I’m an atheist and I have no idea why atheists would form associations.
Are there “Not Stamp Collectors” clubs? Are there “Not Motorcyclists” clubs?
Are there stamp collector clubss that actively and publicly put down and condemn non-stamp collectors? Are there Motorcycle clubs that use the public airways to say that non-motorcyclists aren’t real Americans?
Is there legislation, bigotry, and forced proselytization for non-philatelists or non-motorcyclists?
No, you boil the “everliving Christ” out of it.
Are there stamp or motorcycle clubs attempting to strong-arm school boards into teaching about stamps and motorcycles?
Two reasons atheists would form associations:
1)Antitheist activism like this group
2)Support group. If you don’t know any “out” atheists, it’s nice to get together and no you’re not the only one who thinks like you do.
Given MEBucker’s post, I’m more sympathetic to the unblessing and don’t think it was a total waste of time.
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Sure, there’s space for groups to oppose bigotry and discrimination. OTOH, living in the headquarters city of the “Freedom From Religion Foundation”, I attended a couple of their annual conferences, and found out that they spent so much time and energy ridiculing religions that they spent hardly any time on dealing with public policy issues. So I stopped attending.
Somewhere there probably are.
Are there any organizations placing copies of Philatelist Monthly or Harley Owners Gazette in hotel/motel rooms?
This is exactly point I was trying to make above. If you think a religious group is being intolerant (which I’m not really seeing in the act of blessing a patch of asphault, but whatever) and the best way you can come up with to combat this is to subject people to public mockery for their beliefs, you’re in no position to complain about intolerance.
Well, this bunch apparently feels the need to do so.
On the other hand, if the blessing of a patch of asphalt isn’t mock-worthy, I don’t what is.
I will pray for them, that they see the light. Or the pavement.
This seems like a waste of time and likely will have a net negative effect. I think most people, theist, atheist, or agnostic, will just roll their eyes at it. The more religious people may get offended, and anyone who thinks it’s a good idea probably already agrees with them anyway. If you’re an atheist, any theistic beliefs or rites should be utterly meaningless to you and, thus, this sort of behavior seems to have the opposite effect of imbuing it with meaning.
Really, this doesn’t seem atheist or humanist as much as it seems antitheist. If they’re really a humanist society, they should be expending their effort in humanist causes and just ignore any religious motivation to do so. Why do atheists and theists feel the need to antagonize eachother? At least a theist may hope that they can save a soul or something, but atheists, if you truly believe it’s all a meaningless waste of time, stop wasting your time.
I think letting religiously oppressive crap like this pass without comment will have a net negative effect, and I think thousands of years of history back me up on that. Why don’t you go back and reread MEBuckmner’s account of what transpired, and who supported it. Ignore it and it’ll go away?
I don’t think so.
Theistic beliefs meaningless to us? Haven’t been following the Republican campaign, have you?
If the believers are right, they have a point about enforcing gods laws on us. So we need to convince them that either they are not right or there is a good chance that they aren’t right. One way is to challenge the veracity of their beliefs, but we’ve been doing that since Tom Paine and before and you get the usual crap of you can’t prove God does not exist so he must.
So I think mocking is a good additional course, especially when they do something mockable. No one should mock Unitarians, but Unitarians don’t try to keep the devil off the highway. If the response to someone saying that God doesn’t want us to use contraceptives is a belly laugh, we might have gotten somewhere.
And too bad it upsets them. Bullies hate to be laughed at.
I roll my eyes at a bunch of people doing things like this too. Unfortunately, our government in general and, it looks like, the government of Florida in particular thinks it is a great idea when the religious folks do it. One need only walk through any town in America to see eye- roll worthy religious activity but Og help anyone who actually rolls their eyes at that. If a few athiests want to get together for similar voodoo hand-waving it’s news worthy. Why is that?
I roll my eyes and applaud these goofballs at the same time.
That’s because it’s asphalt.
While they may both be equally fictitious, one is an established cultural referent, the other is a newly coined gimmick term with no clear referent*. *Ergo, different treatment.
And where was that water from 
Reminds me of the joke where scientists in the future call up God and say we can make anything now, so we don’t need you anymore. God challenges them one last time to make life from dust. The scientists get started, then God interjects by saying, ‘No you have to get your own dust’.
Okay, that does put a different spin on it.
Probably the local treatment plant.