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This time, I spoke with the U.S. Air Force Academy Freethinkers, the oldest secular group at the military academies. Unlike every other group, they have had experience with official recognition. Cadets at USAFA are in the process of leaving for summer or commissioning into the Air Force, but a few members found time to answer my questions:

U.S. Air Force Academy Freethinkers

Tell me about your group.

USAFA Freethinkers was originally on and off and unofficial since the early 2000s. Our club had official SPIRE (“Special Programs in Religious Education”) status at one point but left due to being denied the ability to bring in a guest speaker (purportedly Christopher Hitchens himself). SPIRE is a faith-based/religious club status that allows said clubs more privileges in respect to religious accommodation than a regular, official, recreational or social club. Basically, a SPIRE group can have better support (financial and otherwise) and the ability to have activities/events for religious accommodation into scheduling, since the Academy has a very strict schedule of mandatory events and commitments.

The group then tried to become just a club but was basically laughed out of the boardroom due to being a “faith-related” group. Being so, we were unofficial for another year (2010-2011) until a chaplain and former SPIRE-head welcomed us back to SPIRE status with open arms. He even said:

“I can assure you that we here on the USAFA Chaplain Corps team take seriously our oath to ‘support and defend the Constitution’.  We will continue to do all that we can to stand-up for and defend the rights of EVERY American regardless of color, gender, or creed (theistic, poly-theistic, or non-theistic).  We welcome you and the Free Thinker group back into the SPIRE program and will defend and support your rights to Free Exercise and Free Speech and hope that you will do the same for every other citizen pursuing the American dream here on this campus as well. I believe that SPIRE is a perfect example of the vision our Founding Fathers had for this nation, extremely diverse groups all working together side-by-side, agreeing to disagree agreeably.  I hope that you will join us as we continue in this great American experiment that has been going on now for these 234+ years and look forward to continued dialogue with you on this topic.”

We then regained SPIRE status until we merely asked about financial funding and support (such as ways of fundraising for events, NOT actually taking money from the Christian tithers and collections), and the new chaplain leadership brought our status into question. After reviewing what the head of chaplains said in relation to definitions of religion and faith, we were told we could no longer be part of SPIRE. We were basically forced into either nothingness or club status (which does not afford the same privileges as a “faith-based” club or SPIRE would).

USAFA Freethinkers has volunteered for some community service (such as helping a nonprofit dog mill rescue establishment multiple times, Walk a Mile in Their Shoes), but our focus this year has primarily been attaining an official status. We have also attended unofficial group events such as CU-Boulder’s Darwin Day and Skepticamp. We plan on attending more events in the future with our newly reorganized inner-club structure (which includes a Social Events Officer and organizer).

Are you recognized by the Academy? If so, how was that process? If not, why, and what has been your experience.

At the moment, we are trying to gain just an extracurricular club status. We were in the past (as mentioned in the first question) recognized, which has vacillated from official to unofficial.

Are you able to post advertisements, host events, and travel with the same freedom as other groups of your size?

At the moment, not really publicly. We need to get official club status before being able to determinate ads and events. However, an interesting consideration is the fact that we are somewhat religiously (or better yet, irreligiously based), and that we are also part of a religiously sensitive military (meaning any dissemination of “religious” events without the proper channeling or permission is impossible).

Our Facebook page is a public hub for members and non-members of over 100 people. Our email [distribution list] contains approximately 15-20 (since we’re in limbo of seniors commissioning and incoming freshman [during] the upcoming semester). Regular attendance at the official club meetings is around 7-10.

What have been the best and worst experiences you’ve had as a secular group at the Academy?

The best is being able to coordinate unofficial (freethinking) events and spend time with each other… becoming a family… and even occasionally and civilly discussing our viewpoints with religious (usually theistic) guests.

The worst experience has been our inability to have funding or have official events and trips due to our lack of status as anything at the moment.

What are your goals?

We would like to:

1. Get some sort of status (we are currently waiting on the status of paperwork to become an official club)

 

2. Get financial support (for events such as field trips, going off campus to freethinking events, etc.)

 

3. Utilize our newly established and military-based structure to provide a more effective group and experience for our family/members.

So why have students joined USAFA Freethinkers? [This question was open to all members of the group]

“This environment, as I am sure many are, is one in which there is no reason to go out of your way to identify yourself as an atheist. People have so many negative connotations associated with atheism and word getting out could block a promotion or high-quality assignment.”

