The SSA only exists because of your support. Please donate today. Secular shorts: The Edger is a new blog, presenting news, views and event promotion on issues pertaining to secularism, atheism, science, humanism, and the cosmos. Check it out! San Diego judge endorses religious banners in public classrooms. Read it in the L.A. Times. The Boise State Secular Student Alliance lands a feature article in their independent student paper! Read it here. A conservative group is persuading tax-exempt churches to endorse political candidates, despite specific laws against it. Read it in the Washington Post. Did your group have a table at your university’s orientation fair? The Edger is running a poll to see how many people are signing up. You can add your group’s numbers here. Recent SSA Grant Awards
The SSA offers grants to student groups to support operations and projects. Here are some projects that groups are using these grants for! Find more information and apply here. Atheists, Humanists, & Agnostics University of Wisconsin - Madison "Science Education: Caught in the Middle of the War between Science and Religion" (lecture by PZ Myers) Date: Sep. 19 Amount awarded: $200 Contact us! Call us toll free at 1-877-842-9474. You can also email us at ssa@secularstudents.org. We are always happy to hear from you and answer any questions or concerns! What do you think? This is your eNewsletter and we are always updating and changing to fit your needs, so please let us know what you think of our new format! Email enews@secularstudents.org with any suggestions, ideas, or comments. eMpirical Team
Editor-in-Chief:
Elizabeth R.A. Liddell
Editors: August E. Brunsman IV, Hemant Mehta, Jacquie Kuzma, Brian Gelletly
| Introduction The SSA is growing, and there’s lots going on! We’ve just finished up new and updated resources for our student groups (with more on the way) and are welcoming new affiliates and new staff! We’re happy to feature several articles from students in this issue, and Dan Barker gives pointers on how to talk to fundamentalists. We also had the chance to follow up on one of our Student Voice Interviews from 2007, and talk to Lori Lipman Brown about her recent appearance on the Colbert Report. Back to top
One of the most important things the SSA does for its affiliates is provide those student groups with services and resources. You can always find these listed at our Group Services page. We've been adding and revising those resources over the summer and are excited to bring them to your attention! First, we have the Flyer Exchange. This is a forum where you can download templates for various flyers for advertising your group and its events, or upload and share templates of your own successful flyers. Now we also have a resource for groups interested in a service trip - the Service Trip Packet! This detailed guide walks you through organizing a service trip with your group, from the initial planning to the actual execution of the trip. That's not all! We're still in the phases of finishing up an updated Group Running Guide, a brochure on discrimination towards nontheists, and other projects. Worry not - we'll keep you posted as they become available. Plus, don't forget about all the other resources we have available to student groups, such as the Speakers Bureau, our business card service, project grants, and more. This was Sarah Kaiser's statement for the Secular Alliance of IU (at Indiana University Bloomington) callout meeting on September 11, 2008. The group, of which she is president, decided that it should have a semi-formal callout meeting at which the president stood up and spoke about what the group is and what they want to do, as well as talk about upcoming events and activities.  You might be wondering: what is the Secular Alliance and what does it mean to be "secular"? Secular is a word that encompasses many nonreligious philosophies, which include atheism, agnosticism, skepticism, freethought, and humanism, among others. It can mean many different things, but in the context of our group, secularism is simple—it focuses on the assertion that one can lead an ethical, fulfilling, and complete life without religion or supernatural belief. It is also a social ideology in which religion and supernatural beliefs are not seen as the key to understanding the world and are instead segregated from matters of governance and reasoning. Thus, secularism can be involved in the promotion of science, reason, and naturalistic thinking. First off, some information that you may or may not know. There was a recent Pew poll that showed between 5 and 12% of the population being atheist (that is to say, they agree with the statement that they "don't believe in God"). If we take the lower value of 5%, that makes about 2,000 members of the IU community and 3,500 members of the Bloomington community who are atheist. This is just an estimate for the number of atheists, based on national statistics, so we should take these as approximate numbers. But still—if you are an atheist, or even a nontheist at IU Bloomington, you are clearly not alone in your campus or community. I'd like to tell you all a little bit about what we are. There are four important reasons to have a secular group at IU, and four reasons that you might like to be involved with the Secular Alliance. But first, I'd like to tell you what this group is not. You may be familiar with the term "evangelical atheist," a term which has been used to describe atheists who try to convince others not to believe in a God. While this tactic may work for some individuals, it will never be a goal of our group to convert believers into nonbelievers. While we support our members' right to individually act as they choose, we will never take a position as a group that is 'anti-' any religion. We are here to positively support our members' nontheist, secular beliefs. You all are likely here today for various reasons, and hopefully because something about our flyers or publicity made you think "I want to be a part of that." I have found, in our approximately six months of existence, that members want various things out of a secular group. The four main reasons people want to join up are education, activism, service, and community. First, education is one of the principal reasons a secular group is necessary on the IU campus. There are two prongs of the education goal: educating others about secularism, secular philosophies and worldviews, and the virtues of science, reason and naturalistic thinking, and educating ourselves so that we can better explain and understand what we believe. Secularism emphasizes that religion and supernatural belief should be separated from matters of governance, and it follows that the support of church-state separation is an important secular issue. Thus, activism to keep