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UPDATE: The deadline for travel grants has passed.

The Secular Student Alliance is proud to be partnering with American Atheists by providing student registration for their 2010 convention in Newark, New Jersey April 2-4th, 2010.

Student registration is $75 for full-time students who are members of the Secular Student Alliance ($10/year). Join now! This is different from being a member of a Secular Student Alliance affiliate group. Register now!

The Secular Student Alliance will be running registration for the 2010 American Atheists Convention.  The convention will be April 2nd-4th and be held at the Renaissance Newark Airport Hotel.  The student registration page should go live by February.

Humanism and Secularism will receive some great national media attention this week as Good Without God: What a Billion Nonreligious People Do Believe, by Harvard Humanist Chaplain Greg Epstein, will be the subject of this Wednesday 12/23's episode of NPR's "Fresh Air" with Terry Gross, and of a segment on Sunday 12/27's ABC World News with Diane Sawyer.

Epstein chairs the Advisory Board of the Secular Student Alliance and has worked closely with students at several SSA chapters beyond Harvard—including Yale, Tufts, Boston University, and Brandeis. The book describes the work of the SSA in its appendix; and Greg mentioned the Secular Student Alliance in both of these big interviews, though of course we don’t know what the shows will choose to include.

Good Without God has drawn strong praise from both secular commentators as an introduction to Humanism, yet it has also managed to win a very positive response from influential religious leaders who are increasingly realizing they can work with and even learn from the nonreligious. 

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Harvard Professor and noted author Steven Pinker has said,  “Good Without God is not just a brilliant book title but an indispensable and humane ideal. Greg Epstein's wise and warm explanation of the humanist world view goes beyond the recent atheist bestsellers and speaks to the moral and spiritual impulses that have traditionally attracted people to religion.”

December 2, 2009

 
For Release: IMMEDIATELY UPON RECEIPT
Contact: August Brunsman – (614) 441-9588 – august[AT]secularstudents[DOT]org

For Immediate Release
Contact: August Brunsman – (614) 441-9588 – august[AT]secularstudents[DOT]org

November 18, 2009

COLUMBUS, Ohio – In a move that avoids the counter-protests organized by the Secular Student Alliance and other organizations, Ray Comfort and the Living Waters Ministry covertly began their Origin Into Schools project today, November 18th, instead of the previously announced November 19th.  Altered copies of Darwin’s On the Origin of Species, which contain a introduction which misrepresents the theory of evolution, were distributed on college campuses today.  The Secular Student Alliance has been mobilizing groups on college campuses to respond with a positive, science-based campaign but took Comfort at his word that the distribution would occur on the 19th.

“We’re sorry that Mr. Comfort felt he had to mislead everyone just to avoid the counter-efforts of our campus groups,” said August Brunsman, Executive Director of the Secular Student Alliance.  “Apparently he thought his deception would only work if nobody was around to tell the truth.”  Counter-efforts were planned at Harvard, Yale, Stanford, Berkeley, the University of Virginia, UNC Chapel Hill, UCLA, UC San Diego, UC Irvine, San Diego State University, University of South Florida, University of Wisconsin Milwaukee, University of New Brunswick, and elsewhere.

The altered version of On the Origin of Species distributed by Living Waters Ministry contains a 50-page introduction written by Comfort attempting to cast doubt on Darwin’s theory of evolution and connect Darwin to Hitler.  The books feature Comfort's section in a much larger font than Darwin's section.  Comfort's section is rife with illustrations, but the single illustration in the original Origin of Species has not been reproduced.

In an attempt to prevent the ministry from tricking college students, the Secular Student Alliance national office assisted affiliated college groups to schedule protests, host speakers, write letters to the editor, show films, and distribute the original version of Darwin’s 150-year old masterpiece.  Their plans will go forward despite Comfort’s sudden, unexplained change of dates.  The Secular Student Alliance has collected resources to counter Living Waters' efforts at http://www.secularstudents.org/originintoschools.

“The best way to defeat misinformation is with education,” said Brunsman.  “We would have loved to have a peaceful exchange of ideas with the ministry, but we’ll settle for having the last word in students’ minds.”

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The Secular Student Alliance is an educational nonprofit that supports a network of over 180 campus groups which promote the ideals of scientific rationality, secularism, democracy, and human-based ethics. Learn more at http://www.secularstudents.org.

For Release: IMMEDIATELY UPON RECEIPT

Contact: August Brunsman – (614) 441-9588 – august[AT]secularstudents[DOT]org

The Secular Coalition for America is launching its first-ever Capitol Hill Scholars Program!  We're excited to announce this amazing opportunity for our students. Have you ever wanted to spend a summer interning on Capitol Hill? Are you looking to boost your resume while defending the values and principles important to you? Do you want the opportunity to make great professional contacts with important advocacy organizations on Capitol Hill? Are you interested in earning college credit for promoting public policy that nontheistic Americans care about? If you answered yes to these questions, consider applying for the Secular Coalition for America’s Capitol Hill Scholars Program. Here’s how it works: While we can’t guarantee that you’ll land an internship on Capitol Hill, the Secular Coalition will work with you to get your resume and cover letter through the door to elected offices and do everything in our power to help you land a highly coveted internship on Capitol Hill. Applicants who are accepted for internships will then officially become part of our Capitol Hill Scholars Program, where we will offer you fantastic learning and networking opportunities and the tools and skills you need to be a nontheist advocate on Capitol Hill. We also hope to offer a stipend for students who are part of the Scholars Program based on financial need. If you are interested in this summer internship opportunity, contact Sasha Bartolf, the Legislative Director for the Secular Coalition for America, to begin the process of applying to work on Capitol Hill.  You can email her directly at sasha[AT]secular[DOT]org

Support the SSA   WE are young people who... Talk about ideas seriously. Live ethical & fulfilling lives without the supernatural. Think it is more important that we can live together than that we all agree. See democracy as an ideal worth living up to. Believe science and reason lead to more reliable knowledge than faith. WE are members of the

The Secular Student Alliance Sex Ed Month of Action

Coming Soon: October 18: National Secular Service Day Fall Affiliation Renewal SSA Student Membership Drive New Leader? No Longer a Leader? Click Here and Let us Know! Support the SSA

Under the Bush administration, school districts received federal money for promoting theologically-based, ineffective "abstinence-only" sex education rather than medically accurate education.  The Responsible Education About Life (REAL) Act intends to counter this by providing federal funding to support responsible, comprehensive sex education in schools. This education would include age-appropriate, science-based, and medically accurate information about both abstinence and contraception. Currently, there are no dedicated federal funds allocated for comprehensive sex education in schools. Advocates for Youth has partnered with Choice USA, Law Students for Reproductive Justice, NARAL Pro-Choice America, Planned Parenthood, SIECUS, Sierra Club and Spiritual Youth for Reproductive Freedom to make October a nation-wide Sex-Ed Month of Action.  The Secular Student Alliance is cooperating with Advocates for Youth to help promote the Sex-Ed Month of Action.  We encourage our affiliate groups to get involved and hold an event to take action on sex education!