Nostalgia: Images from the 2002 Godless Americans March on Washington March 23, 2012

Nostalgia: Images from the 2002 Godless Americans March on Washington

By Hemant Mehta
March 23, 2012

In anticipation of the Reason Rally this weekend, Scott Romanowski got around to posting his images from the 2002 Godless Americans March on Washington online — it’s like the Big Picture: Atheist Edition!

Here’s just a sampling of what he saw that day:





You can check out the rest of the pictures here.

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  • Washington DC Weather for Saturday:
    Showers, with thunderstorms also possible after 1pm. High near 69. East
    wind between 6 and 9 mph. Chance of precipitation is 90%. New rainfall
    amounts between a quarter and half of an inch possible.

  • Alexanderl

    Check out the nonfiction book 2019 by J.H. for ‘proof’ religion is superstition. It provides compelling evidence of groupthink. All of the worlds’ major religions started around the same time in our history, and at the time right around when ‘real war’ began according to anthro, and this is explained by TMT, terror management theory in psychology-we were mortality salient. It’s a must read for intelligent athiests! Literally scientific proof religion is superstition.

  • Anyone setting up a pool for how long it will take Pat Robertson to claim it’s God’s wrath?

  • Hemant, thanks for posting these pics! That was a VERY enjoyable day. It was a godless party, in that crowd! :o)

  • Ndonnan

    I liked the sign”,All terrorists are religious people”.What about nazis,communists,pol pot, idi amin,china russia,ect ect ect.Even the Irak,their all muslims,but then their sunnis,sheits and kurds,even then religion is only an excuse for the violence not the reason

  • Nazis aren’t atheists.  Then or now.

    You didn’t really state it, but I’ll give you Stalin and Lenin and others in both the Soviet revolution and the subsequent U.S.S.R.  

    Not sure what ‘russia’ has to do with anything.  Russia doesn’t have a state religion, but that makes them secular, not atheist.  More importantly, religion is not discouraged as it was in the Soviet days.

    Pretty sure Idi Amin was a Muslim.

    I’ve actually read that Pol Pot was a Buddhist, but he did target religions, including Buddhism.

    “Even the Irak”  What?  Oh, you think even terrorism that is in Religion’s name isn’t really religious.  Sorry, have to disagree with you at least on many cases there.  Yes, there are cases of ‘religious’ terrorism that are really just political.  But I feel safe in saying that the guys who flew the planes into the towers on 9/11 were looking forward to their 72 dark eyed virgins.  If that myth didn’t prevail, then I doubt you’d have nearly as many suicide bombers.

    So yes, I would agree that the sign is incorrect.  But you could have made the point with a single correct counter example rather than cloud it with a ramble of wrong.

  • Ndonnan

    The point was these people were terrorists to their own countrymen and neighbouring countrys and nothing to do with religion,its ac tually a better example of secular humanism at its logical concllusion to me. Yes i do agree that 72 virgins must look rather atractive to a 20 yo horny muslim boy.I wonder if the koran states that they are women,they might be sheep.virgin sheep though

  • Gwen

     Rich, there will be no takers on THAT no brainer!

  • Actually, I think the real point is that any group of people is capable of engaging in terrorism. Removing religion from the equation won’t stop human violence. Humans created religion and religion reflects human failings. This is something that both atheists and religious people don’t pay much attention to.

    Here’s another idea to chew on. If you are opposing a foe that has far more military resources than you do, small, clandestine strikes that create a lot of casualties can make sense. The strategy is, in a word, rational… if you embrace violence as a solution, that is.

    And of course, there are people of all religions, philosophies, cultures, and economic systems that embrace violence as a solution. Whether those committing violence are seen as “good” or “evil” is a matter of perspective. There’s an old saying from the 80s when the US government was propping up some rather horrific regimes in Central America: one person’s terrorist is another person’s freedom fighter.

  • That you take secular humanism to a ridiculous ‘logical conclusion’ doesn’t mean anything. In fact, it means as about as much as me telling you that the ‘logical conclusion’ to your religious beliefs is that you only care about doing whatever will get you into heaven, and nothing else.  You are heavily biased against secular humanism.  That’s fine, but at least recognize that your ‘logical conclusions’ are more your own fantasy than anything like reality.

    Hint:  none of the nations you listed were secular humanist.

    (as for the virgins, there is a theory that the passage is mistranslated, and should be 72 grapes)

    (btw, you mentioned ‘neighboring countries’. Terrorism isn’t universally defined, but is generally taken as acts against civilians. So for a country to be ‘terrorist’ against another country, they’d have to be targeting the civilians. That is, ‘war’ isn’t usually considered ‘terrorism’.)

  • Ndonnan

    exellent points

  • Given the number of civilians killed by the US in the Middle East, I would say that my country counts as a source of terrorism, too.

    Oh wait, they were just “collateral damage”. Sorry, dead people. You got in the way.

    Oh, and we didn’t mean to invade your country without any valid justification, Iraqi people. Sorry for all the corpses and rubble. It slipped.

    Wait, didn’t Hitchens support this mess? He’s was a nice, rational person. It must be OK, then.

    Hey nasty, Muslim, brown people, you’re a bunch of terrorists!

    (It’s funny how Hitchens’ wholesome, atheist rationalism didn’t save him from supporting this horrific series of military “interventions”. Looks like violence can prevail regardless of a person’s take on religion and rationalism, eh?)

  • Although I agree with the sentiment, I don’t think watering down ‘terrorism’ to mean ‘any act that leads to the injury or death of a civilian’ is useful.  Then again, ‘terrorism’ has pretty much been watered down to homeopathy levels anyway.