Secular Student Alliance: Atheists, Humanists, Agnostics & Others - News

Put Your Secular Values on YouTube This Election Season

17-September-2008

Update: Secular Values Voter video entries for the YouTube Challenge are now online. Deadline to submit your own is October 24.

The Secular Coalition for America wants to make you a rock star! Record a 30-second YouTube video of yourself asking the candidates a question that's important to you as a Secular Values Voter in the 2008 election. If your video is chosen, it'll appear on the Coalition's Election Resources 2008 site and you'll get a prize: Secular Values Voter swag. Take the YouTube Challenge today!

Secular Alliance at Indiana University Makes a Statement

19-September-2008

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.

Action Alert: Protect Medical Services from Religious Objectors

18-September-2008

TAKE ACTION NOW
A proposed regulation at the U.S. Dept. of Health and Human Services would allow medical workers in federally funded facilities to refuse on religious grounds to provide legal medical services. If adopted, this regulation would permit

- an emergency room physician to withhold information about emergency contraception from a survivor of rape

- a surgical assistant to refuse to perform a vital blood transfusion during an operation

- a nursing home worker to refuse to care for a patient with AIDS

Protect your right to direct your medical care according to your own conscience: contact Michael Leavitt, Secretary of Health and Human Services, via this Secular Coalition for America Action Alert.

Express Yourself in a HumanLight Design Contest

8-September-2008

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.

Inmates Can Reform Without Religion

6-September-2008

Activist: Inmates Can Recover Without Religion

Freethought Books Project Challenges Faith-Based Dominance in Prisons

Portland, OR - Prisoners can reform without God, atheist activist says.

The Freethought Books Project, founded by activist Leslie A. Zukor of the Reed Secular Alliance, has been promoting secular reform among prisoners since the fall of 2005. The group has collected over 2,000 books free of religious content and distributed them to prison libraries, individual inmates, and prison-donating organizations.

"The goal of our project is to show inmates that they can lead an ethical life without God", said Zukor.

New SSA Resources for Student Groups

4-September-2008

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.

A Harvard Student's Experience at the Secular Student Alliance Conference

1-September-2008

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.

Student Voice Follow-Up: University of Michigan SSA

31-August-2008

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.

Welcome New Affiliates!

25-August-2008

The SSA is growing faster than ever! Since the beginning of April, we've gained seventeen new affiliate groups and now have a total of 151 affiliate groups. We had only 90 groups as we headed into fall of 2007-the secular student movement really seems to be coming into its own. Let's welcome our new members!

Atheist & Agnostic Alliance
UNIVERSITY OF LONDON-ROYAL HOLLOWAY
Facebook Page
Group E-Mail: rhul(AT)secularstudents(DOT)org

The Blogging of A Secular Lobbyist: As Seen on the Colbert Report

24-August-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.

Secular Coalition for American Director to be on Colbert Report

23-August-2008

UPDATE 8/28/2008: The broadcast of this segment has been POSTPONED - stay tuned for further updates. It was scheduled to air today.

Lori Lipman Brown, director of the Secular Coalition for America, is slated to be featured on The Colbert Report's "Better Know a Lobby" segment tonight (Thursday, August 28th) at 11:30pm (10:30c) on Comedy Central. The Secular Coalition for America will post a link to the interview at www.secular.org as soon as it is available.

The Secular Student Alliance is one of nine member organizations that make up the Secular Coalition for America and we are excited that the Coalition getting so much attention.

While we've got your attention, we also wanted to let you know about the Secular Coalition's new Election Resources 2008 website. It assists voters in becoming better informed on how the presidential candidates stand on sex education, intelligent design, faith-based initiatives, court appointments, and more. It also offers specific ways you can become active in the process and promote the visibility of our community. Check out our Questions for the Candidates, YouTube Challenge, and our Guides for Individuals and Organizers. No election is complete without t-shirts and buttons, so they have made available a line of "Secular Values Voter" products - at cost - through this site.

Both the Secular Student Alliance and the Secular Coalition for America are non-partisan and do not support or oppose candidates for any public office. We are nonetheless delighted to help you learn more about the candidates, and how to let them know what you think and who you are.

Atheism at Dartmouth

20-August-2008

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.

SSA eMpirical No. 31 - Back to School 2008

19-August-2008

Secular Student eMpirical

08/21/2008

In this issue:

Save yourself some clicking and read the all-on-one-page version of this month's eMpirical.

SSA eMpirical No. 31 - Back to School 2008

16-August-2008

Secular Student eMpirical

08/21/2008

In this issue:

Don't like the all-in-one page format? We have the teasers only version, too.

2008 AAI “Unsinkable Atheism” Convention! Early Bird Registration Rates Expire August 31, 2008

16-August-2008

If you have not yet made your reservations for AAI’s 2008 Convention, act now before “Early Bird Registration Rates” expire in only two days. Convention rates are going up after August 31^st!

Register now to make sure that you don’t miss this chance to save money on your and to reserve your place at another memorable AAI convention.