Nothing about the car seems unusual. Its occupants laugh and talk about music as they cruise along Interstate 82. To any passerby, it simply looks like a group of friends driving to Tuscaloosa for the weekend.
  Especially here in the Bible belt, there is something different about the car’s occupants. Something that, at a glance, could be easily missed.
  It isn’t until the driver, Starkville resident Sean Dyess, mentions his slight nervousness about an upcoming meeting with a few of his old classmates that the difference becomes apparent.
  “I’m open about my beliefs,” he says. “It’s on my Facebook page. But I think a lot of people don’t take that seriously. So, they may be like, ‘So what church do you go to?'”
  He gives a quick smile.
  “‘I don’t.'”
  The subject changes as Chris Dees, junior mechanical engineering major, sits in the backseat looking over an event announcement on his phone for directions. Mary Kate Smith, junior aerospace engineering major, types in the directions in the front passenger seat.
  The three are on their way to the University of Alabama to listen to a talk by Hermant Mehta, a high school math teacher better known on the Internet as the Friendly Atheist.
  All three are members of the Freethinkers, Agnostics and Atheists club of Mississippi State University.
  FAAMSU is a Secular Student Alliance affiliate whose stated goal is to “provide a welcoming environment to MSU students, staff and faculty that are without faith or questioning their faith.”
  The group’s weekly meetings are small and informal, generally consisting of discussions or watching videos. The latest meeting consisted of a discussion entitled “The Problem of Evil,” which debated the difficulty of evil existing alongside an omnipotent being, joined by members of the MSU Philosophy and Religion Club with their views.
  In addition to the meetings, FAAMSU participates in service projects, a stargazing night and science lectures.
  One of the more recent events FAAMSU participated in was the Reason Rally held on March 24 in Washington D.C. Touted as the largest gathering of atheists and skeptics, the event featured speeches and performances from a variety of guests.
For the event, FAAMSU managed to gather nine atheist groups from Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana to meet in Starkville to travel together to Washington D.C. thanks in part to a project called Sauce For All.
Created by Chris Dees and Chris Ramos, the president and vice president of FAAMSU, respectively, sauceforall.com is a website for groups or individuals looking to connect with fellow atheist groups in the South. Since its founding in 2011, the website now includes 22 student and community groups across six states.
According to Dees, the members of FAAMSU are a variety of students and residents from an assortment of backgrounds.
“We have members that grew up in secular families and some that grew up going to church every Sunday,” he said. “There are also some that are libertarians and one that’s a member of the Tea Party.”
The Alabama campus is a near ghost town As Dyess, Smith and Dees make their way to the Ferguson Student Center where the talk is being held. The group passes only a handful of students, and most of the campus parking lots are empty. As they park, someone asks about the lack of students.
“Of course they’re not here,” Smith says. “It’s Good Friday.”
The three make their way inside and find the small room, already occupied by members of the Alabama Atheists and Agnostics. The two groups greet each other and catch up while they wait for the final group, the Auburn High School Freethinkers, to arrive. When they do, a quick introduction is given before Hermant Mehta, the Friendly Atheist, begins his talk.
His talk is entitled “I Sold My Soul on eBay (and other atheistical stories),” which details his start as a believer in Jainism, a non-violent Indian religion, to his curiosity of the Christian faith as an atheist which led him to post an auction on eBay stating he would go to church. The experience from the auction and his subsequent visits to various churches led to a Christian book publisher to commission him for a book as an atheist’s outside views and observations of traveling to different churches.
The talk is lighthearted for the most part. Laughs erupt from the audience every now and then from comments or videos, especially when they see Mehta covered in makeup from a news clip.
He turns the talk to more serious matters near the end. He talks about combatting stereotypes of atheism and the importance of contributing to charities. He ends the talk with a news clip from 2007 about a high school student named Nicole Smalkowski who dropped out of school after alleged harassment from fellow students due to her lack of religious beliefs.
“All of this happened before all the blogs got popular,” Mehta says after the video. “This was before there was a good network of atheists out there. Could you imagine if this happened now, how quickly the world would be on their case? How quickly can we as a group help stand up for her and get her back?”
Atheists seem to be standing up more for their beliefs from this support.
One of the most recent events involving atheism in the news is the story of Jessica Ahlquist, a high school student in Rhode Island who brought a suit against her school for displaying a banner with the school prayer within the school. The case led to her having a police escort due to threats.
After winning the case, she was called “an evil little thing” by one of her state representatives, a statement her supporters placed on T-shirts to help fund her college education. She was invited to the Reason Rally as a speaker and accepted a check from the American Humanist Association for $63,000 as a scholarship.
Even the Reason Rally can be seen as a sign that atheists are speaking out about wanting to be taken seriously. According to The Atlantic, despite poor weather during the event, over 20,000 people attended to listen to various speakers.
For Dyess and Smith, who both traveled to the event, it was the first time they found themselves with so many like-minded individuals.
“You’re faced with many different facets of Christians (in the South) that going to be with people like you is just amazing,” Dyess said.
Alongside this is the rising popularity of parody religions. Two of these include the Flying Spaghetti Monster, a satire of creationism, and the Invisible Pink Unicorn, a modern take on Russell’s teapot that illustrates the burden of proof.
After the talk with the Friendly Atheist ends, the groups head to dinner.
During the meal, everyone stops for a photo with Mehta and talks with one another about school and home life. One person mentions the Reason Rally while another discusses space exploration. Someone mentions Neil deGrasse Tyson and everyone’s face brightens at the thought of the astrophysicist. Across the table, a few students talk about the difficulty of learning Japanese versus the German language.
The variety of people who consider themselves atheist and the numerous ways they came to that decision help to paint a small picture of the growing movement.
On the Sauce For All website, a section is devoted to personal accounts of different individuals’ paths toward atheism. Some accounts are in-depth stories of former Christians who questioned their faith while a few describe growing up in secular homes with curiosity toward the Christian world.
For Chris Ramos, MSU physics graduate student, atheism came as a consequence of science and moving to Mississippi.
“It wasn’t until I came to Mississippi that I started thinking about questioning religion and thinking about the arguments against it,” he said. “I was forced because I had placed myself in a culture where everyone took the religious standpoint for granted because that’s what they were born into, and I was forced to defend my non-religious standpoint.”
Even the Reason Rally saw a wide variety of atheists, some angry at the growing perception of religion in government affairs, others happy with simply being able to freely admit to their non-belief. In fact, on the Reason Rally’s website, one of the stated goals of the rally was “to encourage attendees (and those who can’t make it) to come out of the closet as secular Americans, or supporters of secular equality.”
“There are some people who have to keep their atheism from their families,” Dees said. “They’re afraid of losing their friends or destroying relationships with their families, and that is a possibility for some.”
Dinner ends and the members of FAAMSU say their goodbyes and thank the Friendly Atheist for taking his time with everyone. Dyess, Smith and Dees make their way back to the car and slowly find their way back onto Interstate 82 for the hour and a half drive home. The moon is bright and large in the night sky. Music plays softly from the stereo as the three travel the near-empty roads. For most people, it is the start of a holiday; for these three, it is simply another good Friday night.