religion and government separate is an important goal for many members of secular groups. Activism can take the form of protests, letters to local papers, or letters to elected officials. It is an important way of saying "Hey, secularists exist, we're out here, and we care about the issues that affect our campus, our community, and the world we live in." There are people who philosophize and argue that it is possible to be "good without God" (and some who argue that it isn't), but can we show others that we feel helping those in need is important? Service is an important goal of the Secular Alliance of IU, because we believe there is only one life for all of us, and thus, as social, compassionate creatures, we want to help our fellow human beings to each lead rich and fulfilling lives. But compassion in action is much more powerful and meaningful than the assertion that we care, so service is an important goal of our group. Finally, SAIU is fundamentally a community of nonreligious people who want to derive knowledge and understanding about the world through science and reason. By sustaining ourselves and making ourselves known to the campus and Bloomington community through events and publicity, we are a resource to others who may not have even known irreligion is an option! We are a place for discussion, friendship, and maybe even fun. We exist always in the spirit of using science, reason, and compassion to make the world a better place. And we hope you'll join us. Even just by signing up on our email list and coming to one or a few events this year, you are becoming a part of the growing secular movement around the world. After this, I encouraged members to sign up to be on our listserv and another member went through our upcoming events. We encouraged people to ask questions, and then hung out and talked after and had some good discussion. We had about 40 people come to the callout, many of them new who had seen the flyers or chalk around campus from earlier that week. Something I should have done was taken a poll by show of hands or with slips of paper to see what brought people to the meeting—it would have been helpful in the future to know if flyers, chalk, an email, or something else brought them that night.  Sarah Kaiser is a junior at IU Bloomington studying physics, math, and voice performance. She is the co-editor of a local magazine called Cultureweek (cultureweek.com) and works as an intern at the IU Cyclotron Facility. She is the president and founder of the Secular Alliance of IU, a group that works to affirm the idea that all people can lead ethical, fulfilling lives without religion or belief in the supernatural. Back to top This is the first of a three-part series by Alex DiBranco.
“Now that I know atheists can be moral—” I burst into laughter, interrupting Catherine, a Dartmouth junior and Catholic friend of mine. She frowned. “I’m serious,” she said, continuing with her statement—now that she knew, she could possibly date an atheist.
When I decided to write an article looking into perspectives on atheism for my journalism class, I wasn’t quite prepared for many of the responses I would get, even from amongst my own friends. The default assumption that atheists cannot be moral could still bring me to occasional incredulous laughter at the end of my research, despite having been confronted with a number of responses from intelligent young persons, my peers, telling me that, as an atheist, I lack morals.
To begin my research for this article, I emailed a survey to the approximately 4,000 Dartmouth undergraduates. I asked specific “check-the-appropriate-box” questions, and requested that students provide their religious affiliation, definition for atheism, and finally any additional comments elaborating on their perspective on atheism or contact information for follow-up questions.
The first survey question was modeled on a national survey that asked whether people would be willing to vote for a candidate for president who was a given minority: Jewish, Catholic, black, female, homosexual, atheist, etc. In that poll, atheists were at the bottom of the list, with only 45 percent willing to vote for an atheist candidate. My survey addressed only religious (or non-religious) beliefs, asking students to check a box next to the candidates for president they would be willing to vote for who were generally well-qualified and also happened to be: Jewish, Catholic, Evangelical Christian, Mormon, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, Agnostic, or Atheist (one respondent asked why just regular “Christian” or “Protestant Christian” wasn’t included, and I explained that I chose beliefs that were likely to be discriminated against—the religion that the majority of American presidents have professed to believe didn’t seem to fit that criteria).
The results from Dartmouth’s campus were more favorable to atheists, since 80 percent of the 515 students who responded would be willing to vote for an atheist president. Evangelical Christians and Mormons actually fared worse, with only approximately 60 percent of students saying they’d be willing to vote for an Evangelical or Mormon candidate, and just 76 percent said they would be willing to vote for a Muslim candidate.
After seeing these results, I checked the religious affiliations provided; there were a surprising number of atheist, agnostic, or otherwise non-theist/non-religious students. College campuses do tend to have demographics more skewed toward atheism/agnosticism than the country at large, but it also appeared that there was a selection bias to the survey: students who identified as atheist/agnostic saw the survey as more personally interesting to them.
Despite this potential respondent bias, 4.5 percent of students who took the survey agreed with the statement “Atheists are not moral,” while 8.2 percent agreed that “Atheists can be good or moral, but not to the same extent as religious persons. A bare handful of students were in agreement with former president George H.W. Bush’s statement, “I don't know that atheists should be considered as citizens, nor should they be considered as patriots. This is one nation under God.” However, over 16 percent thought that “Atheism has a negative impact on society.”
The bulk of this series of articles is based on the personal responses I received in anonymous comments on the survey and follow-up interviews with students. I found these comments very revealing as to the kind of perspectives on atheism that are out there, and representative of an intriguing array of religious backgrounds and personal experiences and viewpoints.
While I use “theist” or “religious person” as general descriptive terms, in many cases the discussion in the article deals mostly with a Judeo-Christian God, since that is the mainstream in America.
