I belong to an Atheist/Brights/Free Thinkers Meetup group here in the Phoenix area. They meet at least once a month for discussions at restaurants and other locations. Generally the meetings are far away from me so I only occassionally attend. However, I got an invite to a 666 party they threw at one of the member's houses yesterday. The purpose of the party was to of course make fun of the superstitious hype surrounding the dreaded number.

I was mildly surprised when I walked in to find a local Fox News crew there covering the event. They interviewed the host and a few of the party attendees and then I got to experience the surreal situation where a group of very free thinking individuals sat around watching the 10:00 Fox New Report. I'm sure you can imagine the laughs we got as we listened to the tabloid style reporting from the extremely bizarre crew that Fox News is always famous for.

Surprisingly, they did a very good job of presenting the party and resisted the temptation I'm sure their management had of presenting us as a bunch of loons. There were of course loony people there. You simply can't bring together 30 or so people without attracting some wackos but overall, it's a wonderfully refreshing experience to get together with others of similar philosophies. I couldn't help but think about how the conservatives tend to paint atheists and agnostics as Godless, violent heathens but this group was anything but. It was mostly a bunch of very confident, refreshingly funny, and non-threatening people.

Art