The road from being a devoted believer to becoming atheist can be a hard one. It is even harder for those who have devoted their lives to sharing those beliefs with others. In her new book, From Apostle to Apostate: The Story of the Clergy Project, Catherine Dunphy talks about the special challenges facing nonbelievers whose former faith led them to the priesthood. Along the way, she also tells her own story, from former seminarian to executive director of an organization helping people like her.

This Sunday, Dunphy joins us to talk about her book and the work of the Clergy Project.

Related Links:

• Website for From Apostle to Apostate: The Story of the Clergy Project 
• Rational Doubt, a blog featuring Catherine Dunphy and other voices from the Clergy Project
• “Where can priests & clergy go if they lose their faith?“
• Drew Bekius’s review of the book

Continue reading ““From Apostle to Apostate”, Catherine Dunphy on Atheists Talk” →

Skepticon grew from a student event on campus to the largest atheist and skeptic conference in the U.S. in just a few short years. Co-founder Lauren Lane and her team of volunteers built Skepticon into an atheist Mecca, if you will. With talks, workshops, vendors, and even a Dino Prom, it has become an unprecedented annual gathering of heathens from all over the country and beyond. The free registration and central location don’t hurt either.

This Sunday, we’ll talk with Lauren about seeing her baby grow up and what it takes to keep an event this size functioning, fun, and free.

Related Links:

• Official Skepticon site
• History of Skepticon on Wikipedia
• Skepticon talks on YouTube

Continue reading “"Skepticon 8", Lauren Lane on Atheists Talk” →

Skepticon grew from a student event on campus to the largest atheist and skeptic conference in the U.S. in just a few short years. Co-founder Lauren Lane and her team of volunteers built Skepticon into an atheist Mecca, if you will. With talks, workshops, vendors, and even a Dino Prom, it has become an unprecedented annual gathering of heathens from all over the country and beyond. The free registration and central location don’t hurt either.

This Sunday, we’ll talk with Lauren about seeing her baby grow up and what it takes to keep an event this size functioning, fun, and free.

Related Links:

• Official Skepticon site
• History of Skepticon on Wikipedia
• Skepticon talks on YouTube

Continue reading ““Skepticon 8”, Lauren Lane on Atheists Talk” →

There is a much-bandied-about figure in the reporting of Global Climate Change: 97% of climate scientists agree that the science shows that the climate is warming and that the increase in global mean temperatures is due to human activity. This is a strong consensus, and it is based on readings that come from many sources. The temperatures of the ocean and air and the raising of the sea levels all indicate that the level of carbon dioxide and methane are acting as we would expect them to under anthropogenic climate change models. They are wreaking havoc on the natural world and threaten our food supplies and habitable environments. The ice caps at our poles are melting, and the Alps are shedding their glaciers. As a species, we are letting inaction on climate doom us, and we need to make some political decisions as to what we are going to do. Are we going to mitigate the effects of climate change? Are we going to adapt?

Dr. John Abraham is our guest for this show. Abraham is a research professor in thermal sciences at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul.  He is a member of the Climate Science Rapid Response Team and has been our guest in shows past. Dr. Greg Laden will conduct the interview.

Related Links:

• Climate Science Rapid Response Team
• John P. Abraham list of publications (including rebuttal of Christopher Monckton)
• “2015 global temperatures are right in line with climate science predictions”
• “Breaking News: Hottest Year Ever”, Greg Laden on the Green Divas

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.

This week, the Center for Medical Progress has released its fifth video claiming to show that Planned Parenthood is illegally selling aborted fetuses for medical research. This video, like each video before it, has been shown to be deceptively edited to hide Planned Parenthood’s actual practices–allowing abortion patients in a small number of states to donate tissue as a service to those patients. In response to the deceptive video, Senate Republicans attempted to defund Planned Parenthood and failed. In the meantime, the Center for Medical Progress is being investigated for illegal practices of their own.

This Sunday, Amanda Marcotte, writer and host of the RH Reality Cast, will return to Atheists Talk to fill us in on these videos and place them in the context of the current political assault on reproductive rights.

Related Links:

• “Planned Parenthood and the Politics of Conservative Resentment” by Amanda Marcotte
• Center for Medical Progress archives at RH Reality Check
• “How a Lie Becomes a Law: GOP Introduces Legislation to Defund Planned Parenthood Based on Deceptively Edited Videos” at Media Matters
• “U.S. judge halts release of secretly recorded videos of abortion providers” at the Los Angeles Times
• “Investigating Two Claims Against Planned Parenthood: Center for Medical Progress’s Secret Videos” at bioethics.net

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.

On June 26, 2015, the United States Supreme Court, in a historic vote, moved our nation one step closer to finding equality under the law by legalizing same sex marriage nationally.  There are many in the religious right, however, unwilling to allow their fellow citizens participate fully in society.  Unfortunately, in far too many cases, those in the religious right are also in positions of power, or have the authority to exercise control over the freedoms of their fellow Americans.

