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Comment by Chris Loren on December 16, 2012 at 11:37pm

glad to be here...

Comment by Brian Magee on December 12, 2012 at 10:37am

Richard Dawkins endorses atheist to fill DeMint’s seat

The effort to get AHA board member Herb Silverman appointed to fill an open S.C. US Senate seat is getting attention. A Charleston newspaper notes the support of Richard Dawkins and has started an online poll where Herb is way ahead!

Consider adding your vote, and S.C. residents can use our Action Alert system to send a message to Gov. Haley asking her to choose Herb for the post: http://action.americanhumanist.org/p/dia/action/public/?action_KEY=...

Comment by Brian Magee on December 11, 2012 at 12:19pm

Keeping Our Human Light Lit During the Holidays

HumanLight is about celebrating and expressing what fills our lives with love and meaning.

By Roy Speckhardt, December 09, 2012

The winter holiday season is a great time for families and friends to get together and enjoy each other's company. It's among the few times each year that those close to us join to reflect, celebrate, and perhaps eat a bit too much fattening food.

From a humanist perspective, one of the most enriching things we can do is strengthen the connections we share with other human beings, and this time often provides us just such an opportunity. Unfortunately, most of these holidays also have deep religious connections. And depending on how nontheists came to exclude an intervening god from their worldview, some would rather forget those religious connections, and others even find them to be unpalatable.

Most humanists, freethinkers, and other nontheists came to their rational understanding of the world gradually, finding flaws in the faith they were raised in and eventually deciding for themselves on alternatives to the supernatural. Some others were already there, having been raised in secular ethical traditions. But some came to their nontheism more abruptly, as a response to harm experienced from within traditional religions. This could be something dramatic, like the tens of thousands of kids who were molested by Catholic priests, probably only a small portion of whom have sought justice in recent years. It might also be less dramatic, but still significant, like discovering all of a sudden just how ineffective prayer can be.

 

To read the rest of this Patheos article by American Humanist Association Executive Director Roy Speckhardt, click here.

Comment by Brian Magee on December 10, 2012 at 10:00am

AHA Executive Director Roy Speckhardt recently appeared on the Fox News Radio program The Vipp Jaswal Report and had a cordial and informative discussion on humanism and the AHA. The podcast of the program is found here, where comments are welcomed.

Comment by Brian Magee on December 6, 2012 at 1:58pm

Continuum for Humanist Education

The Humanist Institute is pleased to announce the addition of Level Two online courses to the Continuum for Humanist Education (COHE) website. Level two courses include: Humanist Activism & Organization, Science & Humanism, Psychology & Humanism, Law & Politics, Religion & Spirituality, Ethics and Philosophy & the Humanist Connection.

Register today to access these free online courses!

Comment by Brian Magee on November 29, 2012 at 1:23pm

The American Humanist Association's Appignani Humanist Legal Center is now assisting the Arkansas Society of Freethinkers in their complaint about taking public school students to a church to see a performance of "A Charlie Brown Christmas."

"The message of the play is clear: Jesus Christ is the son of God and the messiah, and the real meaning of Christmas is to celebrate the anniversary of his birth," wrote Bill Burgess, the legal center's coordinator in a letter to school officials. "It is completely sectarian in nature and expressly rejects any secular version of Christmas."

Details found here: http://www.arktimes.com/ArkansasBlog/archives/2012/11/29/freethinke...

Comment by Brian Magee on November 27, 2012 at 8:42am

Black Friday and Cyber Monday are good for the economy, and Giving Tuesday is good for the causes you care about!

The American Humanist Association is joining more than 2,000 organizations on #GivingTuesday (www.givingtuesday.org) to bring friends and family together in supporting charitable organizations.

Text HUMANIST to 50555 to donate $10 and support the AHA today! http://givingtuesday.org/

Comment by Brian Magee on November 19, 2012 at 1:35pm

The Humanist Community Project: AHA-HCH Partnership Announcement

The American Humanist Association (AHA) is delighted to announce a new partnership with the Humanist Community at Harvard (HCH) on a nationwide effort to build and promote communities for the nonreligious.

“The nonreligious population has exploded, even without much local organizing. It’s going to grow even faster and become politically influential once more atheists and freethinkers build strong, humanistic communities,” said Greg Epstein, Humanist Chaplain at Harvard University and director of the HCH, a local chapter of the AHA.

In November 2012, the HCH and the AHA agreed to co-sponsor the Humanist Community Project (HCP): a Cambridge-based initiative to help create, establish, and connect a stronger nationwide network of Humanist communities focused on individual, group, and societal betterment, for the benefit of the secular and freethought movement. The project will support and supplement the AHA’s ongoing efforts to develop successful local chapters, of which it already has more than 150 nationwide. Under the agreement, the AHA will endorse the HCP as its official community development project, providing access to staff and existing Humanist community development research. Since the AHA is not providing direct funding for the HCP, the HCH will spend the rest of 2012 raising additional funds to support research and program development through May 2015.

 

Read the complete announcement here.

Comment by Brian Magee on November 13, 2012 at 11:16am

Evolution Made Clear for Kids in "Pepper’s Special Wings"

In order to give parents a fun and effective tool when teaching young children evolution and the science behind it, author Mary Anne Farah has written Pepper’s Special Wings, a children’s ebook that uses the Peppered Moth species, a recent example of natural selection, as its inspiration.

“Children have the right to know the truth about how life evolves and species change,” says Farah. “The well-documented story of how the Peppered Moth species eventually changed due to pollution darkening the plants where they congregated was perfect for a children’s book. The new survival advantage for moths with darker wings is an easy example to explain to children with no need to use words that may not have yet been learned, such as species, population, predation and camouflage.”

The story of Pepper the moth covers more than just evolution, however. While Pepper’s Special Wings relates to small children about how Charles Darwin’s evolutionary theory of natural selection works, children will also identify with Pepper’s struggles with the recurring childhood themes of self-esteem, self-image, bullying and being teased.

To read the full press release, click here.

Comment by Brian Magee on November 13, 2012 at 9:07am

On Nov. 13, 2012, the American Humanist Association launched a national ad campaign to promote a new website, KidsWithoutGod.com. This new resource has been created to strengthen and support kids and teenagers who don’t happen to believe in a god. Online display ads will be running throughout the Google network, Youtube, as well as on Cheezburger sites, Pandora, Reddit and Facebook. (Disney, Time for Kids and National Geographic Kids turned down our ads based on content.) The campaign also includes interior and exterior bus ads in Washington, DC and a billboard in Moscow, ID.

The press release with more information can be found here.

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