“A” Week on Facebook

These ideas either get no traction or a ton of traction.

But I’d love to see it work.

The week of March 29^th – April 6^th, there’s a grassroots campaign to get atheists to put a Scarlet A as their profile picture on Facebook:

… this is not about shoving anything down anyone’s throats and it’s not about being disrespectful to people who have religious views, it’s about quietly showing that there are more people than may be realised who are ‘good without God’ and who don’t need religious doctrine to influence their lives.

At their website, there’s a downloadable image and more information.

My initial thought was: Why bother? No one outside the atheist community knows what the A means.

But that’s really the whole point, isn’t it?

Get your friends to ask questions about what the A means and get that conversation going. Ideally, there are some closeted atheists out there who will realize there are atheists everywhere and they will be compelled to come out in their own way by posting the image on their profile.

It’s a start. And it’s a really simple way to show your friends and communities that you’re an atheist and you’re proud of it.

(Thanks to Scott for the link!)

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maddogdelta

I wish I could.

However, I will be interviewing at about that time for jobs in many states of the union, and some of them are in the south. I can’t take the chance that employers will look up my facebook profile, see the “A” and not hire me.
maddogdelta

@abneyc

Which is the kind of crap I’m referring to. I need the job.
cypressgreen

I’ll do it, too…although my friends might think it’s just for my last initial!
David D.G.

das wrote:

the scarlet “A” is a bad representation of the atheist community anyway.

I emphatically agree! I always have maintained that this was a dumb symbol to adopt as a logo for atheism — though, of course, that ship has long since sailed.

The scarlet letter “A” stands for ADULTERER, as anyone knows who has even a high school level of English literature education. I would no more want to adopt that as a symbol than I would the swastika!

Alternatively, some sources claim that the scarlet “A” is said to stand for the name of the demon/devil “Asmodeus” — but that is hardly an improvement. There are far too many (horribly misinformed) people who equate atheism with Satan worship already.

I still don’t know what sort of symbol, if any, I would want to adopt to advertise my atheism — but this sure as heck isn’t it.

~David D.G.
franny

I think everyone already knows from my facebook page- under religious views, i put “against”!
Gilad

Added 🙂
David

I keep going back and forth. It’s like advertising that you don’t collect stamps, and almost makes you look as crazy as the other side. But it would be awesome to see other people doing it. If enough people did it, I would join in.
Zan

This is the same tactic as those Whosoever weirdos!
AndrewFinden

So… how does a lack-of-belief have a symbol?
AndrewFinden

@David – right! and if someone had a blog about how they don’t collect stamps and why it’s better to not collect stamps, would you conclude that they merely didn’t collect stamps, or that their was more to their view than that?
Dillyriffic

It’s a reference to The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne. The protagonist is punished as an adulteress, so she must always wear an ‘A’ to mark her sin. When she is sewing her ‘A’, she decides to make it flamboyant and scarlet- flaunting her sin: a hidden-but-out-in-the-open message to society.
It’s not a symbol behind which atheists rally because they’re atheists, it’s a symbol around which atheists rally because they are seen as sinners. It’s a friendly jab at societies jaw.
Dillyriffic

Clearly you didn’t actually analyse The Scarlet Letter very well lol
it doesn’t JUST mean adulterer. It means “different-from-our-society”, that’s why everyone’s all butt-hurt when she flaunts it by making it scarlet. She’s supposed to be ashamed!!