The merit of surveying college students is not because they are representative of the country at large. The value lies precisely in the fact that they are unrepresentative. College is supposed to be the time when people are the most liberal, exposed to the greatest diversity of beliefs. So when you see prejudice here, you can extrapolate that it’s worse in the rest of the country (and a glance at national dialogue can confirm this). After concluding my on-campus research, I added some national perspective to my article by conducting interviews with figures outside of the Dartmouth bubble (including August Brunsman, Executive Director of the Secular Student Alliance, who is publishing this article) and reading more of the literature on atheism, including some of the popular works of the four authors (Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett , Sam Harris, and Christopher Hitchens) who have been dubbed “the new atheists."
But I had another reason for wanting to focus on my peers. Young people are our future. You can write off sexist, racist, homophobic, or anti-atheist (no good word for that one) middle aged persons as “behind the times” if you want, holdovers of a previous generation and its prejudices—even if they’re well-meaning, many parents and grandparents make out-of-date comments that cause their kids and grandkids to cringe. But college students are the bright new vanguard. They have about half a century before them to shape, influence, and attempt to impose their beliefs on the country. So I really want to know what they’re thinking.
This series of articles explores those lines of thinking, grouped into the following topics.
- “If God does not exist, then everything is permitted.”
- Time Out: What is Atheism?
- The Arrogant Atheist
- The Arrogant Atheist Part II: How Do You Know Whether Someone is an Atheist?
- But Why Be An Atheist?
- Nobody Understands
“If God does not exist, then everything is permitted.” Adrian, a Dartmouth sophomore, quoted the above phrase attributed to Fyodor Dostoyevsky to explain his belief that atheism is a negative impact on society. “Most Atheists,” he wrote in response to my survey, “find it easiest to embrace a simplistic form of atheism which is immoral.” While he was of the opinion that atheists could have morals, he thought nonetheless that there was a lower likelihood of their being moral. An anonymous student responded, “I don’t think that atheists are inherently immoral, but I am hesitant to trust them in positions of power if they don’t believe in personal consequences to immoral actions.” The question of morality is a key issue went dealing with atheism and prejudice against atheists. A 2003 New York Times poll found that 58 percent of American believe “that it is necessary to believe in God to be moral,” compared to only 40 percent who disagree with that statement. If you don’t believe a person to be moral, it’s understandable that you would not want a relationship with them or have them serving as your president. The frustration amongst atheists and other nonreligious students lies in this widespread belief that they don’t have morals. Hannah, an agnostic junior, voiced this frustration. “People have this idea that atheists don’t have a set of moral codes—if they don’t believe that they’re gonna get punished for doing wrong, they’ll do it…I am shocked at the perception/assumption that atheists are inherently amoral. One instance: I meet this stranger while working, and we chat for a few minutes. At the end, he throws out before he leaves, ‘So obviously you’ve accepted Jesus in your heart…?’ Surprised by the assumption, I reply that I do not believe in Christ nor ascribe to a particular religion… So this guy’s belief system is thrown off whack from this five-minute conversation, but then he thinks I’m an anomaly in the atheist agnostic spectrum.” Yet almost all of the atheists and agnostic who responded ascribed to some kind of moral code. Elizabeth, an atheist student, cited both feelings and science in describing her morality. “To me it ‘feels right’ to be fair and compassionate in my interactions with others—to treat them as I would want to be treated. This sense of right and wrong is part of how our brains are wired—over the course of human evolution, the ability to get along with others in a community has been advantageous.” Emily, a Christian first-year, was in agreement: “I don’t think it takes faith to know that killing and stealing are wrong and that helping other people is good. It just takes being human.” [emphasis added] Annie, a lapsed Lutheran, summed up the issue well. “It makes me uncomfortable not to follow a moral code.” Except for the psychologically disturbed, empathy and moral instincts are an innate fact of life, which continue to shape our actions whether or not the belief in God is discarded, so that we feel better when we act according to our “conscience.” For a more detailed scientific explanation for morality, Richard Dawkin’s best-seller The God Delusion elaborates on the Darwinian roots of acting “altruistic, generous or ‘moral’ towards each other.” It takes heavy negative socialization to make a person actually desire to do harm to another human being—socialization that can even come in the form of organization religion. Indicating that even for theists there is an objective morality unrelated to God, Rebecca, a Jewish student, asked “Theoretically speaking, if God asked you to torture a child, would that still be wrong? If so, surely there is a right or wrong outside of religion.” This argument is similar to that of Walter Sinnott-Armstrong, a Dartmouth philosophy professor and author of the book Moral Skepticisms. In a debate with Dinesh D’Souza, conservative Roman Catholic author and speaker, over whether morality could exist without religion, Sinnott-Armstrong cited a study in which Quaker children were asked if bullying was wrong (yes, they agreed), and why—“because God said so.” The interviewer then asked, “If God said it was okay, would it still be wrong?” “Of course,” they responded, taken by Sinnott-Armstrong as demonstrating that even when we think given persons’ morality stems from God, in general our natural belief in right and wrong supersedes what religion might tell us. Emily supported this with her remark that “even though I do identify myself as a Christian, I can’t say I agree with every moral decision advocated in the Bible.” Leaving morality to the prerogative of given religions instead of discussing it as a society is not necessarily healthy. “I consider myself an atheist and a humanist,” one student indicated. “As people we should talk to each other about values (ethics, morals)—this should be a unifying part of our society—religion annexes it and makes it divisive.”  Alex DiBranco is a senior at Dartmouth College studying Creative Writing and Government. She is the editor-in-chief of the progressive campus paper the Dartmouth Free Press , vice president of the Dartmouth Coalition for Progress, and just finished an internship with the progressive think tank Political Research Associates. Atheism and feminism are a couple of her favorite topics of conversation, and she hopes to work for a progressive non-profit or publication after graduation. Back to top  I know how to talk to a fundamentalist. Well, I know how to talk to the kind of fundamentalist I used to be, so I guess I know how to talk to myself. But that is something.
