Calling all atheists, agnostics, secularists, skeptics, humanists, freethinkers, doubters, and all other non-religious undergrads!

Join the UB Freethinkers, the campus organization devoted to promoting rational thinking, an understanding of the world around us through science and reasoning, and non-religious community activism.

This year we’ll be meeting biweekly to discuss current events and issues relevant to the secular community. We plan to host lively debates, occasional guest speakers, movie nights, and opportunities for non-religious community service!

Though our intention is to question religion, superstition, and pseudoscience while encouraging rational thinking and a non-religious lifestyle, we are determined to do so in a positive manner. The non-religious—especially atheists—are still one of the most distrusted and misunderstood groups in the United States. As a recent University of Minnesota study revealed, “Even though atheists are few in number, not formally organized and relatively hard to publicly identify, they are seen as a threat to the American way of life by a large portion of the American public.”** This year, one of the major goals of the UB Freethinkers is to demystify non-religious lifestyles and to promote a greater understanding of secularism. We cannot overcome animosity born of misunderstanding unless we GET SERIOUS about positively representing the secular community in the United States and on campus.

Come get your doubt on at our first meeting on Wednesday, September 7 at 3pm in the Commuter Lounge in the Student Union. (It’s on the second floor at the top of the stairs that lead down to the ATMs.)

**http://www1.umn.edu/news/news-releases/2006/UR_RELEASE_MIG_2816.html

Happy Carl Sagan Day everybody.

Fitting for International Blasphemy Rights day, and especially after listening to Ken Ham speak the other night…

Ingersoll’s Vow

When I became convinced that the universe was natural,
That all the ghosts and gods were myths,
There entered into my brain, into my soul, into every drop of my blood,
The sense, the feeling, the joy of freedom.
The walls of my prison crumbled and fell.
The dungeon was flooded with light
And all the bolts and bars and manacles turned to dust.
I was no longer a servant, a serf, or a slave.
There was for me no master in all the wide world, not even in infinite space.

I was free to think.
Free to express my thoughts,
Free to live in my own ideal.
Free to live for myself, and those I loved.
Free to use all my faculties, all my senses.
Free to spread imagination’s wings,
Free to investigate, to guess, and dream and hope.
Free to judge and determine for myself.
Free to reject all ignorant and cruel creeds,
All the inspired books that savages have produced,
And the barbarous legends of the past.
Free from sanctified mistakes and “holy” lies.
Free from the fear of eternal pain,
Free from the winged monsters of the night.
Free from devils, ghosts and gods.
For the first time I was free.

There were no prohibited places in all of the realm of thought.
No error, no space where fancy could not spread her painted wings.
No chains for my limbs.
No lashes for my back.
No flames for my flesh.
No Master’s frown or threat,
No following in another’s steps.
No need to bow or cringe or crawl, or utter lying words.
I was free; I stood erect and fearlessly, joyously faced all worlds.

My heart was filled with gratitude, with thankfulness,
And went out in love to all the heros, the thinkers who gave their lives
For liberty of hand and brain,
For the freedom of labor and thought to those who fell
On the fierce fields of war.
To those who died in dungeons, bound in chains,
To those by fire consumed,
To all the wise, the good, the brave of every land
Whose thoughts and deeds have given freedom to the sons of men.
And then, I vowed to grasp the torch that they held, and hold it high,
That light might conquer darkness still.

-Robert Green Ingersoll (1833-1899)

(Source)

Wednesday’s edition of The Spectrum included an editorial regarding a New Jersey Transit Authority worker fired for burning a Koran on his own private time.  The editorial defends the right of the man to burn the book, but makes critical mistakes in regards to the “intolerable,” the “sacred,” and the “peaceful.”  The following letter has been submitted, and will hopefully appear in Friday’s print edition.

UPDATE:  It was printed, and is available on The Spectrum’s website.

To The Editor,

An issue as important as free speech deserves an intellectually honest and coherent examination — something we at UB Freethinkers work to promote on campus.  However, Wednesday’s opinion “N­ew Jersey Transit worker fired for Koran burning” failed in this regard.

In it, the author wrote, “Making a public display of burning a peaceful and sacred text is intolerable.  But Fenton’s First Amendment rights were clearly violated…” Although they should be commended for highlighting and defending Fenton’s rights, the author’s loose wording contradicts itself, logically undermines the entirety of an otherwise principled statement, and hinges on — and blindly serves to promote — false claims to both the sacredness and peacefulness of religious texts.

