Atheist student groups flower on college campuses
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Hetty ter Haar
Nov 21, 2009, 3:06:55 PM11/21/09
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Atheist student groups flower on college campuses
AP foreign, Saturday November 21 2009 ERIC GORSKI= AMES, Iowa (AP)€”
The sign sits propped on a wooden chair, inviting all comers: "Ask an
Atheist."
Whenever a student gets within a few feet, Anastasia Bodnar waves and
smiles, trying to make a good first impression before eyes drift down
to a word many Americans rank down there with "socialist."
Bodnar is the happy face of atheism at Iowa State University. Once a
week at this booth at a campus community center, the PhD student who
spends most of her time researching the nutritional traits of corn
takes questions and occasional abuse while trying to raise the profile
of religious skepticism.
"A lot of people on campus either don't know we exist or are afraid of
us or hate us," says Bodnar, president of the ISU Atheist and Agnostic
Society. "People assume we're rabble-rousing, when we're one of the
gentlest groups on campus."
As the stigma of atheism has diminished, campus atheists and agnostics
are coming out of the closet, fueling a sharp rise in the number of
clubs like the 10-year-old group at Iowa State.
Campus affiliates of the Secular Student Alliance, a sort of Godless
Campus Crusade for Christ, have multiplied from 80 in 2007 to 100 in
2008 and 174 this fall, providing the atheist movement new training
grounds for future leaders. In another sign of growing acceptance, at
least three universities, including Harvard, now have humanist
chaplains meeting the needs of the not-so-spiritual.
With the growth has come soul-searching - or the atheist equivalent -
about what secular campus groups should look like. It's part of a
broader self-examination in the atheist movement triggered by the rise
of the so-called "new atheists," best-selling authors who denigrate
religion and blame it for the world's ills.
Should student atheist groups go it alone or build bridges with
Christian groups? Organize political protests or quiet discussion
groups? Adopt the militant posture of the new atheists? Or wave and
smile?
---
As teenagers move into young adulthood, some leave God behind. But not
in huge numbers.
More than three-quarters of young adults taking part in the National
Study of Youth and Religion profess a belief in God. But almost 7
percent fewer believe in God as young adults (ages 18 to 23) than did
as teenagers, according to the study, which is tracking the same group
of young people as they mature.
What young adults are less likely to believe in is religion. The
number of those who describe themselves as "not religious" nearly
doubled, to 27 percent, in young adulthood.
Growing hostility toward religion was found, too. About 1 in 10 young
adults are "irreligious" - or actively against religion - after
virtually none of them fit that description as teenagers.
At Iowa State, most of the club's roughly 30 members are "former"
somethings, mostly Christians. Many stress that their lives are guided
not by anti-religiousness, but belief in science, logic and reason.
"The goal," said Andrew Severin, a post-doctoral researcher in
bioinformatics, "should a PhD student in biophysics, "should be to
obtain inner peace for yourself and do random acts of kindness for
strangers."
Severin calls himself a "spiritual atheist." He doesn't believe in God
or the supernatural but thinks experiences like meditation or brushes
with nature can produce biochemical reactions that feel spiritual.
When the ISU club began in 1999, it was mostly a discussion group. But
it soon became clear that young people who leave organized religion
miss something: a sense of community. So the group added movie and
board-game nights and, more recently, twice-monthly Sunday brunches to
the calendar.
"It's nice to be around people who aren't going to bash me for
believing in nothing," said Bricelyn Rector, a freshman from Sioux
City who, like others, described community as the club's greatest
asset.
Members also seek to engage their peers at Iowa State, a 28,000-
student science and technology school where the student body leans
conservative. There's a "Brews and Views" night at a local coffee
house and talks by visiting speakers common to any college campus.
"This is not a group of angry atheists. It's a group of very exuberant
atheists," said faculty sponsor Hector Avalos, a secular humanist and
well-known Biblical scholar who used to be a Pentecostal preacher.
"Their primary aim is not to destroy the faith of Christians on
campus. It's more live and let live."
The "Ask an Atheist" booth is the club's most visible outreach. On a
recent Friday, a handful of members stand ready to intercept students
on their way to eat lunch or withdraw money from a nearby ATM.
