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I’m Openly Secular Documentary

On May 2-3, 2014, the Freedom from Religion Foundation held a conference in downtown Raleigh “Freedom From Religion in the Bible Belt.” I gave one of the main addresses at the conference, and there were lot of other interesting speakers.  In addition to the public talks, the organizers taped a number of interviews, that were then put together into a kind of documentary format, found here.   My comments are interspersed throughout, along with those of the other participants. Other participants included: Randy Bender, a former Evangelical Lutheran Church of America pastor. Max Nielson, winner of FFRF’s 2012 Thomas Jefferson Student Activist Award, is one of 3 plaintiffs in FFRF’s lawsuit over unconstitutional graduation prayer at Irmo High School, S.C., and school board prayer. He founded a chapter of the Secular Student Alliance at the College of Charleson.   He has also interned as social media manger of the Secular Coalition and he remains a volunteer social media manager. Michael Nugent, founder and chair of Atheist Ireland. Michael flew in from Dublin to give an international flavor [...]

2020-04-03T13:10:13-04:00November 1st, 2015|Public Forum, Video Media|

Freedom From Religion Foundation Lecture

On May 3 of this year I gave a lecture at a meeting of the Freedom from Religion Foundation in Raleigh NC.    The lecture is about what it is like to be an agnostic who writes about religion.  That's an irony that I am constantly aware of and most of the lecture is about my experience as a non-religious person who is an expert in something he doesn't believe in. I also used  the lecture  to stress that being "free from religion" is not the same thing as "attacking religion."  I absolutely agree with the founding principle of the FFRF that no religion (of any kind, Christian or otherwise) should be imposed on us by the state.  But I do not at *all* think that this is the same thing as being opposed to religion.  I am personally not opposed to religion or people who practice it (although I *am* quite definitely opposed to fundamenalist kinds of religion -- whether Christian, Muslim, Jewish, or whatever).  And I think organized agnostic/atheist/secular/humanist attacks on religion per [...]

2017-12-14T22:43:38-05:00August 16th, 2014|Public Forum, Video Media|
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