A familiar face and voice on The Humanist Hour this week.

So you’re an atheist. Now what? The way we deal with life—with love and sex, pleasure and death, reality and making stuff up—can change dramatically when we stop believing in gods, souls, and afterlives. When we leave religion—or if we never had it in the first place—where do we go? With her unique blend of compassion and humor, thoughtfulness and snark, Greta Christina most emphatically does not propose a single path to a good atheist life. She offers questions to think about, ideas that may be useful, and encouragement to choose your own way. She addresses complex issues in an accessible, down-to-earth style, including: Why we’re here, Sexual transcendence, How humanism helps with depression—except when it doesn’t, Stealing stuff from religion, and much more. Aimed at new and not-so-new atheists, questioning and curious believers, Christina shines a warm, fresh light on the only life we have.

That’s the publisher’s blurb for Greta Christina’s new book, The Way of the Heathen: Practicing Atheism in Everyday Life. This book is a distillation of more than a decade of thinking and writing about atheism. Greta joins us on this week’s show to talk with Peggy Knudtson and Jenn Wilson about how the book came to be and why she’s been wanting to write this particular one for so long.

Listen to the podcast here.

At its inception, Humanism was a recognition that humanity needed to save and better itself with no help from any gods on high. It was an activist philosophy, teaching that we all have responsibilities to help humanity thrive. Over time, however, and following the trend of U.S. politics as a whole, the Humanist movement lost much of that activist bent. To the extent organized Humanism has engaged in activism over the last decade or so, it has largely focused on church-state separation, leaving little to differentiate it from organized atheism.

Recently, however, this has started to change. Humanist groups are rediscovering and embracing their activist roots, from the American Humanist Association’s focus on social justice to individual groups and congregations taking up causes important in their broader community. James Croft of the Ethical Society of St. Louis leads one of these groups. He’s also studied the history of the Humanist movement, and he joins us this Sunday to talk about Humanism’s activist past and its future.

Related Links:

• Temple of the Future, James Croft’s blog
• Ethical Society of St. Louis

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’ve got a new podcast up. We had some weird technical difficulties with this one, but the topic and the background provided here make it worth listening anyway.

Of all the recent “religious freedom” legislation passed around the country, perhaps none is so restrictive as North Carolina’s “Act to Provide for Single-sex Multiple Occupancy Bathroom and Changing Facilities in Schools and Public Agencies and to Create Statewide Consistency in Regulation of Employment and Public Accommodations”. The short version of the bill’s name is the “Public Facilities Privacy & Security Act,” but it quickly became infamous as HB2.

Passed as a response to a non-discrimination ordinance enacted by the city of Charlotte, HB2 removed the protections under that law and others like it, attempted to redefine “sex” under the law, and barred transgender people from using restrooms on state property that conform to their gender. The legal and economic consequences to North Carolina were swift, but so far, neither the legislature nor the governor shows any willingness to overturn the bill.

On this week’s show, Jenn Wilson and Peggy Knudtson talk to Chris Brook, Legal Director of the American Civil Liberties Union of North Carolina, about the ACLU’s suit against the state. Peggy Knudtson and Stephanie Zvan also speak with Danielle White, a transgender activist engaging in civil disobedience against HB2.

Listen to the show.

Bathroom bills and secular invocations and abortion restrictions. Oh, my!

As we come into a presidential election that will determine the direction of the U.S. Supreme Court, it seems like everyone is engaging in last-ditch attempts to enshrine discrimination in the law. American Atheists National Legal and Public Policy Director, Amanda Knief, joins Stephanie Zvan this Sunday to catch us up on what’s happening around the country and what we can do about it. We’ll also get updates on legal initiatives American Atheists has been working on.

Related Links:

Over at The Humanist Hour this week, we got the creator and the geek perspective on learning and teaching humanism from Star Trek.

The Humanist Hour #192: Susan Sackett & Scott Lohman on the Humanism of Star Trek

Gene Roddenberry was openly humanist, and his best-known creation, Star Trek, reflects his views in many ways. Our guests this week talk about how Star Trek informed their humanism and how they use the show to educate others about humanism.

Susan Sackett became Roddenberry’s executive assistant in the mid-1970s and a humanist shortly thereafter. She contributed story ideas for two episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation and worked with Roddenberry until his death. She joins us to talk about her career with Roddenberry, working with some of the Star Trek original series actors, and her career in humanism after Roddenberry’s death. Sackett also serves on the AHA Board of Directors.

Scott Lohman is the former president of the Humanists of Minnesota and a self-professed “serious geek.” He runs Diversicon, a science fiction convention in Minnesota, and gives presentations on humanist principles using examples from Star Trek. He joins us to talk about teaching Star Trek to children at Camp Quest.

Susan’s links:

• Inside Trek: A Star Trek Memoir by Susan Sackett
• Secular Weddings in Arizona

Scott’s links:

• Diversicon
• Camp Quest

Susan Jacoby is a writer and author whose works have focused on atheism, secularism, American history and public discourse. She is the author of thirteen books, and spent much of her career as a reporter for various publications including The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, The American Prospect, Mother Jones, The Nation, Glamour, and the AARP Bulletin and AARP Magazine. Susan Jacoby is a member of the honorary boards of the Freedom from Religion Foundation and the Center for Inquiry, a secular think tank.

Susan Jacoby joins Atheists Talk radio on Sunday to discuss her newest book, Strange Gods: A Secular History of Conversion.

Focusing on the long, tense convergence of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam—each claiming possession of absolute truth—Jacoby examines conversions within a social and economic framework that includes theocratic coercion (unto torture and death) and the more friendly persuasion of political advantage, economic opportunism, and interreligious marriage. Moving through time, continents, and cultures—the triumph of Christianity over paganism in late antiquity, the Spanish Inquisition, John Calvin’s dour theocracy, Southern plantations where African slaves had to accept their masters’ religion—the narrative is punctuated by portraits of individual converts embodying the sacred and profane.

…

Finally, Jacoby offers a powerful case for religious choice as a product of the secular Enlightenment. In a forthright and unsettling conclusion linking the present with the most violent parts of the West’s religious past, she reminds us that in the absence of Enlightenment values, radical Islamists are persecuting Christians, many other Muslims, and atheists in ways that recall the worst of the Middle Ages.

Tune in this Sunday for our discussion with Susan Jacoby!

Related Links:

• Strange Gods: A Secular History of Conversion – Amazon
• The website of Susan Jacoby
• NPR Interview with Susan Jacoby about Strange Gods

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.