Secular Student Alliance: Atheists, Humanists, Agnostics & Others - Dangerous Ideas

"Children of the Border" Provides Humanist Service Opportunity

12-August-2008

Sebastian Velez, fellow SSA member and Harvard University evolutionary biologist, leads an organization serving a community of Haitian-descent sharecroppers along the Dominican Republic-Haiti border. The people of the community served are among the poorest in the Western hemisphere, each family living on less than $2 a day and in the worst misery imaginable: houses made out of sticks and mud, water access from cattle ponds hours away walking distance, children suffering from chronic diseases that should be easily and cheaply treated, rampant illiteracy and lack of opportunities for basic education, high infant mortality, and high fertility rate.

Reflections on a Secular Student Alliance Internship

12-August-2008

As I returned home this summer from my internship with the Secular Student Alliance, I was able to reflect upon and understand the rareness of my experience. Though I was asked many times upon my return, the answer is no, I was not one of those coffee-fetching interns. Instead, I was given striking responsibility over the projects I was assigned and even given the chance to suggest others. I was able to develop key skills with a lot of writing and even some graphic design.

Close Up with the Secular Student Alliance Board of Directors

12-August-2008

When most of us hear a term like “Board of Directors,” we get an image of stuffy old men in suits and ties sitting around a glassy table in some high-rise conference room. But if you think that’s what the Secular Student Alliance’s board is like, then we have some news for you! At this year’s in-person board meeting, Ashley Paramore put together a video showing both the diversity and the activity of our Board of Directors. Check it out and get to know our leaders a bit better!

Maybe you’re saying something like, “Hey, I could do that,” or, “I’d like to be a little more involved in this organization!” If that’s the case, maybe you should consider running for election as a member of our Board of Directors. We hold elections in February, and any member of the SSA is eligible to run. (Not a member? Join today – it’s only $10-$35 depending on your academic status!)

Fringe Religion Creates Opportunity for Secularists

11-August-2008

Who would have thought that a lawsuit brought by Summum, a fringe religious group founded by an ex-Mormon who claimed to have had contact with extraterrestrials, could be an opportunity for the secular community?

The Supreme Court case of Pleasant Grove City v. Summum is one of those anomalous cases which, despite involving no secular advocacy organization directly, could have significant repercussions for the secular movement. The case lies at the intersection of a number of controversial legal issues commonly faced by secularist organizations, including the protection of free speech under the First Amendment, government violation of the Establishment Clause, control of government speech, and the legal doctrine of “public forum.”

The case began in September 2003, when the little-known religious organization Summum asked the mayor of Pleasant Grove City, Utah, to accept its donation of a monument to Pioneer Park, a public space maintained by the city. The monument would commemorate a key text of the religion’s beliefs, the “Seven Aphorisms,” which members of Summum believe were given to Moses by God prior to the Ten Commandments. Perhaps contrary to Summum’s theology, a monument to the Ten Commandments already stood in Pioneer Park, donated nearly thirty years earlier by the Fraternal Order of Eagles. Summum’s request was denied by the city, citing their criteria that permanent displays in the park must “directly relate to the history of Pleasant Grove” or be “donated by groups with long-standing ties to the Pleasant Grove community.”

In August 2004, the city passed a resolution formally establishing their set of criteria for authorizing permanent displays in the park. In May 2005, Summum re-submitted their request, but they received no word back from the mayor or the city. In response, Summum filed for a preliminary injunction against the city to permit the group to erect its monument in the park, contending that the city violated its free speech rights by excluding its monument while allowing another religious monument, that of the Ten Commandments, to remain.

The District Court issued an oral ruling denying Summum’s request on the basis that the organization failed to provide sufficient evidence to warrant the issuance of an injunction. Summum appealed the decision, arguing that the actions of the city and the District Court amounted to viewpoint discrimination, thereby violating its free speech rights. The Tenth Circuit of the Court of Appeals reversed the lower court’s ruling, finding that the city’s denial of Summum’s monument in light of the presence of the Eagles’ Ten Commandments monument constituted a violation of private free speech in a public forum. This ruling left the city with the choice of accepting Summum’s monument or removing the Eagles’ monument. Rather than making an apparently unacceptable choice, the city decided to take its case to the Supreme Court.

