Last night I gave my talk about the Creation Museum. The highlight was making PZ jealous because I had crazier creationists in the audience asking me questions. Despite the talk being full of the mind numbing garbage the “museum” promotes, I try to end on a high note. What can we do to fight these ignorance spreading groups when they’re so organized and well-funded?
We need to become organized and well-funded ourselves.
There are plenty of worthy secular organizations out there, but I’m going to be biased and promote my favorite – the Secular Student Alliance. It’s easy to say something like “Students are the future.” People are more likely to change their minds about religion before they become set in their ways, have children, and all that jazz. And the young leaders we train will likely go on to other important leadership roles, both inside and outside of the movement.
But students aren’t just the future. Students are the present.
We have over 300 college and high school affiliate groups across the US. Each of those is its own grassroots community, working to promote the ideals of scientific and critical inquiry, secularism, and human-based ethics. Our students are challenging unconstitutional religious legislation, creationism in their schools, and negative stereotypes about atheists. I know when I founded my SSA affiliate group at Purdue, it created a community where I finally felt comfortable talking about my atheism – it was an oasis in a sea of oppressive Christianity. And that’s why I’m now Vice Chair for the Board of Directors of the SSA. I’m happy to volunteer my time to help these student groups flourish.
If you want to help secular students across the country, please consider donating to the Secular Student Alliance today. And if you need even more motivation, there’s currently a $250,000 matching offer going on. That means any donation you make is effectively doubled!
We can win the battle against the Creation Museums, Focus on the Families, and Rick Santorums of the world.
PS: You could also start running for office – even if it’s piddly positions like Town Dog Catcher. We need to start being an active part of the political process, and I don’t mean just writing letters. I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention it – those of you who were at the pub celebration after the event know why. Thankfully I have 11 whole years to come up with my presidential campaign slogan and running mate.
Dont worry, I’ll be running for office eventually, but its going to be awhile
Aw! No list of the questions you got?
Just curious, were any of the questions not covered by: http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/ ?
I’d be shocked if they WERE NOT already covered by the index.
They were all things I’ve heard before. I’ll try to remember what I asked, or just wait for the video to go online.
Speaking of creationism, there is apparently a creation conference going on right now here in PDX. Eric Hovind even came up for it.
In fact, just last night the Basic English Bible Club at PSU gave a pro-creationist lecture in rebuttal to a series of lectures that we put on in recent months. It was awful. So terribly disjointed. So many words spoken, yet no valid points, no evidence, not even a thesis were made apparent. I imagine the flavor of misinformation that we saw last night was similar to that which you encountered at your talk also.
McCreight-Watson 2026? I’d vote for you guys.
…which is why it would be really nice if people organizing major events would keep the fucking school year in mind. >.>
Vote for Jen McCreight. I’ve got Pirate Fluxx.
AJ
Perhaps it may be easier and quicker to simply refer the questioner to the URL for their answer.
then you can demonstrate that they do not have original questions and indeed they do not have original thoughts.
Best ticket ever. You’d have my vote. :D
Spokane Secular Society here, attended both Pullman & Moscow events, loved it all. There were several full blown YEC questioners at Jen’s (VERY INFORMATIVE!) talk on Ken Ham’s AIG Creation Museum … both objected to the (quite correct) characterization of “creation scientists” as not really scientists. In my question a bit later I tried to reinforce the idea that it is important for critics of creationism to be up on the participants here, to know who the “creation scientists” are and so be able to easily illustrate their shortcomings at the time, so the YEC brigade cannot get to first base when they try to highjack regular science work (like plate tectonics) to use apologetically on their side to give their claims a sciency patina.
I threw a few bucks at the SSA. Thanks for the suggestion. You (and they) are doing good work, and yes, I’d vote for you too! McCreight-Watson 2026, hell yeah!
Not sure what I think yet but uniqe.