Godless Geeks

Christian churches have long been in the business of reaching out to non-believers. Well now the non-believers are reaching out to non-believers. Of course, if this is going to happen anywhere, it's going to happen in San Francisco:

As they watch religion increasingly dominate American political discourse, nonbelievers will gather in San Francisco today for their first "All Atheist Weekend" -- in an effort to put a friendlier face on godlessness.

"We're trying to do what church people call outreach," said Jim Heldberg, a Pacifica software salesman and onetime Methodist who coordinates the group San Francisco Atheists.

"We feel very threatened by what's going on in this country, but we realize that we can't just sit here in a corner by ourselves," Heldberg said. "If we do, the religious right is just going to run us over."

So Heldberg and other leaders of the Bay Area's five chapters of atheists -- from the "Godless Geeks" club of the Silicon Valley to the crew at the Rossmoor retirement community in Walnut Creek -- have put together a weekend designed to bring together the God-unfearing and "have some fun," Heldberg said. They will chat about their favorite mainstream film, "Contact," the 1997 flick in which Jodie Foster plays an alien-seeking astronomer with a lot of atheistic questions.

The president of a national atheist organization will speak this evening in a room at the Commonwealth Club, which is not sponsoring the event. A Michael Moore-styled atheist "opinion documentary" will have its world premiere Saturday at a small theater in South of Market, and atheists will be treated to a one-man multimedia presentation and a fund-raising dinner (to pay for the Commonwealth Club rental).

The goal is to do what organizers commonly call "herding butterflies" -- turning atheists into activists.

You have to admit it probably takes more faith to defiantly believe there is no God than to believe there is a God to who cares about what's going on in this world He created. Maybe one of these activist atheists will come out with their own best seller: The Purposeless Driven Atheist.