Recognizing the importance of this case to our movement, the American Humanist Association (AHA), in cooperation with several other organizations such as the Secular Student Alliance and the Institute for Humanist Studies, recently filed a friend-of-the-court brief in support of neither party. While the brief expresses sympathy for Summum’s assertion that the government should remain belief-neutral in its acceptance of monuments into the park, “the primary aim of our brief is to inform the Court that all religious monuments in a public park are unconstitutional,” said Bob Ritter, attorney for the secular groups.

While this case has been argued as a question of free speech versus the government’s right to control what is placed on its property, AHA’s brief argues that the real issue in this case is the government’s longstanding violation of the Establishment Clause. Whereas the Tenth Circuit Court assumed that city parks are “public forums” wherein all expressions of religious viewpoint are protected under the First Amendment, the AHA brief asserts that this is a mischaracterization of the legal access sought by Summum. AHA argues that, while parks and sidewalks are public forums for assembly and debate, this status does not extend to the realm of donated permanent monuments in city parks. Therefore, the forum to which Summum is seeking access is not simply “a city park,” but rather “permanent monuments in a city park,” which does not fall under the legal protections of the public forum.

Furthermore, the brief argues that, from a common-sense perspective, one can reasonably assume that a man on a soapbox does not speak for the government since he has not been endorsed by the government. At best, a rally or public speaker can only be assumed to have received a permit from the government, and nothing more. A monument, on the other hand, is accepted, installed, and maintained by the government. Despite its origin as a privately-donated item, a donated monument becomes, as far as the reasonable observer can distinguish, the property of the government. This further undermines Summum’s argument that such monuments remain solely the private speech of the donors, as the monuments have the effect of sponsored government speech, regardless of the givers’ intentions.

Under the AHA’s view, both the proposed monument from Summum and the pre-existing monument from the Fraternal Order of Eagles would be considered to be government endorsement of religion in violation of the Establishment Clause and therefore illegal. AHA hopes that, through its brief, the focus of this case will return to the issue of the city’s violation of the Establishment Clause. The AHA concluded its brief by asking the Supreme Court to reverse the 10th Circuit’s rulings in favor of Summum and refer the case back to the lower courts to consider whether the Ten Commandments monument violates the Establishment Clause.

The Supreme Court’s decision in this matter, no matter which side it holds for, is likely to have a major impact on the secular movement’s legal proceedings in the future. If the Court finds in favor of Summum, then privately donated monuments in public parks would be granted First Amendment protections, and the government would lose its authority to turn away religious monuments that meet its general criteria. If the Court finds in favor of Pleasant Grove City, however, then cities will continue to be able to select what message they wish to convey to the public. Particularly relevant here is Pleasant Grove’s argument that the Ten Commandments is a permissible secular display honoring the city’s “pioneering heritage,” and this is where the AHA takes issue with the city’s position, arguing instead that the “secular heritage” label is a sham description that the city devised in order to endorse the Christian religion.

“Given the Court’s bogus reasoning in its 2005 Van Orden decision,” Ritter said, “removing the Ten Commandments monument in Pioneer Park will be a long and difficult road even should Pleasant Grove prevail in the current case.”

This article was written by Brendan Dieffenbach. Brendan Dieffenbach is a student intern at the Secular Student Alliance in Albany, NY. He is double-majoring in English and sociology at Kenyon College in Ohio, and will be spending the '08-'09 school year studying at the University of Exeter, England, where he will be harassing his fellow ex-pats to cast their absentee ballots in a timely fashion. He is passionate about politics, and hopes to make a lifetime career out of activism.

Wafergate: Let PZ Myers Be PZ Myers

8-August-2008

Last month, biology professor and blogger PZ Myers encouraged his readers to send him a consecrated Catholic communion wafer, which he would then desecrate publicly. The volume of comments and death threats he received was huge, even by Pharyngula's standards. Myers did receive, and vandalize, a communion wafer a few weeks later.

Two of the Secular Student Alliance's board members weigh in on Myers's actions. Chris Calvey is the founder of Atheists, Agnostics, and Freethinkers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Joe Foley is the president of Atheists, Humanists, and Agnostics at Stanford University. The Secular Student Alliance has not taken an official position, but encourages students to discuss free speech issues and the best ways to promote secularism.

