{"id":4915,"date":"2011-09-30T10:32:08","date_gmt":"2011-09-30T10:32:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/freethoughtblogs.com\/xblog\/?p=492"},"modified":"2011-09-30T10:32:08","modified_gmt":"2011-09-30T10:32:08","slug":"are-more-people-coming-out-than-usual","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/2011\/09\/30\/are-more-people-coming-out-than-usual\/","title":{"rendered":"Are more people coming out than usual?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>&#8230; as atheists, I mean &#8230; <\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<blockquote><p>There has been a spike in the number of people coming out of the woodwork to declare themselves atheists and the head of both the Arizona Coalition of Reason and The Phoenix Atheist Meetup Group said blogs, Facebook and Twitter are just part of the reason.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Yeah, I&#8217;m the guy who sees &#8220;twitter made this social movement happen&#8221; and I want either real proof or at least a more contextualized, nuanced analysis.  John Lynn suggests safety in numbers, and that could be.  Convenience even, or a (false) sense of anonymity. Either way, it&#8217;s good:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>&#8220;As more people become educated as to who atheists really are, the better off we are,&#8221; Lynn said.<\/p>\n<p>The stigma of declaring yourself atheist has diminished.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>But I&#8217;m not sure that twitter made them do it.  <\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.ktar.com\/?sid=1456383&#038;nid=6\">The original comments are here. <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&#8230; as atheists, I mean &#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[5020],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5fhV1-1hh","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4915"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4915"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4915\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4915"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4915"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4915"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}