Politics and Pucks

As I've been reading the Twitter feed from Skepticon IV, I've had a thought. I really think the time has come to bring a national Atheist-con to Indiana. There's a lot of good reasons to do it here:

1) Travel
Arguably, the travel is a burden on everyone, however, there are generally few national and annual conventions that occur in a reasonable distance to Indiana. The closest and easiest conference for Hoosiers to attend is SSA-con in the summer. Outside of that, there's very few options unless you take a flight or you want to drive 9 hours or more (Okay AA in Iowa was 6 hours away, but still it's not close). Columbus, OH is 4 hours away, and SSA-con is awesome! I love it, but it would be nice to have something else also in our area to look forward to, because after that one not very many of them are close by. TAM is in Las Vegas, Skepticon is in Missouri, other conventions are in the deep south or on the coasts. In reality the great lakes area has very few national conventions.

2) We Need Help in the Flyover States
There's only so much CFI-Indiana can do. Even though Indianapolis is the only proper city in the state, there still are a lot of atheists who struggle to find groups out in the middle of nowhere. If David Silverman and other national organizations are looking to get atheists out of the pews, do it in Indiana. For example, Purdue's campus has over 100 religious groups of the 500 or so student groups. There is only 1 atheist/agnostic specific group. We're fairly outnumbered, and we struggle to get our voice heard to start with. Despite this, we do great events and are becoming a known name in the community once again, but a boost could help us.

Then looking at the state of Indiana in general, there's a lot of good reason to have one for non-students too. Abortion is a bipartisan issue, with the Democrats leading the way. Indiana Right to Life is a Democrat institution, if you didn't know. The sentiment towards the non-religious is also not very friendly. We could use some help shaking some things up.

3) We've seen other areas of the country have conventions that are in similar positions
Alabama and Iowa have had national conventions. Those areas of the country are also highly religious, in a similar fashion to Indiana. If it's a question of location, Indianapolis is having the Super Bowl. If they can do that, they can surely host an atheist convention that is not nearly as large in scale. There are a lot of other states in the bible belt who are holding conventions, and Indiana still has not held one recently. We've had individual speakers, but not a large organized event like some of the other ones held in the US.

So seriously, I think it's time to start a new chapter of history for atheists in the Great Lakes Region. We really need to get together and plan something in Indiana or something within a reasonable driving distance, if not in our own backyard.