Hector Avalos is a professor of religious studies at Iowa State University and former executive director of the Committee for the Scientific Examination of Religion, a division of the Council for Secular Humanism. He specializes in biblical studies. His books include Fighting Words: The Origins of Religious Violence; The End of Biblical Studies; and Se Puede Saber si Dios Existe? [Can […]

Elizabeth S. Anderson is a professor of philosophy and women’s studies at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. She contributed the essay “If God Is Dead, Is Everything Permitted?” to Philosophers Without Gods: Meditations on Atheism and the Secular Life (2007).

Keith Parsons is a professor of philosophy at the University of Houston-Clear Lake and author of God and the Burden of Proof. He is a member of the Council for Secular Humanism’s speakers bureau.

The West Central Episcopal Mission in Spokane, Wash., is dedicated to relieving urban poverty, addressing the root of its causes, and saving the environment one step at a time. The Rev. Kris Christensen is executive director and urban missioner.

Robert B. Talisse is a professor of philosophy and political science at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tenn. He is co-author of Reasonable Atheism (2011) and the author of Democracy and Moral Conflict (2009).

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 […]