Tag Archives: America;

An Interview With Roy Speckhardt

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Roy Speckhardt is the Executive Director for the American Humanist Association, the oldest and largest Humanist organization in the United States. He is also a board member of the Humanist Institute, and an advisory board member of both the Secular Student Alliance and The Women’s Law and Public Policy Fellowship Program. Previously, he served as deputy director for the Interfaith Alliance. He lives in Maryland with his wife Charlene Gomes and daughters Johanna and Riley. (Roy’s Web Site). Q: Roy … Read on…

An Interview with Herb Silverman

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Herb Silverman is a native of Philadelphia. He received his Ph.D. in mathematics from Syracuse University and has been a Professor of Mathematics at the College of Charleston since 1976. He has published over 100 research papers in mathematics journals, and is also the recipient of the Distinguished Research Award. In the 1990s, after learning that atheists were ineligible, by law, to hold elected office in South Carolina, he ran for office and pursued overturning the law in court, succeeding … Read on…

An Interview with Ellen Johnson

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Ellen Johnson has been an activist for American Atheists (AA) since 1978. In addition to having served on the AA Board of Directors, she was also the New Jersey representative for ten years. Currently, she is the President of AA. She considers herself “one of the fortunate few who grew up in an Atheist home.” She is raising her two children in an Atheist environment. American Atheists is an organization dedicated to securing the civil liberties of Atheists and the … Read on…

Mormon Heaven Part 2 (of four)

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The History of the LDS Church Let’s begin with a capsule history of the Church. The founder, Joseph Smith, was born on a farm in upstate New York in the early nineteenth century. That area later became known as The Burned-Over District, a nickname alluding to the many fire-and-brimstone preachers who roamed the area delivering jeremiads to the local residents in tent shows and so-called camp meetings, urging them to repent their sinful ways lest they burn eternally in Hell. … Read on…

An Interview With August E. Brunsman IV

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August E. Brunsman IV, Executive Director, Secular Student Alliance Brunsman has been the unpaid Executive Director of the SSA since 2001 and has been the paid ED since October 2004. Before that, he worked as a programmer for the Institute for Humanist Studies for three years. In 1997 he founded Students for Freethought at the Ohio State University where he graduated Phi Beta Kappa majoring in psychology and minoring in mathematics and cognitive science in 2001. Brunsman is also the … Read on…

The Eloquent Engineer: The Dark Side of DNA

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The rate of scientific discoveries has been increasing exponentially for centuries and we are on the leading edge of that vast wave. New technology comes at us so fast that most people have become numb to it. New electronics? Ho hum. A revolutionary physics theory, another extraterrestrial planet, or uncovering the bones of a hitherto unknown ancient ancestor, nothing fazes us any more. We accept world-changing discoveries matter-of-factly, that is, if we notice at all. However, something special is happening … Read on…

An Interview with Lori Lipman Brown

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Celebrating Her Second Anniversary As Director of the Secular Coalition for America Lori Lipman Brown is a former Nevada State Senator, private practice lawyer and law professor. Her legislative record in the arenas of public education, mental health care and the repeal of consensual sex crimes resulted in her being named Civil Libertarian of the Year by the Southern Nevada chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union and Legislator of the Year by the Nevada chapter of the National Association … Read on…

An Interview with Jim Haught

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James A. Haught was born in 1932 in a small West Virginia farm town that had no electricity or paved streets.  He graduated from a rural high school that had 13 students in the senior class.  He came to Charleston, worked as a delivery boy, then became a teen-age apprentice printer at the Charleston Daily Mail in 1951.  Developing a yen to be a reporter, he volunteered to work without pay in the Daily Mail newsroom on his days off, … Read on…

A Humanist’s Declaration of Independence

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Dearest Family and Friends, At a point in my life, it became necessary to honestly examine the religious dogma presented to me as fact, and upon finding it lacking, throw off its shackles and assume personal responsibility for my actions. A decent respect to the opinions of family and friends requires a declaration of the causes that prompt my rejection of religion. This decision required a lifetime to reach, certainly not something that happened impulsively with little thought. There was … Read on…