EARTHWARD

EARTHWARD was founded, nearly a decade ago, on the premise that vast numbers of atheists around the world, like ourselves, wanted to make contributions to society and help those in need, but lacked a vehicle to do so.  In addition to our primary mission of extending emergency aid to victims of religous violence, providing that vehicle was also a major goal.  By giving fellow atheists an opportunity to contribute time and/or money to worthy causes, without fear of those contributions being diverted to proselytizing and other religious activities that would undermine their ethics, we hoped to more fully engage the atheist community in humanistic endeavors. 

We must concede that that engagement has met with limited success, however.  In retrospect, we've come to think we may have overlooked one impediment to atheist altruism.  Unlike religions, atheism has no specific geographical origin, and atheists therefore have much greater diversity of culture and values, and traditionally much less opportunity for interaction and collaboration.  Only with relatively recent proliferation of transportation and communication advances, most notably the Internet, has an atheist "community" begun to emerge; but it is still in its infancy, and has not yet developed the self-help / community-support infrastructure that has existed within religious communities for centuries and millennia.  Atheists, therefore, must devote a great deal more time and effort to their own livelihood and their families' well-being, as few applicable resources are available to assist them.  For example, consider the case of the atheist alcoholic.  Where can he find help to overcome his addiction?  Maybe AA?  They would undoubtedly tell him that the first and most important step to recovery is to have faith in the almighty and to pray for strength and resolve; which is somewhat like telling a fish that the best approach to improving his health is to take up jogging in the sunshine 30 minutes a day. 

The purpose of AHA! is to define and initiate a process whereby such resources can be identified or developed, and made available to atheists or anyone who finds them useful.  We hope that this will in turn free atheists to engage more fully in altruistic endeavors.  We have already identified some such resources, such as an effective countermeasure for alcohol addiction, which requires no faith whatsoever.  Others include an organization that provides faith-free marital councelling, an effectove program for the correction of various vision deficiencies and nutritional recommendations based on the latest research.

AHA! Forums

We invite all interested individuals to participate in our discussions of AHA! implementation planning.  Subject matter of discussion will include specific atheist-oriented resources to develop, or existing resources to endorse, as well as more basic questions, such as:
Should AHA! be implemented as an extension of EARTHWARD, or as a separate entity?
    What would be the legal requirements of either scenario?
    What should be the name of the resulting org / extension?
           ("AHA!" is an interim project name, but is not necessarily final.)
    Who will participate in the implementation effort?
    Etc. 
Please join this discussion at:
http://tinyurl.com/3fmuu4 after reading the description therein.

Another forum, the AHA! Mutual Support Group, is the first resource developed as a result of the AHA! initiative.  All atheists seeking or offering advice and assistance on issues commonly faced by atheists are invited to share their ideas here.  This group is likely to be of  particular interest to recent de-converts, who typically struggle, sometimes for years, with issues such as how to deal with religious friends and family members who may react to their de-conversion with bewilderment, with coercion to "return to the flock", or with outright hostility.  Bear in mind, it is NOT a place for theological debate.
Please join this discussion at:
http://tinyurl.com/3svlh4 after reading the description therein.

Both forums are, for the time being, hosted by YahooGroups!  We intend to move them to our own domain, earthward.org at a later date.  We will try to make the transition as painless and transparent to subscribers as possible.