Senior Campus Organizer Alison Bates conducts a Student Voice interview with the new SSA affiliate Bentley Secular Student Alliance (BSSA).  This group just joined up with the SSA on September 24th!  Byung Min, the group's president, answers the questions.


As one of our newest affiliates, can you tell me about the work you've been doing to establish a campus secular group?

To be honest, I only recently started to gather active members for BSSA.  I added all people on my network that identified as were atheists, agnostic, or secularist and invited them to our Facebook group.  I was a very vocal atheist because of influential figures such as Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens, but only recently I decided to get off my ass and take the next step. I saw that there is a group on campus called the Bentley Christian Fellowship.  Their mission statement is to “Help integrate Jesus into the lives of more students and change the environment of college campuses worldwide.”  I’m sure they mean well and have a romantic view of what they are doing, but I found this horrifying. What right do they have to impose their beliefs onto others? This helped me decide to create a secular group on campus to help non-religious students find a comfortable area. I am on my way to growing BSSA.  

You're in the overwhelmingly blue state of Massachusetts. What do you say to all those who claim that there is less of a need for secular groups in liberal, secular states?

Well, although liberal people are more open-minded toward atheists, agnostics, and secular humanists, the reality is that there is still a huge unbalance of belief and non-belief. It's still pretty common to have a priest or a pastor come on campus to promote religion. Also, there are only two secular organizations in the state of Massachusetts. The problem is not liberals against conservatives.  The issue at hand is a bigger one, that religious belief should not impinge upon political issues and the non-religious view should be respected as much as (if not more than) the religious.

Getting a group off of the ground is tough. What have been your biggest challenges?

Gathering people is a very hard thing to do. It’s true that gathering atheists is like herding cats; we are all too individual to commit to any group. But I have some close friends that are working hard on gathering more members, and in three days we have already gotten 15 members.

What events are on the horizon for BSSA?  Have you thought about cooperating with the group at Tufts and the groups at Harvard for an event?

It’s too early to say what events we will have, but once I have established a solid group of members I plan to have regular weekly meetings. I also wish to have debates with the religious groups at Bentley to get an opposing viewpoint. As for cooperating with groups at Tufts and Harvard, I have already contacted Greg Epstein, the humanist chaplain at Harvard, and I plan on visiting him for a meeting in the near future.

Your Facbook page has many important quotes from historical freethinking figures.  Which is your favorite?  What is it about this particular quote that speaks to you?

“Isn’t it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to see that there are fairies at the bottom of it too?”
- Douglas Adams

It is such a beautiful quote with so many implications. Why can’t the religious appreciate the beauty of the world around us as it is? A naturalistic view is arguably more aesthetically pleasing. Evolution basically says we are here as a result of a struggle to survive, thus the struggle to survive is magnificently beautiful! You don’t have to contribute natural beauty to a supernatural being. It is almost like religious people are shunning the beauty that this world holds. We are where we are because what we did and how we've survived, not because of an invisible man up in the sky.