Tim Murphy is an associate professor of religious studies at the University of Alabama. He teaches a course on modern atheism.

Scott Aikin is senior lecturer in the philosophy department at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tenn. He is co-author of the book Reasonable Atheism and wrote an essay titled “The Problem of Worship” for the summer 2010 issue of Think.

Dr. J. Anderson Thomson Jr. is a psychiatrist in Charlottesville, Va., and a trustee of the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science. He is interested in the new cognitive neuroscience of religious belief — why human minds generate, accept and spread religious ideas — and spoke on the subject at the American Atheists’ 2009 convention. He has also […]

Walter Sinnott-Armstrong is the Chauncey Stillman Professor in Practical Ethics in the philosophy department and the Kenan Institute for Ethics at Duke University in Durham, N.C. His essay “Overcoming Christianity” is included in Philosophers Without Gods: Meditations on Atheism and the Secular Life (2007). His books include Morality Without God? (2009) and (as co-author) God?: A Debate Between a Christian and […]

Jennifer Hancock is a former executive director of the Humanists of Florida Association. She writes a freelance column on humanism for the Bradenton Herald; her Aug. 21, 2010, column discusses how humanism helped her cope with tragedies in her life.

Martin L. Cowen III is the founder of Atlanta’s Fellowship of Reason, an organization whose members “believe each individual’s purpose and success in life are derived from, and ultimately determined by, the individual — not a supernatural authority.” He wrote in the group’s October 2007 newsletter that he does not want to be called an atheist, though, as […]

Ed Buckner is the former president of American Atheists (and continues there as a board member) and former executive director of the Council for Secular Humanism. He lives in Georgia.

Cecil Bothwell is a City Council member in Asheville, N.C. Shortly after his election in 2009, some opponents sought to oust him from office because he does not believe in God. Bothwell, a journalist and author, blogs and speaks frequently about matters of faith. His books include The Prince of War: Billy Graham’s Crusade for a Wholly Christian Empire (2008) and Whale Falls: […]

Edward T. Babinski is an agnostic and the editor of Leaving the Fold: Testimonies of Former Fundamentalists, and he contributed a chapter (“The Cosmology of the Bible”) to The Christian Delusion: Why Faith Fails (2010). He lives in the Southeast.