This coming Saturday, March 24, 2012 in Washington, DC will be a major gathering of people. It is called the Reason Rally and tens of thousands of people are expected to attend. It is billed as one of the largest group of people in support of reason in the history of the world.
One controversial element of this rally is the "official" list of speakers. It includes US Senator Tom Harkin and Comedian/Commentator Bill Maher. Both of these individuals are well-known public figures who have vocally promoted alternative medicine and pseudoscience. It is this blogger's opinion that it is very unfortunate to have such anti-science/anti-reason people officially speaking at a rally billing itself as focused on reason. Reason leads to atheism and it should be the main focus of such a large gathering, in this blogger's opinion.
Perhaps, the organizers should have called the rally the Atheist Rally, as there are many atheists that support pseudoscience in various forms. However, if they had done so, it would give the public the wrong impression regarding how most atheists arrive at that worldview, through the use of reason and evidence. As it stands now, with some of the official speakers, there is still going to be the wrong impression given.
Following are three links, presenting different opinions on this situation. This Blogger (and PZ Myers) may be in the minority within the Freethought community on this one. However, the opinion is still firm.
The Reason Rally ought to have some standards
Atheist Purity
Plan your own Reason Rally and then tell me how it goes
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