About the Secular Student Alliance at UMBC

Catherine Blackwell is the founder of the Secular Student Alliance at the University of Maryland - Baltimore County. When asked about her beliefs and the group she's leading, she wrote these responses. She eloquently counters some of the most common questions we hear about our groups, and so we're delighted to share her explanations. Learn more about the Secular Student Alliance at UMBC at www.secularstudents.org/umbc or find them on Facebook.

The Secular Student Alliance at UMBC. Catherine Blackwell, president, far left.

I would say my family is largely secular, and I grew up in a household where religion wasn't much of an issue. My mom was a single parent, but I've stayed in touch with my dad, who would call himself an atheist. There was a period from when I was about 8-13 after my grandfather died and my mom decided that we would start going to church more, but it was always rather half-hearted and I was never a believer. I threw a huge tantrum when she tried to have me baptized when I was seven. I think I actually declared myself an atheist when I started high school, but I wasn't much of an activist until the past couple of years. I started learning more about science and I read a lot of the work of Dawkins, Harris, and other of the "new atheist" authors and really looked up to what they were doing for the secular movement.

I wouldn't say that my atheism itself has a profound impact on my everyday life, simply because all it is is a rejection of dogma. But what it does do is give me empowerment to live my life under my own authority, and to understand that I have to continually seek knowledge about the world around me. I think the first step to becoming a nonbeliever is to start asking questions, and to investigate the answers with science and reason if they are not known. Religion teaches that we should be satisfied with not knowing, and I personally find absolutely no fulfillment in that.


-If I'm not mistaken the club is brand new this year, do you know anything about secular clubs on campus previous years? How did the club get started?

I decided to start the club at the end of last semester, right as I was finishing up my ecology and evolution class. Dr. Freeland was the professor for the evolution portion of the class, and as a religious man, he allowed us to open up the discussion a little bit between science and religion both in class and on Blackboard. Evolution is a complicated issue for a lot of the religious community, and Dr. Freeland cleared up a lot of misconceptions and tried to demonstrate that religion and evolution can coexist together (even though I disagreed with him). We had a lot of interesting conversations, and I started looking for an outlet to continue the discussion on campus.

A few searches for an organization led me to the national group, the Secular Student Alliance. I realized there was no equivalent group on campus, so I figured I would start one. It looked like a great way to bring together other atheist, secular, skeptic, humanist, and/or agnostic students in a friendly environment and start a real, rational discussion about religion. The only other similar group I know of at UMBC was several years ago a few students planned an "Atheist Week" that I think was largely successful, but there hadn't been anything like it since. The SSA sent me a startup packet, and I started out pretty much on my own. I had an interest meeting at the beginning of September, which had a great turnout. Two months later, we have a chapter that is coming along nicely, with a great team of hard-working officers and a growing membership.

-How do you personally define your atheism (or secularism if that is the case)?

We had a discussion meeting about this a few weeks ago, but defining atheism can actually be a tricky thing, and no two nonbelievers will give the same response. I would call myself a "de facto" atheist, which basically means that I do not claim to know with 100% certainty that no god(s) exist, but due to the lack of supporting evidence in the favor of any supreme being I am inclined to reject theist and deist claims of this existence until such evidence is provided. My position regarding God is identical to my position regarding pink unicorns, leprechauns, fairies, flying spaghetti monsters, and orbiting teapots--I do not live my life on the assumption that they exist because there is not the slightest bit of evidence demonstrating that they do.

-What are your reasons for joining the SSA, essentially why did you join a club designed around the non-belief in something?

A lot of people have asked us "What's the point of having a group for people who don't believe in anything? What do you DO?" I think the best way to answer this is to say that our group isn't focused on sitting around talking about what we don't believe in. The SSA offers an outlet for secular students of all kinds of religious and non-religious backgrounds to have a safe place and an outlet for rational, intelligent, and interesting discussion about our world and our place in it outside of the supernatural. Just like the religious organizations on campus, we want to create a sense of community. Atheists are possibly the most ostracized minority in the United States. From the SSA website: "In 2007, when asked if they would vote for an otherwise qualified atheist candidate of their party, only 45% said yes. This score is fully ten percentage points lower than the score an otherwise qualified homosexual received, and even further below the scores women, blacks, Jews, Catholics, Baptists and Mormons received. In fact, no minority scored lower than atheists."

Having a group like the SSA here allows us to talk about issues regarding religion and where we see its injustices, to have events and activities that enrich and educate the UMBC campus about what the secularism movement is about, and, quite simply, just to have a place to get together and meet people that share a lot of the same ideas. What is absolutely not our goal is to start "deconverting" religious people and getting them to join "our side." The process of abandoning faith is arduous, and takes many years of studying, pondering, asking questions, and really thinking about why you believe what you believe. If it were our goal to go around proselytizing atheism, we wouldn't get anywhere and we would project an extremely negative image of ourselves. We would much rather reach out to the nonbelievers who are already here on campus and who would benefit from having a friendly forum of discussion. Our group also emphasizes the importance of volunteer work, as the importance of service to one's community is something that both religious and non-religious people can agree on. This also helps our group to demonstrate that it is possible to be good without God.

-What, would you say, is the average attendance of your members to the club?

The SSA at UMBC right now is a rapidly growing organization. We currently have a Facebook group with almost 70 members, and regularly see up to 30 at meetings, with occasional guests from other groups on campus who show up to check us out. Just this afternoon, we got final word on getting officially recognized from the university, which is very exciting because now we will be free to request funding, plan events, and have a real website. So far, we've had some really interesting discussions during our weekly meetings, showed a compilation of YouTube clips as a fun diversion, and had a movie night last week with "Jesus Camp". The group is also really interested in uniting with some religious organizations on campus for some healthy discussion or joint events to promote mutual understanding, and we're looking into planning things like that in the future.

The SSA at UMBC is now, as far as we know, the largest group of secular students in the entire state of Maryland. Only Towson has another chapter, and it has fewer than ten people involved and appears to be inactive. We are affiliated with the national group, the Secular Student Alliance, and have also been approached by the National Coalition of Reason, which is interested in starting a Baltimore Coalition of Reason and including our group. The Coalition of Reason is an umbrella organization that serves to unite local groups and provide funding and resources for billboard and bus advertising, seminars, and speakers. If you've heard of the Atheist Bus Campaign in the US, keep an eye out because you may see some UMBC buses in the future with similar ads.