I started preaching in high school, and by college I was really good at it. I would walk up to you on campus, convinced that you were inwardly seeking exactly what I had to offer, and ask if you were saved, knowing that you would be so happy to finally meet someone so interesting, someone whose life was together, unlike yours. I was breath of fresh air.
It would be your lucky day when God directed you to sit next to me on a bus.
Maybe you didn’t consciously admit that you wanted the truth I was offering, but after sensing the Spirit of God in my words, you would realize that, “Yes, this is what I have been yearning for!” You were merely living in “the world,” and I was handing you the privilege to leave that sad, lowly, hopeless, empty domain and move into God’s fraternity. What a blessing that there were people like me on campus who had the goodness and courage to make you such a wonderful invitation.
It was more than that, of course, but you get the idea. You probably thought I was a kook, but I knew I was a humble servant of the creator of the universe, so laugh all you want. The bible predicts that we obedient messengers of Jesus would be misunderstood and persecuted. If you called me names, that proved the bible is true! It also raised my status in His eyes, which were more important than your eyes.
It was exciting to get doors slammed in my face. It was affirming to hear ignorant college students arguing with me, trying to use the flawed and misconstrued “facts” of mere science, which are always changing, to combat the transcendent truth of the bible, which never changes.
Not all fundamentalists are the same. They often fight among themselves about various doctrines. They also differ in their style. Some are peaceful, loving, gentle believers who are genuinely good people trusting that their joyful and meaningful lives will be attractive to you. They figure it is God who is the judge. Others are intrusive proselytizers who sense a duty and a right to confront you in order to change your sinful ways and bring you into heaven. Fundamentalists fall across the bell curve of personality types like the rest of us. Some are intelligent and informed. Some are more emotional. Some are more empathetic and compassionate, more kind and respectful than others. The one thing that unites them is their commitment to the authority of the bible, regardless of how they interpret the “truth” of that book.
Fundamentalists pretend to love you sinners while hating your sin, and fancy themselves as doctors (or agents of the doctor) who can fix what is wrong with you. Like many doctors, fundamentalists rarely imagine they can learn anything from the patient. They walk through life diagnosing what is wrong with everyone else, smiling with the certainty (some might say smugness) that they have the secret to life, and if you challenge the reality of their so-called relationship with Jesus, they will simply say “you don’t know.” (And that may be true. Most of you nonbelievers don’t know what it is like to “talk with God.” But I do know, which is why I can write about this. It’s quite a powerful experience, which I can reproduce today, with all the attendant feelings of being in the presence of a superior being—but as an atheist I now know that “talking with God” is purely psychological and points to nothing outside of the brain.)
It would seem that a true two-way dialogue between fundamentalists and nonbelievers, with radically different approaches to epistemology, is difficult, maybe impossible. But I am going to tell you exactly what you could have said to me that would have made a difference, things that I now wish someone had told me years ago.
Before you jump in with arguments swinging, I want to caution you to back up. Ask yourself what your agenda is and how it relates to their agenda.
Their goal is to convert you. Therefore, by not converting, you have already won. If you are not the arguing type, don’t worry. You can just say, “No thanks, I don’t believe that. I am happy. I don’t need what you offer.” Then walk away. That might be more effective than squaring off for a prolonged one-way argument where they can show off how much they know, trying this and that (changing the topic), and feeling like a very important servant of God, going back to their church to boast, “I was unafraid to confront Satan face to face.” If you simply walk away, you deny them the chance to feed their attention-seeking needs. They want to feel important and useful to God. They hate to be ignored.
And what is your goal? If your goal is to simply counter them and let them know there are happy, informed nonbelievers in the world, then that is easy. Just be yourself, say what you think, and don’t worry if they change their minds. Be relaxed about it. You are not the one with the problem and you can’t solve everyone else’s problems. If you try too hard to change their mind, it can make you look uneasy, like you are “protesting too much,” which they most certainly will take as a sign of insecurity. It can also validate their “war” (as the hymn says, “Onward, Christian Soldiers”), hardening their resolve. Many nonbelievers are happy to live and let live, and don’t care what fundamentalists believe. Most of us nontheists will complain only about the harmful behavior (not ideas) of believers, because people should be judged by their actions, not their beliefs. If a religiously motivated action is causing unnecessary harm, then moral people will challenge such behavior. Otherwise, belief is a private matter. Tell them a little of your opinions, then leave it at that.
