We don’t need our presidential candidates to be scientists, although many of us wouldn’t complain too much if it were so. We do need them to have an understanding of how important science must be in forming public policy and informing our leadership in resolving vital issues. ScienceDebate is a drive started by several scientists and science communicators in an attempt to hold at least one debate focusing on science in 2008’s presidential cycle. The demand is growing for a debate in the 2016 cycle, with more than 43,000 signers.

Sheril Kirshenbaum is the Executive Director of Science Debate and will be talking to Greg Laden about progress being made and prospects for finally putting science on the table as a topic for discussion in the election.

Related Links:

• Sheril Kirshenbaum
• Science Debate Dot Org
• Greg Laden Interviews Sheril Kirshenbaum for ScienceBlogs – Topic? Science Debate.

Listen to AM 950 KTNF this Sunday at 9 a.m. Central to hear Atheists Talk, produced by Minnesota Atheists. Stream live online. Call in to the studio at 952-946-6205, or send an e-mail to [email protected] during the live show. If you miss the live show, listen to the podcast later.

Follow Atheists Talk on Facebook and Twitter for regular updates. If you like the show, consider supporting us with a one-time or sustaining donation.

Atheists Talk is not the only podcast in the Twin Cities for atheist and skeptics.  On this show, we’ll do a bit of cross-promotion.  Joining us live and in the studio are podcasters who have their own shows: Geeks Without God, Positively Godless, A Minnesota Trans Atheist, and Dimland Radio. We’ll find out what they say and do in their podcasts and give our listeners some new audio resources for fun, science, atheism, music, and skepticality.

After the show, join us and some of our guests for brunch at Q-Cumbers restaurant.

Our podcasting guests:

• Geeks Without God
• Positively Godless
• A Minnesota Trans-Atheist
• Dimland Radio

Listen to AM 950 KTNF this Sunday at 9 a.m. Central to hear Atheists Talk, produced by Minnesota Atheists. Stream live online. Call in to the studio at 952-946-6205, or send an e-mail to [email protected] during the live show. If you miss the live show, listen to the podcast later.

Follow Atheists Talk on Facebook and Twitter for regular updates. If you like the show, consider supporting us with a one-time or sustaining donation.

In denigrating atheists, theists will often claim that we have no basis for morals nor a grounding for ethics.  We don’t have a book; we don’t have a source; we don’t have commandments that tell us, as atheists, how to be good.  Engaging the issue, atheists often make the mistake of listing all the good things that we do as citizens and generally altruistic human beings and rightly we are proud of our efforts.  But we aren’t necessarily more moral or ethical than anyone else, and so, if we take credit for the good things we do, we have skipped a crucial step in argumentation: We haven’t defined our terms.  Asking Christians to define ethics and morals based on the actions we take and contemplate in our daily lives, we often discover that it really comes down to their belief that they are “saved,” and we are not.

Dr. Dan Fincke is a professor of philosophy and has written several articles discussing the issues of ethics and morality. He returns to Atheists Talk to explain empowerment ethics and how we can use objective, non-religious means to develop ethics and morals.

Related Links:

• Atheist Humility, Dan Fincke
• How Can Atheists Condemn Rape Without Theistic Moral Absolutism? Dan Fincke
• Does Everyone Mean Something Different by the Word Good? Dan Fincke
• How Can We Find External Criteria to Assess Morality’s Truth and Authority? Dan Fincke
• Empowerment Ethics (Collection of Links) at Camels With Hammers
• Only Real Gods Agree with William Lane Craig, Rosa Rubicondior

Listen to AM 950 KTNF this Sunday at 9 a.m. Central to hear Atheists Talk, produced by Minnesota Atheists. Stream live online. Call in to the studio at 952-946-6205, or send an e-mail to [email protected] during the live show. If you miss the live show, listen to the podcast later.

Follow Atheists Talk on Facebook and Twitter for regular updates. If you like the show, consider supporting us with a one-time or sustaining donation.

“We’re not unchurched, we’re done churched.” Neil Carter, from his blog Godless in Dixie.

According to the General Social Survey (GSS), the number of Americans choosing not to affiliate with a specific religion is growing rapidly larger. Since 2012, the number has risen by 7.5 million people.