Traffic is slow. Scott Moseley, a Bettendorf, Iowa, senior, stops for
a polite conversation.
He explains that he was raised Methodist, has a Buddhist friend and
dates a Wiccan.
"My entire concept of one religion is kind of out the window," Moseley
says.
Bodnar, an ex-Catholic married to a Buddhist, recommends the local
Unitarian Universalist congregation, a haven for a grab bag of
religious backgrounds and a few members of the ISU Atheist and
Agnostic Society.
The closest thing to a confrontation comes when another student, a
baseball cap pulled tight to his brow, talks briefly about heaven
before he mutters, "I can't listen to you guys," and walks away.
---
On most college campuses, secular groups take shape when non-believing
students arrive and find a couple-dozen Christian groups but no home
for them. It isn't that atheism is necessarily growing among students
— surveys show no uptick in the number of atheist and agnostic young
adults over the last 20 years.
But the greater willingness to speak out, paired with the diversity
within the movement, has resulted is a patchwork of clubs across the
country united in disbelief but different in mission.
At Texas State University in San Marcos, a group of freethinkers led
by a former Lutheran organizes rock-climbing outings and has co-
sponsored a debate with a campus Christian group.
The University of South Florida is home to two active clubs: a
freethinkers group that held a back-to-school barbecue and an atheist
group that protested an anti-abortion group's campus visit.
Still other clubs embrace rituals. At the University of Southern
Maine, a secular humanist organization has celebrated HumanLight, a
secular alternative to Christmas and Hanukkah.
Just in the past year, the Iowa State club has evolved in new
directions. Some are things churches have traditionally done — like
the club's first foray into volunteerism, sleeping outside in
cardboard boxes to raise money for homeless youth.
Others get at the heart of tensions within the atheist movement. The
club worked with a Methodist church on a gay rights candlelight vigil,
a gesture that would make some atheists cringe.
"The trouble is, any time you start working with other groups,
religion starts coming in," said Victor Stenger, an adjunct professor
of philosophy at the University of Colorado and author of "The New
Atheism: Taking a Stand for Science and Reason."
"People bring up Jesus, they're trying to proselytize, trying to get
people to go to church," Stenger said. "The atheist groups just can't
put up with it. They have to argue against it."
More recently, the ISU club's non-confrontational philosophy has been
tested by a debate over the fate of a small chapel at Memorial Union
on campus.
The club has avoided taking a position because members are divided.
Some want the chapel's religious symbols — including an eight-foot
wooden cross — removed on First Amendment grounds. Others fear
repercussions and don't think a fight is worth it.
"The point of the club is not to make waves or controversy," said
Bodnar, adding that she is uncomfortable with "calling out religion as
wrong."
Some club members would like to be more confrontational when
circumstances merit. Junior Brian Gress was interested in
participating this fall in a nationwide "Blasphemy Day," a stick in
the eye to religion. But the club passed and the idea fizzled.
"You should always try to make friends, but there are certain things
about religion that can't be tolerated," Gress said. "Basically, the
intolerance of religion can't be tolerated."
Most affiliates of the Secular Student Alliance fall somewhere between
militant and why-can't-we-all-just-get-along, said Lyz Liddell, senior
campus organizer for the Columbus, Ohio-based group.
"College students can be a little more susceptible to the more
reactionary anti-religion voices, partly because it's so new to them,"
she said. "My impression is after a couple of years, they mellow
out."
Christian Smith, director of the Center for the Study of Religion and
Society at the University of Notre Dame and a principal investigator
on the youth and religion study, said campus atheist groups are better
off without militancy. Young adults are taught their entire lives to
be nonjudgmental, that different points of views are OK and that there
is no one truth, he said.
"Emerging adults are just not into trying to make other people be or
do something," Smith said. "If I were advising atheists and humanists,
I would say their long-term prospects are much better if they can
successfully create this space where people view them as happy, OK,
cooperative, nice people."
At Iowa State, what one club member describes as a band of misfits and
outcasts is trying to carve out a space where atheists who raise a
fist and atheists who wave and smile can coexist peacefully.
