At the Secular Student Alliance annual conference last weekend, the University of Nevada, Las Vegas chapter was awarded with the Best Collegiate Affiliate Group award: Especially noteworthy was UNLV’s work bringing in speakers, running a lending library, and hosting discussions. They are very focused on activism to avoid conflict, for example their work with the Westboro Baptist Church. UNLV has also done an impressive amount of charity work, from fundraising, to a book repair & book drive, to sponsoring a… Read more
That would be the Dawkinsia Srilankensis, “a new genus of fish comprised of nine species found only in South Asia.” [Rohan] Pethiyagoda, an ichthyologist and internationally acclaimed conservationist, said extensive studies in India and Sri Lanka showed that the level of diversity among such fish was “much greater than previously suspected”. This was partly the reason that the study group had chosen to name the new genus after the 71-year-old Dawkins, the British author of the anti-religion polemic, “The God… Read more
Zach Kopplin reports that Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal’s school voucher program has a significant problem: Now Governor Jindal has passed a voucher plan which provides millions of taxpayer dollars to private schools that teach creationism and whose curriculum doesn’t meet the state’s approved science standards. My review of the Governor’s voucher program identifies at least 20 schools who use a creationist curriculum or blatantly promote creationism on their websites. These 20 schools have been awarded 1,365 voucher slots and can… Read more
You want to know how tough some high school atheists have it? Check out this story JT Eberhard recently dealt with as the Secular Student Alliance’s high school specialist: He recently got an anonymous letter from a high school teacher who saw the SSA’s Educator’s Brochure (PDF) and felt the need to correct it and save children from eternal damnation. This person said that an atheist group had tried to form at his school but they faced an obstacle: It… Read more
This is an excerpt from Meaning and Value in a Secular Age: Why Eupraxsophy Matters — The Writings of Paul Kurtz (Prometheus Books, 2012). Edited by Nathan Bupp. Reprinted by permission of the publisher. … All living beings undergo continuous processes of replenishment and renewal. Within each species is the constant striving to persist and to reproduce its own kind, in spite of the surrounding forces in the environment that tend to denude or destroy it. All forms of animal… Read more
At the Secular Student Alliance 2012 conference last week, comedian Keith Lowell Jenson performed an atheist-friendly set. I really loved his opening lines (0:44 mark) but the part that probably stuck out the most was when I inadvertently volunteered to go through a gay-to-straight conversion (31:27), just as they do at actual Christian de-gay-ing camps. (Ted Cox, on the mic in the black shirt, actually attended one of these.) All I have to say is David Fitzgerald was a good… Read more
Remember Secular Woman? An organization dedicated to supporting the interests and work of women in the secular movement, they made a splash right out of the gate, appearing in Glenn Beck’s The Blaze, listing a Speakers Bureau, offering memberships, and advertising the wares of their members. Now, just two weeks after launching, Secular Woman has announced a partnership with Skepticon 5 to offer travel grants to women who would be otherwise unable to attend. At least ten women will recieve the money… Read more