If your goal, however, is to convert them, then you have a lot of work to do. Well, actually, we can’t “convert” anyone. We all have to come to our own conclusions. If you were raised religious, like me, you know that your de-conversion came from inside, not from an atheist evangelist. But still, some of us atheists and agnostics do feel a need, or responsibility, to champion reason, science, and kindness, and would like to improve the world by persuading others to abandon superstition and dogma.
There is one other thing you should realize before you start talking with a fundamentalist, and this might save you a lot of grief and wasted time. Regarding religious and moral matters, fundamentalists have binary brains. Their mindset is absolutistic. There is no gray area in their skulls when it comes to Jesus and the bible. (I didn’t say “gray matter,” but maybe sometimes it feels that way.) To a fundamentalist, everything is black or white, yes or no, right or wrong. Jesus is reported as saying, “Because you are lukewarm—neither hot nor cold—I am about to spit you out of my mouth.” If you use gray talk—relativistic, situational, tentative, hypothetical—it will translate to black. They claim to have 100% certainty and they will demand it of you. For this reason, fundamentalists are just as dismissive of liberal Christians as they are of atheists. If you say anything that admits less than perfect truth or absolute moral values, they will pounce on it and say, “Aha! You don’t know!” If you say, “You don’t know either,” they will smile and reply that they have a personal relationship with Jesus, the author of reality, so it is you who is in the dark.
I used to say those things. And I believed them. I know that you can’t shake that mindset with a few arguments on a sidewalk. However, there are some things you could have said to me which would have made an impact when I was a fundamentalist preacher.
Dan Barker continues his article in the next issue of the Secular Student Alliance eMpirical, elaborating on those things you might say to have an impact. Be sure to check it out!
 As an officer for the Harvard Secular Society, I had the opportunity in June to attend a major humanist conference in Washington, DC, thanks to some generous funding from the Humanist Chaplaincy at Harvard and the Secular Student Alliance (SSA).
This conference was held jointly by the International Humanist and Ethical Union (IHEU), the American Humanist Association (AHA), and the SSA. The IHEU is an organization that includes Humanist, rationalist, secular, atheist, and other non-theist groups from all over the world. The AHA is a domestic organization that aims to promote the ideals of humanism, and the SSA seeks to mobilize young people to become activists for secular causes. The other Harvard attendees were Kelly Bodwin, an undergraduate; Jon Figdor and Sebastian Velez, graduate students; and Greg Epstein, the Humanist chaplain.
 Going into the conference, I had a few goals. First of all, I wanted to gain a better understanding of humanism and its role in the worldwide non-theist movement. Second, I wanted to meet other young non-theists from different parts of America and the world. Third, I wanted to come up with some good ideas for the Harvard Secular Society next year.
I arrived at the humanist conference in the early afternoon on Friday, June 6. After registering and taking care of a few logistical matters, I was ready to get started. Most of my experience of that first afternoon consisted of listening to speakers and panels in the main ballroom. The first speaker I saw was Matt Cherry, the head of the United Nations Committee on Freedom of Religion of Belief. His talk about the freedom of conscience being a fundamental right was commendable, though I did leave with some questions about how the UN is actually going around enforcing this ideal.
Maryam Namazie, the spokesperson of the Council of Ex-Muslims in Britain and an Iranian women's rights activist, followed with a fascinating talk about the dangers of political Islam and how expression is restricted when certain ideas and practices are protected from criticism solely by being deemed "sacred."
The speaker that best caught my attention was Eugenie Scott, the head of the National Center for Science Education, who gave a very thorough and informative overview of the evolution vs. creationism debate when it comes to public school science education. As a student interested in pursuing science as a field of study and possibly as a career, I was really shocked by some of the statistics Scott showed in her presentation. If there were one very specific area in the quest for spreading humanism that I would like to pursue more as an individual, it is this topic of evolution vs. creationism/intelligent design.
