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.

Rebecca Watson of Buffalo, N.Y., and London, is a well-known activist, writer, blogger and founder of the website Skepchick. She speaks frequently at atheist and other freethought gatherings on the subjects of feminism, science and young people in the movement, and she has a podcast called The Skeptic’s Guide to the Universe. There is a contact form available […]

Massimo Pigliucci, an atheist, is a philosophy professor at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. He blogs about science, philosophy, politics and religion at Rationally Speaking and co-hosts the Rationally Speaking podcast.

Jennifer Michael Hecht teaches at the New School University in New York City. She is the author of Doubt: A History and The End of the Soul: Scientific Modernity, Atheism and Anthropology in France.

Daniel Garber is a philosophy professor at Princeton University. In his essay “Religio Philosophi” (included in Philosophers Without Gods: Meditations on Atheism and the Secular Life), he writes that he is fascinated by religion’s role in the lives of the historical figures he studies, even though he is a nonbeliever.

Paul Fidalgo is communications manager at the Secular Coalition for America, a policy advocacy group based in Washington, D.C. He has a master’s degree in political management from George Washington University and wrote his thesis on atheists’ precarious place in U.S. politics.

Margaret Downey is founder and president of The Freethought Society, based in Pocopson, Pa. She is also a secular celebrant, performing life-cycle ceremonies for nonbelievers.