The Lonely Atheists

There may be no "church" for the unbeliever, but there can at least be one big party. In late March, more than 10,000 people gathered on a rainy Saturday morning in Washington, D.C. The Reason Rally 2012 was billed as the largest collection of non-theists ever assembled on the National Mall. Armed with lawn chairs, umbrellas, and posters, they came: humanists, atheists, skeptics, agnostics, and a myriad of other self-identified non-believers. One held a sign, which read, "Atheism: it stands to reason." An individual dressed as Jesus riding a dinosaur walked around the grounds. The event promised to provide the big names and sounds of unbelief: headliner Richard Dawkins, the modern emblem of atheism; Jessica Ahlquist, the 16-year-old who successfully sued to take down a prayer banner in her high school and was dubbed an "Evil Little Thing" by her state representative; and the sounds of Bad Religion, the 1980s punk rock band.