 One of the most fun experiences of the conference was interacting with other students through the events planned by the Secular Student Alliance. That night, all the students had a dinner together at a restaurant near the hotel. I was able to meet a bunch of fellow young humanist activists, especially a large group of students from Berkeley who were very interested in hearing from us about how to grow their club and branch out into bigger events. That dinner was also the occasion for Kelly and me to start spreading the word about her idea for a National Secular Service Day in the coming year. To our great excitement, there was near-unanimous enthusiasm among the other leaders of student secular groups. The night ended with us hearing a stirring speech by Jamie Raskin, a Maryland state senator and noted advocate for civil liberties, and a fairly humorous speech by Congressman Pete Stark, the first member of Congress to publicly admit a lack of faith in god. While I was impressed by Congressman Stark's courage to "come out" as a non-theist, I was discouraged to hear that there were 21 other high level politicians who described themselves as being some sort of non-believer but were unwilling to be open about it publicly. I can't wait for the day when the political climate changes to the point where politicians can be honest to the public about their non-theism. Saturday was a productive day on many fronts. Kelly, Jon, and I all attended a session with the SSA designed to inform us about ways to expand the role of our secular groups in our communities by coordinating with other nearby secular groups and being more open to interacting with people of all ages. Since part of my job as vice-president of the Harvard Secular Society is to coordinate with other secular groups in the Boston area, I will take this advice to heart and plan on having some joint events with other student and non-student groups in the coming year. Following that session, I was honored and delighted to experience a stirring panel discussion between Harvard Humanist Chaplain Greg Epstein and Washington, DC, journalism icon Sally Quinn. It was interesting to hear about Ms. Quinn's website " On Faith," which provides a forum for discussion about faith among noted intellectuals ranging from atheists like Richard Dawkins to evangelicals like Cal Thomas. Ms. Quinn recounted her remarkable story about her relationship with belief/non-belief, even though to me her claims about goodness and love and other positive abstract ideas forming a divine entity seem kind of fluffy. The day ended with more socializing and discussion with young humanists (pizza was involved) and another award ceremony for important humanists, complete with almost comically long and intricate introductions. Philip Pullman, the author of one of my favorite books as a child, The Golden Compass, gave a nice speech about the importance of using one's imagination even in the absence of belief in a god. But I was truly fascinated by the images of Saturn and its moons that Carolyn Porco, a planetary scientist and Imaging Team Leader for the Cassini space mission to Saturn, showed at the ceremony. Those Cassini photos make Earth look so insignificant and tiny on that grand a scale that I believe they can capture anyone's imagination about what lies beyond current understanding. Sunday was a short day, during which I only attended one event: Christopher Hitchens's keynote address. I was expecting a fire-breathing tirade from the noted anti-theist author about how we atheists should be aggressive in our denunciations of believers. Instead, he gave a mild-mannered address about the virtues of atheism without really stepping on the toes of the more conciliatory Humanists. I was pleased, but not totally blown away by his performance. Once the conference was over, I reflected on whether or not I had achieved the goals I had set coming in. The SSA session had provided good focus for organizing a larger secular student community moving forward. And I had indeed met a slew of young Humanists from all sorts of locations, from California to Sweden. What was interesting was that they all had slightly different tilts when it came to their take on humanism, which brings me to my other goal of gaining a better understanding of the movement. And to tell the truth, I think I've come away with more questions than answers. For example, I noticed a serious age gap in active humanists. This was epitomized by Saturday night, when I went from a laid-back student event where a bunch of teenagers and people in their twenties mingled and talked about student challenges to a fancy award ceremony honoring elderly people who already had impressive titles and credentials. It has since come to my attention that it is difficult for people in the middle-age range with families and jobs to take several days off for a conference, which makes sense. So as my understanding of humanism evolves with every event I attend and book I read, I become more and more and enthused with what lies ahead. I thought that the conference was great and very helpful, and I appreciate being given the opportunity to attend. 
Andrew Maher, who was raised in the small town of Bow, New Hampshire, is a sophomore at Harvard University where he currently serves as a vice president for the Harvard Secular Society. He plans on majoring in chemistry, and his interests include campaigning for Democratic candidates, playing the trombone in various musical ensembles, watching the Red Sox, and being an active atheist and humanist.
Back to top This month, Leslie Zukor had the opportunity to interview Patrick Julius, the founder and President of the University of Michigan chapter of the Secular Student Alliance. He is 20 years old, a Dean's Scholar, and a third-year honors student studying Cognitive Science at Michigan. He is also active in Bilateral, a student group for bisexuals, and the Progressive Alliance, a coalition of liberal campus organizations. His hobbies include writing and photography.
This interview is a follow-up of a 2007 Student Voice interview with Julius in the Secular Student Alliance eMpirical. The original was published in January of that year and can be found here: http://www.secularstudents.org/node/561.
Has your club finally gotten recognition from the University of Michigan? How were you able to raise awareness about your SSA Chapter? Yes, we're now an officially recognized student group, with our own group account with Student Organizations Account Services. In practice, this doesn't mean much, but on paper it looks good, and in theory we are eligible for grant funding. Also, we are now affiliated with the Philosophy Department, which means we get our pizza paid for (They yell at me for tipping too much, though!). To raise awareness, we have held regular meetings, served free pizza, told our friends, posted fliers, hosted a few events – all the usual things. The most spectacular thing we've done so far was host a talk by a local professor, Carl Cohen, on Darwin Day. He is noted for his unusual and original political views, combining atheism, Humanism, Marxism, and liberal stances on LGBT issues and contraception, with opposition to affirmative action, abortion, and animal rights. This was the most successful and well-attended event our group has yet organized, with at least 50 people attending and nearly all saying that they enjoyed the event. In our last