Does this mean that the number of atheists or agnostics is growing that rapidly? No, not so fast. There are a large number of still-religious people who don’t go to church or feel like organized religion fills their spiritual needs. So, among the Nones, there are religious people and even people who designate themselves as “spiritual but not religious.”

And then there are The Dones. Neil Carter has been there, done that and has a bunch of the t-shirts of a churchy background, but now he is an atheist. He blogs at Patheos, and has written of the Dones as a subset of the Nones.

Related Links:

• “The Nones vs The Dones” by Neil Carter Godless in Dixie
• “7.5 Million Americans Have Lost Their Faith Since 2012” Huffington Post
• “Atheists: In Godlessness We Trust” by Mo Rocca CBS Sunday Morning (featuring Neil Carter)

Listen to AM 950 KTNF this Sunday at 9 a.m. Central to hear Atheists Talk, produced by Minnesota Atheists. Stream live online. Call in to the studio at 952-946-6205, or send an e-mail to [email protected] during the live show. If you miss the live show, listen to the podcast later.

Follow Atheists Talk on Facebook and Twitter for regular updates. If you like the show, consider supporting us with a one-time or sustaining donation.

The Secular Student Alliance has been supporting student groups in colleges and high schools for fifteen years. This year, they released a new vision statement that addresses some of the unique needs of a movement with leadership that graduates every few years, as well as many of the questions the broader atheist movement has been facing as a whole. They have embraced humanist ideals, civic engagement, and inclusion.

This Sunday, the SSA’s Executive Director, August Brunsman, joins us to discuss where the SSA is coming from in releasing this vision and how they intend to make it a reality.

Related Links:

• The Secular Student Alliance
• “A New Vision for the Secular Student Alliance“

Listen to AM 950 KTNF this Sunday at 9 a.m. Central to hear Atheists Talk, produced by Minnesota Atheists. Stream live online. Call in to the studio at 952-946-6205, or send an e-mail to [email protected] during the live show. If you miss the live show, listen to the podcast later.

Follow Atheists Talk on Facebook and Twitter for regular updates. If you like the show, consider supporting us with a one-time or sustaining donation.

Genetic Engineering, or Genetic Modification, is a process that creates a shortcut method to crossbreeding and hybridizing crops and livestock for favorable traits. Technologists create genetically modified organisms, or GMO’s, by inserting genes into the chromosomes of the target DNA. Sometimes the transplanted gene is from an organism in the same species as the target species, other times the gene is from a different species or it may be the case that an animal’s gene is spliced into a plant’s gene. In a recent show, Dr. Anastasia Bodnar and Mike Haubrich discussed the difficulties of spreading the news about the science of GMO’s due to rancor in the social media.

On this show, Dr. Greg Laden will join us to continue the discussion in a more positive light. We will go through the positive benefits of using genetic engineering to meet the growing demands of an ever larger population with a shrinking land area for raising the food to feed billions of people. We will address the ways in which the technology will adapt our food to help cope with the effects of climate change and help reduce other threats to the environment as well.

Related Links:

• “Why Genetic Engineering of Plants is Vital for Food Security” Pamela Ronald at TED, 2015

Listen to AM 950 KTNF this Sunday at 9 a.m. Central to hear Atheists Talk, produced by Minnesota Atheists. Stream live online. Call in to the studio at 952-946-6205, or send an e-mail to [email protected] during the live show. If you miss the live show, listen to the podcast later.

Follow Atheists Talk on Facebook and Twitter for regular updates. If you like the show, consider supporting us with a one-time or sustaining donation.

Sigurd Olson was a conservationist and writer and a driving force in preserving the solitude and quiet peace of the Boundary Waters Canoe Area. A native Wisconsinite who moved to Minnesota to teach biology, he faced the displeasure of many around Ely who wanted to have fly-in resorts and roads through the pristine natural wonders in Northern Minnesota. Kristin Eggerling has written a biography of Sig to illustrate for children the importance of fighting to save the quiet places and to instill a love of the natural world around us.