On this episode, we welcome Annie Laurie Gaylor, cofounder of the Freedom From Religion Foundation, editor for Freethought Today, the nation’s only freethought newspaper.  In addition to her editorial and leadership roles within the FFRF, Annie also has found time to author the books Woe to Women: The Bible Tells Me So, Betrayal of Trust: Clergy Abuse of Children, and Women Without Superstition: No Gods – No Masters.  Annie is here to discuss, and help us understand what obligations are there for people in the religious right have when it comes to executing the duties government. We’ll also discuss areas of continued, state-sanctioned discrimination where people across the entire LGBTQIAA spectrum still face hurdles on a daily basis.

We welcome Annie Laurie Gaylor to the show to bring her expertise and experience on legal issues concerning this new tactic to punch a hole in the wall between church and state.

Related Links:

• Freedom From Religion Foundation
• The battle for same sex marriage equality is now being fought at the clerk level.
• Kentucky legislators sponsoring bills to protect county clerks form legal action when refusing to issue same sex marriage licenses. Bill would also protect churches for denial of marriage services.
• Texas governor Greg Abbot issues an executive order “protecting” clerks from being punished by superiors for failure to issue same sex marriage licenses.
• A condensed timeline for the fight for marriage equality.

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 May, American Atheists underwent a reorganization to better help them focus on shaping public policy. As part of that focus, they created a new role of National Legal and Public Policy Director in Washington, DC. This role is filled by former Executive Director Amanda Knief, whose background is in law and politics. This past week, she took American Atheists’ AtheistVoter initiative to the Family Leadership Summit in Iowa to ask conservative Christian politicians what they had to offer the growing demographic of nonbeliever voters and to join Iowa Atheists and Freethinkers’ protest of the event.

This Sunday, Amanda returns to Atheists Talk to discuss the aims of the AtheistVoter program and tell us what else she looks to accomplish in her new role.

Related Links:

• “American Atheists Announces Reorganization“
• “Atheists greet crowd arriving at Christian conservative cattle call” in The Gazette
• “Bake a Cake–And Be Religious Too!” by Amanda Knief
• “The Citizen Lobbyist”, Amanda Knief on Atheists Talk #230, August 4, 2013

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.

So, what really happened at Fortney Road?  In the late 1960’s and during the 1970’s, Christianity was adding a large new movement of former hippies and drug users and other young adults.  They referred to themselves as “Jesus Freaks.”  It was a movement of communes and music, of revolutionary ideas that brought The Word to people who were bored with and couldn’t relate to conventional evangelical Christianity.  Larry Hill was the charismatic preacher and leader of one such church based from a farm on Fortney Road.

Our guest, Jeff Stevenson, spent seven years researching the goings on of a cult whose members were run through an ordeal that few can understand.  They lived through sleep deprivation, corporal punishment and sexual abuse at the hands of Hill.  Things looked great from the outside, and sounded great, too.  The church sponsored a musical group that has produced some of the most unusual blues/rock Christian music ever heard and featured the talented guitarist Glenn Schwartz, who had come through The James Gang and Pacific Gas And Electric before joining Hill’s church and helping to form the All Saved Freak Band.

Freethought House has published Stevenson’s book and we welcome the author to the show.

Related Links:

• Fortney Road: Life, Death and Deception in a Christian Cult at Freethought House
• “What Religious Cults Seem to Have in Common”
• An overview of Fortney Road in the Star-Beacon, Larry’s hometown paper
• “Different Fundamentalists, Same Covered-Up Child Abuse”

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.

After losing two friends to suicide just over a year apart, Jennifer Michael Hecht was looking for answers. As she usually does, she turned to philosophy, but she found herself dissatisfied with the reactive individualism of Enlightenment and modern secular philosophy. Out of that dissatisfaction came Stay: A History of Suicide and the Arguments Against It. Stay chronicles the history of Western reasons for committing suicide and the reasons philosophers have given for people to hang on through bleakness and despair.

Hecht joins us this Sunday to talk about the book and to talk about why would should be grateful to those who chose to remain with us.

Related Links:

• Jennifer Michael Hecht’s website
• Stay: A History of Suicide and the Arguments Against It on Amazon
• “To Live Is an Act of Courage” on the crisis of military suicide

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

Independent Baptist Preachers can be feisty types.  They even maintain their ‘tude after they become atheists.  Bruce Gerencser started over eight churches, pastored at eight and was a preacher for over twenty five years.  Now Bruce is a humanist and agnostic blogger.  Join us as we find out about his life as a preacher and how he left religion.  Bruce blogs at “The Life and Times of Bruce Gerencser; One Man’s Journey from Eternity to Here.”

Related Links:

• The Life and Times of Bruce Gerencser; One Man’s Journey from Eternity to Here

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.