interview, you called yourself a “militant atheist.” Has your stridence been tempered, due to your activist experience?I'm not sure about the word “militant” anymore; it has connotations of violence or the threat of violence, which is certainly not something I would support. Perhaps it would be better to call me “confident” or “vociferous” or (to use Sam Harris's term) “conversationally intolerant.” ...I believe in challenging religion through speech and dialogue, questioning ideas that are considered “sacred,” but to call me militant is probably too strong. I should be more careful with my semantics. Is the University of Michigan SSA Chapter still primarily a philosophy discussion group? Or have you done more in the way of secularist advocacy?I want to move on from philosophy discussion; we've done a lot of that, and not enough in terms of outreach or activism. I think we're running the risk of becoming navel-gazing, and I don't want that to happen. This coming year we're going to do some more serious outreach activities. Our plans will be determined after some brainstorming sessions once school starts again. Besides bringing a speaker, what have been the key accomplishments of your club in the two years since the first interview? What do you feel the most proud of in your tenure as President?We've spent most of this time getting established, which I suppose is reasonable for the first couple of years. We now have official recognition, a continuous source of free food, funding opportunities, and the like. We've established a presence as an institution. But I want to do more; I'm not happy with the little we have done in terms of activism so far. How has secular activism impacted you? Are you still of the opinion that religion is destructive and harmful? If anything, I think I'm more confident of that than I was two years ago. I've spent time with other freethinkers, many of whom are the most sensible, kind, and intelligent people I know; I've seen the way people feel liberated when they finally abandon religion. I've seen the way religious evangelists become self-loathing in their obsessive legalistic “morality”; I've had preachers on street corners denounce me for my [bisexual] sexual orientation; I've been to lectures by people so indoctrinated with Puritanical moralities that they become ashamed of things as innocuous as bikini photos and masturbation. ...I've seen the continuing idiocy of the intelligent design movement, culminating in Ben Stein's ludicrous film. I even got the chance to write a popular and controversial opinion in my local newspaper denouncing intelligent design. I've also learned some psychology in the interim – my [major] field is now Cognitive Science – and learned about the ways that religion substitutes for healthy psychological coping mechanisms and ends up creating sexual neuroses. In this sense, religion can be called a contagious mental disorder. I've also learned to recognize the techniques of persuasion and manipulation that religion uses – the guilt it induces by inventing meaningless “sins” (coveting? lust? pride? Basic emotions, now labeled by fiat as immoral), thus making everyone a sinner; it then offers “salvation” from horrors of its own design, horrors like “Hell,” which can be said on public television, whereas “fuck” cannot. I personally consider the idea of a place of eternal torment so horrible it makes Auschwitz seem like Disneyland – especially when it is taught to children and unsupported by evidence – a lot more offensive than the idea of sexual intercourse! Religion convinces you that there is something wrong with you, and then convinces you that it is the only way to fix you. It manipulates your emotions to bypass your cognitive analysis. Actually, this is the same technique used in brainwashing; it's the same type of aggressive psychological and emotional manipulation meant to persuade you into believing particular ideas regardless of their truth. But really, I think a lot of this is beside the point: it's worth noting that religion can be socially and psychologically damaging, and this is all the more reason to get rid of it; but even if it weren't, even if on the whole the consequences of religious belief were benign or even positive – that wouldn't be enough reason to keep it. A happy delusion is still a delusion; a pleasant lie is still a lie. The most important point to be made here is not that religion is bad, but that religion is false. That fact alone is sufficient reason not to believe it, in the same way we don't believe that the Earth is flat or that unicorns live on Mars. What advice would you give to a prospective group leader? Do more than we have done. Speak out more. Be more active, more vocal. We sat quietly and found ourselves accepted, but at the same time we weren't being nearly as effective as we might have. We tried very hard not to offend people, but as a result we censored ourselves, too afraid to say anything of substance. Be bolder than we have been – don't be afraid to offend. Right from the start, be assertive, even aggressive. What are your goals as a club President?I want to do more outreach, more activism. I want to be heard, to be noticed, even if it means people will be offended. I'm tired of getting together for little meetings and talking about nuanced philosophical issues while I get fat on pizza and soft drinks. I want to be inviting speakers, hosting rallies, posting fliers that make a few people angry and a lot of people think. I'm tired of being neutered by our own self-censorship, trying so hard to be “friendly” to religious people that we lose sight of our capacity – even duty – to make change in the world. I want t-shirts that say “Michigan Freethinker” – they already have “Michigan Engineering” for the Engineering Department, “Michigan Linguistics” for the Linguistics Department, “Michigan CRU” for Campus Crusade for Christ, etc. – and “Flamboyantly Atheist”; I want to print more issues of [our newsletter] Brightly Illuminated and distribute them in little envelopes right next to the newsletter Christ is Victor that is posted all around campus. I want to organize counter-protests and read Norse mythology or J.R.R. Tolkien next to the preachers who read Bible verses. Basically, I want to do more. Thank you for your time, Patrick, and we appreciate you sharing your experiences! 
Leslie A. Zukor is a junior Linguistics major at Reed College in Portland, Oregon. During her time in college, she has founded the Reed Secular Alliance and spearheaded the 2006 Secular Student Alliance Best Award winning Freethought Books Project. Her hobbies include baseball, nature photography, and reading nonfiction books. Back to top  HumanLight is a holiday celebrated around December 23rd specifically to acknowledge reason, family, friendship, and other shared, secular values of humankind. To learn more, visit the website: http://www.humanlight.org.
The HumanLight Committee is hosting a HumanLight Holiday card and ornament design contest for secularists of all ages. Contestants should design an artistic expression to positively address these questions or some aspect of the HumanLight holiday.
Contest Topics: What do we have to celebrate during the winter holiday season? What do you hope for in the future? What is the Humanist view/perspective?
Eligibility: All are welcome to enter!
Category 1: Ages 11 and under.
Category 2: Ages 12-17.
Category 3: Ages 18 and up.
