A former preacher and children's music composer turned atheist spokesman said last week that the nationwide increase in secularism is a good thing for the country.

"A secular country allows for religion to flourish, if it wants to. A secular country allows atheism to flourish if it wants to," Dan Barker said after a lecture he gave Friday in the Geology Building. "Secular means that religion is not controlling the government. And I guess it also means that nonreligion shouldn't control it either."

During his lecture, Barker, co-president of the Freedom From Religion Foundation, advocated the separation of church and state while talking up the increasing number of nonreligious Americans. He was invited to speak by Atheist Longhorns, a student organization founded this semester.

Barker is a former evangelical preacher who "de-converted" in 1984, he said. He is the author of the 1992 book "Losing Faith in Faith: From Preacher to Atheist." His foundation has been behind many court cases to remove Ten Commandments monuments from public lands. The foundation may be best known for its efforts to fight President Bush's faith-based initiatives. In the 2006 Hein v. Freedom From Religion Foundation Supreme Court case, the court overturned an earlier Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals ruling and ruled that the foundation did not have standing to sue the executive branch.

The foundation works to fight for the separation of church and state. Barker said that while the nonreligious identity is the fastest growing in the United States, politicians and scholars have "not caught up" and are appeasing the religious right.

"You can't have religious freedom if you don't have the freedom to dissent," Barker said. "In America, we're free to disagree with each other on religious matters, but we're not free to ask the government to settle the argument, so the government has to be neutral."

Barker said there is a growing percentage of nonreligious persons in the U.S. He referenced the 1990 and 2001 American Religious Identification Surveys done by the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. According to the surveys, adults who do not subscribe to any religious identification rose from 8 percent to 14 percent in the 11-year span. The survey says that category saw the biggest increase.

Barker also said secular groups are increasing among the student population. He said students are wanting to fight back and "stand up for reason, science and education." Secular students also want to "socialize with like-minded rationalists," he said.

"We saw a lack of groups on campus that represent atheism," said physics freshman Taylor Ratliff, vice president of Atheist Longhorns. "In a country where we have a growing number of atheists, we felt the need to represent atheism and provide a place where atheists can come together."