Save the Date: Darwin goes Biennial

6-August-2008

Darwin Day is coming! It’s not too early to start planning how you are going to celebrate! This year’s Darwin Day Celebration is special, indeed, as it marks both the 200th birthday of Charles Darwin as well as the 150th anniversary of the publication of The Origin Of Species. If you are ever going to celebrate Darwin Day, this coming year will be the time to do it.

Wafergate: PZ Myers Crossed the Line

3-August-2008

The Atheism Tapes: Big Names for Not-So-Small Talk (DVD Review)

28-July-2008

“Yes! We have a soul, but... it's mechanical... but it's still a soul. It still does the work that the soul was supposed to do. It is the seat of reason, it is the seat of moral responsibility… It's just not a mysterious lump of wonder-stuff.”

So says American philosopher Daniel Dennett in his interview with neurologist-turned-director Jonathan Miller, discussing the headline in an Italian newspaper that covered Dennett’s visit, reading: “Yes, we have a soul, but it's made of lots of tiny robots.” Dennett’s observation is typical of the mood of this intensely-personal series: often humorous and more than occasionally profound, but never beyond the rational and the real.

The Blogging of a Secular Lobbyist

9-July-2008

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.

Richard Dawkins Foundation and the Secular Student Alliance

4-July-2008

At the 2008 SSA Conference, Dr. Liz Cornwell introduced the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Science and Reason, and explained the collaboration with the SSA and student groups. This article is a summary of that presentation.

Dawkins’ recent bestseller The God Delusion has allowed him a bit more freedom to make demands in terms of how he promotes it. When one sells over a million and a half copies in English alone, even publishers have to sit up and listen. It also affords him the opportunity to reach out to a new audience. Amazingly enough, many people had never heard of Richard’s other books, even major bestsellers like The Selfish Gene and The Blind Watchmaker, until they had read The God Delusion. It has been a great success - and Dawkins and his Foundation want that success to be shared by other organizations such as the Student Secular Alliance.

Oregon Declares Day of Reason

3-July-2008

The governor of the state of Oregon declared June 21 to be a Day of Reason. Student groups with high ambition might try to have a simliar proclamation made in their own city or state!

STATE OF OREGON PROCLAMATION
OFFICE OF THE GOVERNOR

WHEREAS: Application of reason offers a hope for developing and implementing intelligent, humane, and ethical interactions among people; and

WHEREAS: Philosophies of reason were emphasized when writing the Constitution of the United States of America and those of its several states; and

A Second Class Astros' Fan

2-July-2008

Leslie A. Zukor is a Reed College student who is majoring in Linguistics with a concentration in Classics. During her college years, she has founded the Reed Secular Alliance and has spearheaded the Freethought Books Project. The Freethought Books Project seeks to give inmates and individuals in need access to compelling secular titles. In her free time, Zukor is an avid baseball fan, loves squirrel photography, and enjoys reading nonfiction books.

Open Call for Humanist Life Stories

17-May-2008

Are you a humanist with a story to tell? The Humanist Community in Silicon Valley has a project that just might be up your alley. Read on for details!

Dear fellow humanist,

We, Arthur Jackson (president) and Armineh Noravian (vice president) of the Humanist Community in Silicon Valley, California, wish to share an exciting idea with you. Our constant search for ideas to promote Humanism has led us to the realization that one important area is the manner in which Humanists deal with difficult or unusual life circumstances. We believe that sharing such experiences will provide important models of how Humanists live with life's challenges without divine guidance.

The Blogging of a Secular Lobbyist

17-May-2008

In Reason We Trust?

17-May-2008

This story originally appeared in The Daily Cardinal (the campus newspaper of the University of Wisconsin at Madison) on 04/03/08, and is used by permission.
Article by Sajia Hall of The Daily Cardinal.

Between the religious right and violence in the name of religion, do atheists on campus have a prayer?

As an organizing member of AHA, the UW-Madison organization for Atheists, Humanists and Agnostics, Nick Jikomes hears arguments against atheism all the time. One of the most common is that atheism requires belief and is therefore a religion.

Jikomes, however, has an answer.