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“I’ve never had an outright bad encounter here (home is a different story being born/raised in the Bible Belt); the only issue I have had is the military chaplains not recognizing our Freethinker’s group along with other religious groups but as only merely a ‘club’ (which brings about different privileges and statuses).”

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“Free pizza. And our freshman are absolutely adorable.”

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“Because I needed a place to talk to people during basic instead of being talked at, and I also like the idea of a small group with close-knit members who are all pretty open, which is nice at the academy.. not saying people are close minded but we’re def the most open-minded.”

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“Freethinkers at USAFA really keeps my spirit enlivened.  Being able to gather around other skeptical minded people to hash out the universe’s wonders and problems and how we fit into them is a marvelous opportunity, and one I’ve looked forward to every Monday.”

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Previous interviews in the series have included members of West Point SSA and Naval Academy Freethinkers and Atheists.

NOTE: A number of cadets contributed to this post, on condition of anonymity. They are not speaking in their official capacity. Statements are not intended to reflect official policy.

There was a vote by the senior class earlier in the semester to determine whether or not to have a prayer during graduation, but the vote itself was faculty-led. This is in accordance with district policy which says that benedictions at school events should be determined by majority vote.

Max is suing on the grounds that the policy itself is unconstitutional:

The clear purpose of the policy is [to] promote religion; it… lacks a secular legislative purpose; and it cultivates, fosters and fertilizes a most excessive governmental entanglement with religion. The mere passage by the District of this policy evidences a purpose and perception of government establishment of religion. The policy’s text and the circumstances surrounding its enactment reveal that it has such a purpose. The District’s implementation of an electoral process that subjects the issue of prayer to a majoritarian vote has established a governmental mechanism that turns the school into a forum for religious debate and empowers the student body majority to subject students of minority views to constitutionally improper messages. The award of that power alone is constitutionally repugnant.

Yesterday was the graduation and it went exactly as planned, including the prayer. Since Max is a friend of mine, I decided to go and support him. None of the local news networks had contacted Max before the ceremony, so the story was still relatively quiet. Most of the student body so far has supported Max in his efforts for equality, so it has really only been the school district blocking equality.

Here’s video of the pre-graduation prayer (Apologies for the terrible quality — there was a baby and I was far away)

Click here to view the embedded video.

Gentlemen, please remove your hats.

Father, we come today once again asking for your guidance, protection, and mercy. Be with us, Lord, as we venture out into the world and start this journey called life… lead us all, Lord, through the path that you intend for us to follow. We ask that you will continually watch over us because we need you now more than ever and help us, Lord, with any future endeavors that we may face. Because we know with you all things are possible. We thank you for all the teachers, parents, and administrators who [got] us through our 12 years of school. We also pray for families of those who didn’t make it here to see this day, but remain in our hearts. Our final prayer, Lord, is that you grant us the serenity to accept the things we cannot change, the courage to change the things we can, and the wisdom to know the difference.

It was a relatively normal graduation and nothing (else) went awry. After graduation, a news anchor was waiting for Max to get a quote.

So far he’s been covered on WLTX and he was interviewed by WIStv in the evening.

Overall it went about as expected for the day. Congratulations on graduating, Max!

You can see how that plays out at Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal

Mark Reyes

He’s also an atheist. And thanks to his activism, the school will be getting rid of a nearly-100-year-old tradition of reciting invocations and benedictions at the ceremony:

Poteet Independent School District Superintendent Andy Castillo announced Tuesday that due to legal problems the words “Invocation” and “Benediction” will be removed from the commencement program of their Friday night graduation ceremony. The words “Opening Remarks” and “Closing Remarks” will replace “Invocation” and “Benediction”.

The substitution comes after the school district received a complaint from a person representing Americans United for Separation of Church and State. “After receiving this information last week, we have been working with our attorneys to avoid legal problems,” said Poteet Superintendent Andy Castillo.

Reyes added: “I know it’s tradition, but tradition isn’t always right.”

The Fox affiliate in San Antonio has the (un-embeddable) video interview with Reyes and you can watch that here.

I’m eager to hear how Reyes uses his time on stage.

I’m even more interested to hear how Religion Right groups — who push hard for Christian students to use their time on the graduation stage to proselytize — react to this. Will they support Reyes’ right to speak about atheism on stage (if he so chooses)? Will they denounce him? Will they just ignore the whole issue? (My money’s on the last option.)