First, to call burning any book “intolerable” negates, in short order, the very notion that the freedom to do the deed is any sort of defensible right.  On that principle of free expression — of which the written word is but one facet — we at UB Freethinkers do agree that burning any book is “reprehensible,” to use the author’s earlier and more sensible term.  However we argue that to do it is still entirely tolerable, since this act of free expression physically harms no one.  It is precisely the “intent of the First Amendment” to protect exactly that: unpopular and offensive — but still harmless – free expression.

Likewise, a book’s status among a certain religious sect does not dictate how others must treat it, or make its destruction at all unique.  Books are books; full of ideas both good and bad, truths and myths, focused on very earthly issues, and penned by very earthly human beings subject to very human emotions.  Even among those books considered by some to be “sacred” or “holy,” historical investigation and critical inquiry reveal that they are no different.  As such, burning them is no more reprehensible, and no less tolerable in a free society.

When any books are so casually accepted as “sacred,” the question of where critical thinking, doubt, and free expression are allowed to go becomes not just harder, but dangerous to answer.  To label something as “sacred” is a very tempting, but very reckless human impulse — one especially sad to see on full display in 2010.  Unfortunately, as too many still do, the editorial’s author fell prey.

Lastly, as a group dedicated to the rational examination of religion, we at UB Freethinkers would be quick to point out that for the author to call the Koran “peaceful” — or the Bible and Torah for that matter — only serves to show that they have failed to read it in its entirety.  It is precisely that sort of casual thought and feel-good obfuscation that undermines objective and honest dialogue on transcendent issues like freedom of expression.

Ed Beck
Vice President and Co-Founder
UB Freethinkers
www.UBFreethinkers.org

Be sure to join us for a discussion with author and philosopher Dr. John Shook about his new book The God Debates: A 21st Century Guide for Atheists and Believers (and Everyone in Between), due out October 19th!

Dr. Shook will be discussing the evolution of the arguments both for and against the existence of a god across history, let us know where the arguments currently stand, and then explain why in his opinion, there’s no valid evidence for any gods.

As a naturalist, pragmatist, and humanist philosopher by trade, Dr. Shook will also explain why, in the absence of any divine creator, we must then develop our own secular, humanistic ethics and values based upon reason, consequences, and human compassion and concern for one other.

9/30, 5pm at 209 Norton.  Be there!

There you go.  209!  Bring your friends, bring ideas!

Hey everybody, Ed here.  I just wanted to throw up a post to say hello to our visitors who may have seen our flyers around campus, and pass along some usable info.

For those of you new to UB, welcome!  You may have already noticed the deluge of religious groups and their proselytizing ways on campus.  Well, they’re sweet people and all, but we’re here to counter that.  We aim to provide a rational, freethinking perspective on campus, and create a nice comfy home for the godless and the doubting at the University at Buffalo.

As for announcements, we don’t have a meeting time or place scheduled yet.  We’ve applied for a room and will let everyone know as soon as that pans out.  In the meantime, keep checking back here and on our Facebook Fan Page for announcements.  Also, be sure to join our mailing list!  Simply send a request to UBFreethinkers [at] gmail [dot] com to be added, or leave a message on our Facebook wall.

A few of us from UB Freethinkers also run a community-wide group in the area called Buffalo Freethought.  We meet every Sunday evening at 6pm at Spot Coffee on Elmwood Avenue downtown.  Check out our Facebook fan page here.  A website is in the works…

For those of you who are 21, we also have Drinking Skeptically – Western New York!  We meet at a local bar on the last Friday of each month.  Our Facebook group can be found here, along with our Meetup.com group here.

Also, for you newbie freethinkers at UB, we also have the good fortune of being located directly across the street from the international headquarters of the worlds largest freethought and skeptic organization, the fantastic Center for Inquiry.  They host events year-round, including Tuesday night poetry readings, Wednesday night potlucks, and Friday night lectures by authors, professors, and other nerd-tastic guests.  We try to attend en masse, and it’s always a great time.

If you have any questions, or wish to blog on our site, send us an email or hit us on on Facebook!

Cheers,

Ed Beck
Co-Founder and Vice President
UB Freethinkers

Fall semester for UBFT is about to launch, keep an eye open on campus, and check back here for announcements very, very, very soon….

We’ll be tinkering with things around here for the next few days.  Don’t be shocked.

…is kaput.

Check back for something possibly in the fall.