Patheos Featured Writers

Dale McGowan has written several books from the nonreligious perspective, including Parenting Beyond Belief, Raising Freethinkers, and Atheism for Dummies. His book In Faith and In Doubt is the first to focus on marriages between religious believers and nonbelievers.

After 15 years as a college professor, Dale became a nonreligious parent educator and was named Harvard Humanist of the Year in 2008. He founded Foundation Beyond Belief, the world's largest humanist philanthropy, and served as Executive Director from 2009 to 2015. He is currently Director of Growth and Engagement at Patheos.

Dale holds a BA in physical anthropology from UC Berkeley and a PhD in music composition from the University of Minnesota. He lives with his family near Atlanta.

Recent Articles

Born This Way?
In a very real way, we are born in the Stone Age. Childhood is a period during which we are brought — by parenting, experience, and education — into the modern world. Or not.

Evolution for Breakfast
My kids learned about evolution from chewable vitamins, pink deer, and samurai crabs.

No Virginia...and the World is Still Wonderful
"Please tell me the truth," says a little girl. Then the editor not only lies, but tells her that the world would be intolerable if this thing he knows to be false were false. And the world coos with delight.

The Big Reveal: Telling Your Religious Partner You're an Atheist
By the end, I was relieved, we knew each other better, she had articulated her own beliefs in a way that was new even to her...and the biggest secret I had was out in the open.