Posts Tagged Atheist Experience
Cindy Cooper with Camp Quest Oklahoma will be giving a brief speech talking about Camp Quest Oklahoma and the importance of secular education and camps for kids.
From the Camp Quest Oklahoma website:
The purpose of Camp Quest is to provide children of freethinking parents a residential summer camp dedicated to improving the human condition through rational inquiry, critical and creative thinking, scientific method, self-respect, ethics, competency, democracy, free speech, and the separation of religion and government.
Through our programs we seek to:
- Build a community for freethinking families
- Foster curiosity, questioning, and critical thinking
- Encourage reason and compassion as foundations of an ethical, productive and fulfilling life
- Raise awareness of positive contributions made by atheists, agnostics, humanists, freethinkers, and other nontheistic people to our society
- Promote an open dialogue about metaphysical questions that is marked by challenging each other’s ideas while at the same time treating each other with respect
- Demonstrate atheism and humanism as positive, family-friendly worldview
Scott Austin, PhD
PhD, Physics, Arizona State University (1995)
Personal Web Page: http://faculty.uca.edu/saustin/Astronomy/scott_austin.html
Research: Variable stars, spectroscopy, photometry, asteroid astrometry.
Recent Publications:
Late-Type Near-Contact Eclipsing Binary [HH97] FS Aur-79, Austin, S. J., Robertson, J. W., Tycner, C., Campbell T., and Honeycutt, R. K. 2007, The Astronomical Journal, Volume 133, Issue 5, pp. 1934-1946
An Eclipsing Near Contact Short Period Binary in the Field of FS Aur, Robertson, J. W., Austin, S. J., Campbell, T., Hoskins, J., 2004, Information Bulletin on Variable Stars, 5536
Professional Biography:
B.S. in physics in 1987.
PhD. in physics in 1995.
Scott took his current position at the University of Central Arkansas in the Department of Physics and Astronomy starting in the fall of 2000 and was granted tenure in the spring of 2006. He has renovated the UCA Observatory so that a variety of research projects are being done with the new 0.35-m telescope. These projects include near-earth asteroid astrometry, emission star spectroscopy, and variable-star time-series-photometry. Scott does public outreach with the UCA Observatory and the 60-seat UCA Planetarium. He runs monthly public viewing nights with the observatory. With the planetarium he produces and gives shows monthly for the general public and by request for school groups.
Aron Ra
* Producer of the ‘Foundational Falsehoods of Creationism’ video series
* Regular co-host of the Magic Sandwich Show on BlogTV
* Occasional co-host on the Atheist Experience TV show
* Member of American Atheists and the Fellowship of Freethought
Aron Ra is one of the “YouTube atheists” and an advocate for rationalism in science classrooms. He grew up in an exclusively creationist environment where he felt like a lonely outcast just for understanding evolution, let alone accepting it. Being raised in a mostly-Mormon family encouraged him to explore other denominations and eventually non-Abrahamic spiritualism before rejecting faith-based beliefs altogether. He was drawn into activism when the Religious Right dominated his state’s Board of Education, and began undermining education in history, health, science, and social studies. His videos often focus on evolution and the evidence indicating an interrelated tree of life. His series summarizing the ‘Foundational Falsehoods of Creationism’ and his subsequent series, ‘Falsifying Phylogeny’ (including the Phylogeny Challenge’) have been mirrored, featured, referenced, and recommended by many professional scientists, secularists, and educators, and has attracted more than 60,000 subscribers to his YouTube channel at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ER8cq1JO3Y8.
Past speaking topics include:
“Preferred Truth” – North Texas Skeptics
“The Evolution of Morality” – Darwin Day 2010
“The Erroneous Association of Evolution and Eugenics” – Darwin Day 2011
“What we can and cannot honestly say we know” – Atheist Community of Austin
“If only you believed like I believe, baby” – Oklahoma Freethought Convention