Richard Haynes (known by many as “Brother Richard”) is president of Atheist Nexus, an online community with nearly 20,000 nontheist members. He’s also co-host of the freethinking podcast Atheist News, and he blogs at Life Without Faith. A former associate minister at a Georgia megachurch, he now travels the country speaking to nontheist groups and encouraging others “to […]

Daniel M. Farrell is a philosophy professor at Ohio State University in Columbus. In his essay “Life Without God: Some Personal Costs” (included in Philosophers Without Gods: Meditations on Atheism and the Secular Life), he tells about losing his faith while he was a seminarian, and how coming to terms with that affected other aspects of his […]

Dan Barker is a former evangelical preacher turned atheist. He and his wife, Annie Laurie Gaylor, are co-presidents of the Freedom From Religion Foundation, based in Madison, Wis. Barker’s books include Losing Faith in Faith: From Preacher to Atheist and Godless: How an Evangelical Preacher Became One of America’s Leading Atheists (2008).

Dennis Culhane is a professor of social welfare policy at the University of Pennsylvania where he studies homelessness and housing policy.

Ronald Inglehart is a political science professor at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor and a research professor at its Center for Political Studies. He is particularly interested in the effects of changing belief systems on societies socially and politically. His books include (as co-author) Sacred and Secular: Religion and Politics Worldwide, which concluded that industrial […]

Dean Hamer is a geneticist and director of the Gene Structure and Regulation Unit at the National Cancer Institute in Bethesda, Md. He is the author of The God Gene: How Faith Is Hardwired Into Our Genes. His hypothesis, criticized by some other scientists, is that some people inherit a gene that predisposes them toward faith in […]

Ryan T. Cragun is an associate professor of sociology at the University of Tampa, where he studies secularization, the nonreligious and members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Jason Torpy is president of the Military Association of Atheists and Freethinkers. A West Point graduate, he served in Germany, Kuwait and Iraq before leaving the service in 2005 to pursue a master’s degree. He lives in New York City.

Todd Stiefel is a secular humanist, atheist and full-time freethought activist whose mission is “to gain respect for freethinkers and ensure the complete separation of church and state.” He is founder and president of the Stiefel Freethought Foundation, based in Raleigh, N.C., and a trustee of the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science. Stiefel also serves on […]