One entry per artist. All media, (painting, printmaking, collage, digital art, photography, or perhaps something even more creative?) is accepted.
To Apply: Email the image as a high resolution (at least 300 dpi) JPEG
to humanlightcontest (AT) gmail (DOT) com. In the body of the email, include the artist's name, age, what country and state (if it applies) he or she is from, and what method he or she used to create the image.
Deadline for entries is November 1, 2008.
Prizes: Three images will be selected, one from each age category. Cards and ornaments displaying all three winners will be available for purchase at the HumanLight merchandise webpage. Each prize winner will receive an ornament and set of cards with their image, as well as some HumanLight candy! The winners and their designs will also be featured on the main HumanLight website www.humanlight.org. Judge: Martha Knox is a fine artist, Humanist celebrant, art teacher, and Director of the Humanist Association of Greater Philadelphia.
All images in this contest are owned by the artist. By submitting images to this contest, the artist agrees to grant the HumanLight Committee the right to print or otherwise re-publish the submitted images in marketing or web materials for the purpose of promoting HumanLight so long as credit is given to the artist as the original creator of the image(s). All proceeds from HumanLight merchandise sales will go toward further promotion of HumanLight.
Spread the word! Back to top  Lori Lipman Brown is Director of the Secular Coalition for America, where she serves as the first Congressional lobbyist representing atheists. She is also a speaker on the SSA's Speaker's Bureau. She writes a weekly blog for The Humanist; we reprint select articles with permission.
September 9 - As Seen on the Colbert Report
After far too much kvelling, I’ve been asked by my colleagues in the Secular Coalition for America office to take a moratorium on mentioning the name Stephen Colbert. But He who shall not be mentioned was so much fun! A few weeks back, I taped a two hour interview for the  Colbert Report that was cut to a five minute segment. (We were aware in advance that this is how it is done.) While I am sworn to secrecy on some of the more detailed descriptions of the process, I can generally attest that the Colbert folks, including Stephen himself, were very gracious and put this guest quite at ease.
Many individuals have asked which parts of the long interview I would have liked to have seen in the final cut (as opposed to on the cutting room floor.) There was a very funny pledge of allegiance, much information about military proselytizing, and my insistence that Stephen and I don’t have to agree on theology to agree to live in a civil society – not a theocratic one. Of course I covered lots of issue-oriented things that didn’t make the final cut, but the goal was to let the Colbert Nation viewers know that the Secular Coalition for America exists and then have them go to our website to get more extensive information. Mission Accomplished.
I received numerous e-mails after the show expressing excitement about the interview and those who “get” Colbert’s format understood how it works. But I also got one very funny e-mail, though the sender didn’t realize it was funny. The gentleman wrote about the issues I should have covered during the five minute interview (I guess he thought it was a live-to-tape five minute stint.) He seemed to think it was supposed to be a serious debate with a serious opponent – and missed the satire completely.
 After the taping, I asked Stephen to autograph my copy of his book, I Am America and So Can You. For anyone who hasn’t read it, he has a terrific section on the “Big Secularist Agenda” and how the secular “caucus” of Representative Pete Stark (the only out nontheist in Congress) – he, himself and him – is taking over. Mr. Colbert inscribed the following in the front of my book: “Better watch your back. GOD [underlined three times] bless you. Stephen Colbert.” Ya gotta love this guy!
Watch Lori on the Colbert Report courtesy of the Comedy Central website! Back to top By August E. Brunsman IV, Executive Director  It gives me great pleasure to announce that Lyz Liddell will be joining our staff as senior campus organizer. Lyz has been volunteering as the Editor-in-Chief for the Secular Student Alliance's eMpirical for over two years--so she should already be very familiar to most of you. I met Lyz when we were both at the Ohio State University, and I got to watch her blast through a Master of Music degree there in only a year with a 4.0 the whole way. When I later learned that she'd finished her BA from Bradley summa cum laude, I wasn't surprised at all. Having Lyz volunteer for me as Editor-in-Chief of the eMpirical has been a pleasure. I'm incredibly excited about what the SSA as a whole will be able to accomplish now that we won't just have a few of Lyz's spare hours every month, but will get her full-time attention. As senior campus organizer, Lyz will be the primary point of contact between Secular Student Alliance headquarters and the leaders of the rapidly growing crop of campus groups which we support. She will be the one responsible for making sure that as many of our groups as possible have access to all our great resources both old and new. I cannot think of a more qualified person than Lyz to take on the herculean task of providing the SSA's network of over 145 groups with the resources they need to promote scientific and critical inquiry, democracy, secularism, and human based ethics on their campuses. Lyz will be working remotely from Peoria, IL for a few months before her and her husband relocate to SSA headquarters. Bjorn Watland, of Minneapolis, Minnesota, will be filling Lyz's shoes as Editor-in-Chief of the eMpirical starting with the October issue. You'll learn more about Bjorn next month. August E. Brunsman IV is the executive director of the Secular Student Alliance. He lives in Albany, NY where SSA headquarters is housed at the Humanist Center by the Institute for Humanist Studies. August lives with his wife, Amanda Metskas (director of Camp Quest, Inc.), his two cats Vishnu and Shiva, and a recently resurrected Roomba. Back to top |
Dan Barker is co-president of the 