----
Eric Gorski can be reached at egorski(at)ap.org or via http://twitter.com/egorski
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News and Media Limited 2009
AP foreign, Saturday November 21 2009 ERIC GORSKI= AMES, Iowa (AP)€”
The sign sits propped on a wooden chair, inviting all comers: "Ask an
Atheist."
Whenever a student gets within a few feet, Anastasia Bodnar waves and
smiles, trying to make a good first impression before eyes drift down
to a word many Americans rank down there with "socialist."
Bodnar is the happy face of atheism at Iowa State University. Once a
week at this booth at a campus community center, the PhD student who
spends most of her time researching the nutritional traits of corn
takes questions and occasional abuse while trying to raise the profile
of religious skepticism.
"A lot of people on campus either don't know we exist or are afraid of
us or hate us," says Bodnar, president of the ISU Atheist and Agnostic
Society. "People assume we're rabble-rousing, when we're one of the
gentlest groups on campus."
As the stigma of atheism has diminished, campus atheists and agnostics
are coming out of the closet, fueling a sharp rise in the number of
clubs like the 10-year-old group at Iowa State.
Campus affiliates of the Secular Student Alliance, a sort of Godless
Campus Crusade for Christ, have multiplied from 80 in 2007 to 100 in
2008 and 174 this fall, providing the atheist movement new training
grounds for future leaders. In another sign of growing acceptance, at
least three universities, including Harvard, now have humanist
chaplains meeting the needs of the not-so-spiritual.
With the growth has come soul-searching - or the atheist equivalent -
about what secular campus groups should look like. It's part of a
broader self-examination in the atheist movement triggered by the rise
of the so-called "new atheists," best-selling authors who denigrate
religion and blame it for the world's ills.
Should student atheist groups go it alone or build bridges with
Christian groups? Organize political protests or quiet discussion
groups? Adopt the militant posture of the new atheists? Or wave and
smile?
---
As teenagers move into young adulthood, some leave God behind. But not
in huge numbers.
More than three-quarters of young adults taking part in the National
Study of Youth and Religion profess a belief in God. But almost 7
percent fewer believe in God as young adults (ages 18 to 23) than did
as teenagers, according to the study, which is tracking the same group
of young people as they mature.
What young adults are less likely to believe in is religion. The
number of those who describe themselves as "not religious" nearly
doubled, to 27 percent, in young adulthood.
Growing hostility toward religion was found, too. About 1 in 10 young
adults are "irreligious" - or actively against religion - after
virtually none of them fit that description as teenagers.
At Iowa State, most of the club's roughly 30 members are "former"
somethings, mostly Christians. Many stress that their lives are guided
not by anti-religiousness, but belief in science, logic and reason.
"The goal," said Andrew Severin, a post-doctoral researcher in
bioinformatics, "should a PhD student in biophysics, "should be to
obtain inner peace for yourself and do random acts of kindness for
strangers."
Severin calls himself a "spiritual atheist." He doesn't believe in God
or the supernatural but thinks experiences like meditation or brushes
with nature can produce biochemical reactions that feel spiritual.
When the ISU club began in 1999, it was mostly a discussion group. But
it soon became clear that young people who leave organized religion
miss something: a sense of community. So the group added movie and
board-game nights and, more recently, twice-monthly Sunday brunches to
the calendar.
"It's nice to be around people who aren't going to bash me for
believing in nothing," said Bricelyn Rector, a freshman from Sioux
City who, like others, described community as the club's greatest
asset.
Members also seek to engage their peers at Iowa State, a 28,000-
student science and technology school where the student body leans
conservative. There's a "Brews and Views" night at a local coffee
house and talks by visiting speakers common to any college campus.
"This is not a group of angry atheists. It's a group of very exuberant
atheists," said faculty sponsor Hector Avalos, a secular humanist and
well-known Biblical scholar who used to be a Pentecostal preacher.
"Their primary aim is not to destroy the faith of Christians on
campus. It's more live and let live."
The "Ask an Atheist" booth is the club's most visible outreach. On a
recent Friday, a handful of members stand ready to intercept students
on their way to eat lunch or withdraw money from a nearby ATM.