Kristin Eggerling is a conservationist and a writer who lives in Northern Minnesota. She will be in the studio as our guest for this show, talking with Mike Haubrich about the inspiration of the wilderness and how it gives her breath.

Related Links:

• The Facebook Page for Breath of Wilderness:  The Sigurd Olson Story
  
• The Listening Point Foundation
• The Friends of the Boundary Waters Wilderness Area
• Nature Rocks
• Author Interview in Conservation Minnesota Magazine

Listen to AM 950 KTNF this Sunday at 9 a.m. Central to hear Atheists Talk, produced by Minnesota Atheists. Stream live online. Call in to the studio at 952-946-6205, or send an e-mail to [email protected] during the live show. If you miss the live show, listen to the podcast later.

Follow Atheists Talk on Facebook and Twitter for regular updates. If you like the show, consider supporting us with a one-time or sustaining donation.

Stop me if you have heard this one before.  “If atheists don’t believe in anything, why do they organize and talk about nothing?”  Far from being a Seinfeldian sideshow, the Minnesota Atheists are a very active group. We are very much involved in the community; volunteering for various worthy causes, having fun with fellow atheists, meeting and speaking and watching and listening and just generally enjoying each other’s company.  With so much activity, we need to have a board of directors to make decisions and generate ideas as well as revenue.  Each year we elect a new and fresh board and on this episode we talk to members of the board so that people know who is representing them.

Listen to AM 950 KTNF this Sunday at 9 a.m. Central to hear Atheists Talk, produced by Minnesota Atheists. Stream live online. Call in to the studio at 952-946-6205, or send an e-mail to [email protected] during the live show. If you miss the live show, listen to the podcast later.

Follow Atheists Talk on Facebook and Twitter for regular updates. If you like the show, consider supporting us with a one-time or sustaining donation.

A couple of centuries of national pride and the gentle glow that history casts on winners have given today’s U.S. citizens a rather staid view of the radicals and revolutionaries who built a country from former colonies. Not only did they wage treasonous war against their king, but many of the crafters of our constitution were religious radicals. There were Quakers and Methodists and Christians who rejected the authority of the Bible.

There were also deists among the people who shaped our government. In his recent book, Nature’s God: The Heretical Origins of the American Republic, philosopher Matthew Stewart tells their story. He traces the strains of deism in Enlightenment thinking and shows how it shaped our country.

Related Links:

• Matthew Stewart’s website
• Matthew Stewart on Wikipedia
• “Locke’s Disguised Spinozism” by Wim Klever (pdf)
• “The Original Tea Partier Was an Atheist“
• “Hobby Lobby and the Separation of Church and Business“

Listen to AM 950 KTNF this Sunday at 9 a.m. Central to hear Atheists Talk, produced by Minnesota Atheists. Stream live online. Call in to the studio at 952-946-6205, or send an e-mail to [email protected] during the live show. If you miss the live show, listen to the podcast later.

Follow Atheists Talk on Facebook and Twitter for regular updates. If you like the show, consider supporting us with a one-time or sustaining donation.

Voting matters. Voting as an atheist or nonbeliever matters, even when all the candidates are religious. Yet Millennials, the generation known for being far less religious than prior generations, had incredibly low turnout this election. The impact of that was felt when votes were tallied.

This Sunday, we’ll talk to American Atheists Development Director Nick Fish about the election results, what those results mean for the causes usually championed by atheists, why we need to pay more attention to state races, and about the future of American Atheists’ #AtheistVoter campaign. Fish feels so strongly about the importance of voting that he helped to register 5,000 voters for the 2008 election. Join us this weekend as we talk about why.

Related Links:

• “#AtheistVoter Campaign Launched to Put Politicians on Notice“
• Secular Voter Guides and Congressional Report Cards
• The Secular Majority

Listen to AM 950 KTNF this Sunday at 9 a.m. Central to hear Atheists Talk, produced by Minnesota Atheists. Stream live online. Call in to the studio at 952-946-6205, or send an e-mail to [email protected] during the live show. If you miss the live show, listen to the podcast later.

Follow Atheists Talk on Facebook and Twitter for regular updates. If you like the show, consider supporting us with a one-time or sustaining donation.