Either way, Reyes has already shown courage and wisdom by getting the school to end a tradition that never should have been in place to begin with. What the administration at that school couldn’t do, Reyes has done.

We owe him a (root) beer for that.

(Thanks to Brian for the link!)

Check it out:

Manal al-Sharif is a Saudi Arabian women’s rights activist who helped instigate the Women2Drive campaign, as women in Saudi Arabia are not allowed to drive. Over 100 women partook in the campaign last June 17^th.  Al-Sharif herself has been arrested on a few occasions for driving.

In the above video from the 2012 Oslo Freedom Forum, she discusses how she came to lose her religious extremism because of the Internet and how 9/11 changed her view on the world in which she had been raised. Al-Sharif was born during the year of the fundamentalist Sunni riots in Saudi Arabia which came about as a response to the relatively liberal government that was in place at the time. Al-Sharif chronicles the change of the position of women from 1979 to the present and the taboos that began to unfold around her and her family. Women began to lose the freedoms that they had gained before the riots, but after her realization and opening up to different points of view, al-Sharif is now fighting for those rights today.

Are there any particularly powerful moments during the video that you like? Leave the time stamp in the comments!

(Thanks to ihedenius for the link!)

My argument is that no group of people, and certainly no society, has ever suffered because everyone became too willing to hear arguments and data and got too interested in other people’s points of view. The zero-sum contest is between believing things for good reasons and believing things for bad reasons, you know? And it just so happens that science, 99 percent of the time, is on the right side of that cut. And religion more or less 99 percent of the time is on the wrong side.

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All I’m arguing for really is that we should have a conversation where the best ideas really thrive, where there’s no taboo against criticizing bad ideas, and where everyone who shows up, in order to get their ideas entertained, has to meet some obvious burdens of intellectual rigor and self-criticism and honesty—and when people fail to do that, we are free to stop listening to them. What religion has had up until this moment is a different set of rules that apply only to it, which is you have to respect my religious certainty even though I’m telling you I arrived at it irrationally.

So, if there is an argument for why the Quran is so good, please bring it forward. I’ve read the Quran several times and it’s not that good. In fact, it’s conspicuously bad as a moral map, and a spiritual map. You can wander blindfolded into a Barnes & Noble, and the first book you pick off the shelf will have more wisdom than the Quran. The Quran is uniquely barren of wisdom relevant to the 21st century. It’s got a few good lines about patience and generosity, and the rest is just vilification of the infidel.

The full interview is here.

This 4-year-old boy is already singing about homos going to hell:

I know the Bible’s right,

Somebody’s wrong…

Ain’t no homo’s gonna make it to heaven

Perhaps even worse, he received a standing ovation with hollers, and a proud father shouting, “That’s my boy!”

I really have nothing more to say.  This is just about the worst thing I have seen in quite some time.  If this is what Christianity teaches, no one should want any part of it. (And just to be clear, even the kinder, gentler, “love the sinner, hate the sin” type of Christians still believe acting on your homosexuality is a sin. It’s not just the extreme types like in this video.)

Feel free to let Pastor Jeff Sangl know what a great job he’s doing preaching peace and love! And don’t resort to his level when writing any emails.

My assumptions about what atheists think about Christians.

Obviously I don’t know all of the atheists in the world, but my interactions with the bulk of the atheists that I’ve met online and those I’ve met in person through Jason have pretty much shattered how I assumed that group felt about Christians. I thought that atheists believed that all Christians were stupid; most simply feel that Christians are wrong. I thought that atheists hated Christians; most don’t have any problem with Christians. I thought that atheists were angry; most are considerably more laid back than some of my evangelical friends. Over and over I’ve found that my assumptions keep being proved wrong and are slowly disappearing.

That’s only the first item. You can (and should) check out the rest of her list here.

Even though his work didn’t lead to a repeal, he’s now at least getting recognized for his efforts. He’s one of four recipients of the Hugh M. Hefner First Amendment Award:

… the award was established in 1979 and is intended to “honor individuals who have made significant contributions in the vital effort to protect and enhance First Amendment rights for all Americans. The award winners, many of whom are unsung heroes, come from various walks of life.” Kopplin will receive a cash award of $5,000 and a commemorative plaque.

… and a trip to the Playboy Mansion for the reception. (For Science!)

Congrats, Zack!