Traffic is slow. Scott Moseley, a Bettendorf, Iowa, senior, stops for
a polite conversation.
He explains that he was raised Methodist, has a Buddhist friend and
dates a Wiccan.
"My entire concept of one religion is kind of out the window," Moseley
says.
Bodnar, an ex-Catholic married to a Buddhist, recommends the local
Unitarian Universalist congregation, a haven for a grab bag of
religious backgrounds and a few members of the ISU Atheist and
Agnostic Society.
The closest thing to a confrontation comes when another student, a
baseball cap pulled tight to his brow, talks briefly about heaven
before he mutters, "I can't listen to you guys," and walks away.
---
On most college campuses, secular groups take shape when non-believing
students arrive and find a couple-dozen Christian groups but no home
for them. It isn't that atheism is necessarily growing among students
— surveys show no uptick in the number of atheist and agnostic young
adults over the last 20 years.
But the greater willingness to speak out, paired with the diversity
within the movement, has resulted is a patchwork of clubs across the
country united in disbelief but different in mission.
At Texas State University in San Marcos, a group of freethinkers led
by a former Lutheran organizes rock-climbing outings and has co-
sponsored a debate with a campus Christian group.
The University of South Florida is home to two active clubs: a
freethinkers group that held a back-to-school barbecue and an atheist
group that protested an anti-abortion group's campus visit.
Still other clubs embrace rituals. At the University of Southern
Maine, a secular humanist organization has celebrated HumanLight, a
secular alternative to Christmas and Hanukkah.
Just in the past year, the Iowa State club has evolved in new
directions. Some are things churches have traditionally done — like
the club's first foray into volunteerism, sleeping outside in
cardboard boxes to raise money for homeless youth.
Others get at the heart of tensions within the atheist movement. The
club worked with a Methodist church on a gay rights candlelight vigil,
a gesture that would make some atheists cringe.
"The trouble is, any time you start working with other groups,
religion starts coming in," said Victor Stenger, an adjunct professor
of philosophy at the University of Colorado and author of "The New
Atheism: Taking a Stand for Science and Reason."
"People bring up Jesus, they're trying to proselytize, trying to get
people to go to church," Stenger said. "The atheist groups just can't
put up with it. They have to argue against it."
More recently, the ISU club's non-confrontational philosophy has been
tested by a debate over the fate of a small chapel at Memorial Union
on campus.
The club has avoided taking a position because members are divided.
Some want the chapel's religious symbols — including an eight-foot
wooden cross — removed on First Amendment grounds. Others fear
repercussions and don't think a fight is worth it.
"The point of the club is not to make waves or controversy," said
Bodnar, adding that she is uncomfortable with "calling out religion as
wrong."
Some club members would like to be more confrontational when
circumstances merit. Junior Brian Gress was interested in
participating this fall in a nationwide "Blasphemy Day," a stick in
the eye to religion. But the club passed and the idea fizzled.
"You should always try to make friends, but there are certain things
about religion that can't be tolerated," Gress said. "Basically, the
intolerance of religion can't be tolerated."
Most affiliates of the Secular Student Alliance fall somewhere between
militant and why-can't-we-all-just-get-along, said Lyz Liddell, senior
campus organizer for the Columbus, Ohio-based group.
"College students can be a little more susceptible to the more
reactionary anti-religion voices, partly because it's so new to them,"
she said. "My impression is after a couple of years, they mellow
out."
Christian Smith, director of the Center for the Study of Religion and
Society at the University of Notre Dame and a principal investigator
on the youth and religion study, said campus atheist groups are better
off without militancy. Young adults are taught their entire lives to
be nonjudgmental, that different points of views are OK and that there
is no one truth, he said.
"Emerging adults are just not into trying to make other people be or
do something," Smith said. "If I were advising atheists and humanists,
I would say their long-term prospects are much better if they can
successfully create this space where people view them as happy, OK,
cooperative, nice people."
At Iowa State, what one club member describes as a band of misfits and
outcasts is trying to carve out a space where atheists who raise a
fist and atheists who wave and smile can coexist peacefully.
----
Eric Gorski can be reached at egorski(at)ap.org or via http://twitter.com/egorski
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News and Media Limited 2009
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