Godless Columbia

When we moved to Columbia in August, I felt the culture shock for a while. Eventually, work swamped me to the point that I didn't have time to reflect on it much. Besides Gainesville being ranked number one of the best places in America to live, it was a "college town" in the sense that USC does not make Columbia. This city is the state capitol and is rich with secessionist history and Dixie pride, while G'ville really had only UF to its merits. In February, during a lull (winter break at my school), I decided to poke around and find out if there were any atheist/freethought groups here in Columbia.

Almost to my surprise, there are a few.

I first found a secular humanist group here, but it seemed pretty dull. I emailed one of the officers there and he directed me to Godless Columbia, a more social, informal and active group. I joined it in February. I attended last night for only my second time, at the meeting at Starbucks in Sandhills and we discussed making a website and a logo. This morning, I bought the godlesscolumbia.org domain and constructed a page there using Blogger. I also put up a facebook group for good measure. Go check it out.

I'm pretty proud of what I was able to do in such a hurry.

I found out this morning that USC has something of a freethought group, although their web presence is a little weak: a Pastafarian group. At least there's something here, which is almost surprising, considering the history of Gator Freethought and the relative size and demographic disadvantages here. The former group, Carolina Freethinkers Association, registered with CFI, went defunct after a short while, the faculty advisor told me.

I'm not sure that I really have the time or desire to get involved in leadership in a group again, but I certainly enjoyed putting together those web resources this morning, and I hope they ameliorate the group's membership and activity in some way. I've grown a little more realistic (cynical, probably) in my vision for what websites can do. When I started GF, I thought everyone there would want to join and contribute to the blog, and that it would be like a hive of activity. Now, I see that a group's primary lifeblood is its meetings, while website are only great for sharing information and preparing for said meetings.

One of the things I've never liked about groups such as Godless Columbia is when it seems that those attending meetings only rave or rant about atheism or religion on a "pop-culture" level, repeating common fallacies and engaging in fallacious generalization rather than engaging on a respectable (philosophical) level. This group falls more into the Kelly at RR category than my friends at GF, so I'm not sure I'll even attend very many meetings. They don't seem interested in setting up debates or guest speakers, nor engaging academically with the "other side" to any degree. We'll have to wait and see.