The Philippine Atheists Atheists, Agnostics, and Secularists organization has taken the lead during the lockdown.
The org used to have regular face-to-face activities and is known for being to most active and committed with activism towards a Secular Philippines.
Forced to cut all those events because of the lockdown, they decided to go online where now they hold weekly live events and decided to create a full community through FB groups online.
When a Filipino decided to become an Atheist they commonly feel ostracised and lonely. All their life and most of their surroundings are usually Christian. So there is an immediate sense of emptiness. To solve that, PATAS decided to create community by two actions:
- Creating interest clubs: for people to gather around their passions.
- Creating local org chapters: to get to know each other when living in the same city or province. Speak the same dialect. Organize real life face-to-face events when possible.
So the headcount for their online groups and pages now Dec 2021 goes to over 44k. Some members might be in several groups at the time, of course. Still, it is a very strong online presence and influence to be taken into account.
Here goes a list of groups and links that you can visit to get to know them better. Some small some big. They’re expanding now.
We welcome a change in open thinking with a fresh set of ideas to enrich variety in the Philippines.
The Philippine constitution says it is a Secular country, still to be enforced though.
Pretty regular Sunday 8pm online meeting from PATAS Davao open for PATAS members and sympathizers.
Congrats to PATAS and looking forward to following their growth.
