Richard Carrier holds a doctorate in ancient history, and his research specialties include the origins of Christianity. He is the author of Sense & Goodness Without God: A Defense of Metaphysical Naturalism, and he contributed chapters (“Why the Resurrection Is Unbelievable” and “Christianity Was Not Responsible for Modern Science”) to the book The Christian Delusion: Why Faith Fails (2010). […]

Lara Buchak is an assistant professor of philosophy at the University of California, Berkeley. Her research interests include what faith is, under what circumstances faith is rational and how to characterize the central nondoxastic attitudes associated with religious practice. She is also interested in how one ought to be religious if one takes current science […]

Debbie Allen is director of the San Diego Coalition of Reason, a partnership of 15 atheist, humanist and skeptic organizations. She is also a humanist chaplain.

Pete Wernick has a doctorate in sociology and wrote a chapter on parenting in a secular/religious marriage for the book Parenting Beyond Belief: On Raising Ethical, Caring Kids Without Religion (2007). He lives in Colorado.

Lawrence M. Krauss is a cosmologist and director of the Origins Project at Arizona State University, which explores questions ranging from the origin of the universe to the origins of human culture and cognition. His commentaries on matters of science and religion have appeared in The Wall Street Journal, including a Sept. 8, 2010, column, “Our Spontaneous Universe,” and one […]

Jack David Eller is an assistant professor of anthropology at Community College of Denver and the author of Cruel Creeds, Virtuous Violence: Religious Violence Across Culture and History (October 2010) and Natural Atheism, Atheism Advanced: Further Thoughts of a Freethinker (2007). He also contributed two chapters to the anthology Atheism and Secularity (2009).

Keith Augustine is executive director of the Internet Infidels, a nonprofit educational organization based in Colorado Springs, Colo., that is dedicated to defending and promoting a naturalistic worldview on the Internet.

Sharon D. Welch is provost and professor of religion and society at Chicago’s Meadville Lombard Theological School, which educates students in the Unitarian Universalist tradition. She is also a senior fellow at the Institute for Humanist Studies.

James Tappenden is associate professor of philosophy at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. His essay “An Atheist’s Fundamentalism” is included in Philosophers Without Gods: Meditations on Atheism and the Secular Life (2007).