Here’s a research summary excerpt you won’t be seeing in the United States anytime soon: Two thirds of UK adults (66%) or 32.2 million people have no connection with church at present (nor with another religion). These people are evenly divided between those who have been in the past but have since left (16 million) and those who have never been in their lives (16.2 million). This secular majority presents a major challenge to churches. Most of them – 29.3… Read more
I don’t know whether Paula Zahn is trying to atone for the mess she made with the atheist community or whether she just enjoys digging a deeper hole for herself… But for what it’s worth, Ellen Johnson, president of American Atheists, will be Paula’s guest tonight at 8:00 EST on CNN. According to the announcement: Johnson will be discussing the recent Newsweek poll revealing that 91% of Americans believe in deity, half reject the findings of evolutionary science, and 62%… Read more
Last month, Congressman Pete Stark (D-California) made history when he came out publicly as the first non-theistic, elected official. He did this at the prompting of the Secular Coalition for America, which had run a contest asking people to nominate the highest-ranking such official. At the time, the “second place” winner was a school board president. Well, after the positive press given to Stark, other elected officials are slowly following in Stark’s footsteps! (That’s right– officials. Plural!) But we’ll take… Read more
A couple days ago, an article discussing the upcoming The New Humanism conference at Harvard circulated through the Associated Press wire. The story was picked up by many papers, including the Washington Post, the New York Times, and the Guardian. This was personally exciting if for no other reason that the Secular Student Alliance that I chair is working together with the Harvard Humanist Chaplaincy in promoting the conference (the SSA is sandwiching the main event with our own “activist… Read more
