Hemant Mehta’s talk, Improving the Atheist Image, was covered twice by the IDS (once the day day of, and once the day after).

Here’s the first article. And here’s the follow-up article.

Location: Fine Arts 015

Hemant Mehta, author of "I Sold My Soul On eBay"

Description: Hemant Mehta is the Chair of the Secular Student Alliance (SSA) Board of Directors.
He attended the University of Illinois at Chicago, where he graduated with honors in both Mathematics and Biology. While there, he also helped establish their first secular student group, Students WithOut Religious Dogma (SWORD). He is now earning his Masters in Math Education at DePaul University.

He has worked with the Center for Inquiry and is also an SSA representative to the Secular Coalition for America.
More recently, Hemant received national attention, including being featured on the front page of the Wall Street Journal, for his work as the “eBay Atheist.”
Hemant’s blog can be read at FriendlyAtheist.com and his book “I Sold My Soul on eBay” (WaterBrook Press) was published in 2007.
He currently works as a high school Math teacher in the suburbs of Chicago.

(Room reserved from 7pm; talk starts at 7:30pm.)

Location: Wonderlab Museum

Description: The group is going on an outing to Wonderlab Museum of Science & Technology during the day on Sunday.  Instead of an evening meeting, we’ll be meeting on campus at 12:45pm and going over to visit from 1-5pm.  We’ll go out and get some food in the area afterwards.

The campus meeting spot is in the circle drive in front of the IMU.  If you want to come and/or can drive, email secular@indiana.edu.  The cost of museum admission is $7.

Location: Sassafras Room in the IMU

Description: This weekly meeting is a discussion that we call “Russell’s Tea Party.”  The origin of that name is below.  The topic for this week will be homeopathy.

Bertrand Russell, a British philosopher (among other things), is the namesake of our biweekly discussion meetings. They are called tea parties to honor the religious analogy he came up with called Russell’s Teapot, which stated

If I were to suggest that between the Earth and Mars there is a china teapot revolving about the sun in an elliptical orbit, nobody would be able to disprove my assertion provided I were careful to add that the teapot is too small to be revealed even by our most powerful telescopes. But if I were to go on to say that, since my assertion cannot be disproved, it is an intolerable presumption on the part of human reason to doubt it, I should rightly be thought to be talking nonsense. If, however, the existence of such a teapot were affirmed in ancient books, taught as the sacred truth every Sunday, and instilled into the minds of children at school, hesitation to believe in its existence would become a mark of eccentricity and entitle the doubter to the attentions of the psychiatrist in an enlightened age or of the Inquisitor in an earlier time.

Though this analogy is a parody of religion, our group does not  debate or discuss religion at every meeting. Our topics range from political to religious to philosophical to scientific. We have discussed evolution, morality, education, and other topics.

If you have ideas or suggestions for future Russell’s Tea Party topics, please post them on the forum. Or join us at our next meeting!

The Herald-Times wrote an article about Annie Laurie Gaylor, co-founder of the FFRF, speaking at IU.

You must have a subscription to read the H-T version. Fortunately the article was also syndicated by the Times-Mail.

There were dozens of comments posted on both of the articles; in general, Herald-Times subscribers seemed rather more supportive of our cause; Times-Mail subscribers, not so much.

Here was my favourite comment from a Times-Mail reader:

I wonder why these so called atheist never scream and try to pass laws against lepriconns, tooth fairy’s, Santa clause? because they know they do not exist. Why talk about something if it is not real? They rail against God because deep in their spirits, they know they will stand before Him. I like the verse’s He has written for them.
Psalms 37;12 The wicked plotteth against the just, and gnasheth upon him with his teeth.
37:13:: The Lord shall laugh at him, for He seeth that his day is coming.

This one is pretty good too:

John 14:6 JESUS said, “I am the way, the truth, the life, no man comes the Father (Heaven), but by me”… Christians don’t only think it, we believe it… If Jesus said it, that pretty much makes it gospel (no pun intended)… and BTW nonsensical things that boggle my mind that people believe to be true: we came from an amoeba, aliens exist, and that Obama is going to “Change” America… And Hard as it is to believe, Science and anthropology actually align with, not against the Bible…. You’ve swallowed everything the Haters of Christianity have put out there, hook, lies, and sinker….

Perfectly articulated, don’t you think?

The Secular Alliance of IU uses a LISTSERV mailing list to send emails out to the whole group and inform them about events.  At IU, you are probably on multiple mailing lists on campus that are all centrally managed.  You can go to the IU LISTSERV page to manage your subscriptions all at once.  Here you will find information about subscribing and unsubscribing to lists.

You can learn more about LISTSERV mailing lists at IU from the Knowledge Base article.

If you want to be on the SAIU mailing list, and get event updates, news, and other information, you can send an email to ‘LISTSERV@INDIANA.EDU’ with the text ‘SUBSCRIBE SECULAR-L’ in the body of the email (not the subject line).

If you are on the SAIU mailing list, and would like to stop receiving messages, send an email to ‘LISTSERV@INDIANA.EDU’ with the text ‘UNSUBSCRIBE SECULAR-L’ in the body of the email (not the subject line).

An opinion piece in today’s IDS claims that creation science doubters don’t take the time to understand creationist claims.

Link.

Annie Laurie Gaylor is giving a talk this Saturday, March 7 at 4pm in Woodburn 100. The topic is “Why we need freedom from religion.”

Download a copy of the flyer for the event and post it around campus!

Annie Laurie Gaylor, co-president of Freedom From Religion Foundation, will speak this Saturday at 4pm in Woodburn 100.

Annie Laurie Gaylor and her mother, Anne Nicol Gaylor, co-founded Freedom From Religion Foundation, Madison, WI, in 1976. Annie Laurie was a college student at the time. She is now  Co-President of FFRF with her husband, Dan Barker. She is editor of Freethought Today which is published ten times a year by FFRF.

Annie Laurie is the editor of Women Without Superstition, “No Gods, No Masters”–The Collected Writings of Women Freethinkers of the Nineteenth & Twentieth Centuries. She is the author of Woe to Women–The Bible Tells Me So–The Bible, Female Sexuality, & the Law and Betrayal of Trust: Clergy Abuse of Children.

She makes numerous appearances on national and local radio and television advancing the cause of Separation of State and Church and other issues involving nonbelievers. She is a graduate of the Journalism School, University of Wisconsin-Madison.

She will be talking about why the lack of freedom from religion threatens progress in the United States, and why atheists, freethinkers, and other nontheists need to come out of the closet.  FFRF, a state/church watchdog based in Madison, Wis., is the nation’s largest association of atheists and agnostics.

The talk is hosted by the Secular Alliance of IU and CFI Indiana.

If you’re closer to Indianapolis and free on Sunday, Gaylor will also be speaking at CFI Indy at 6pm.  You can find more information at their website.

Movie: TBA

Info: 3/26, 7:30pm

Place: Student Building 150