train their fire on the wrong target.