Archives

Some Past Presentations/Programs

• March 2008 - Atheist Coalition of San Diego hosted the San Diego premier of Catholic School Catfight. It stars Atheist Coalition member Bryan Walsh, who plays Father Billy, a Catholic priest. The co-star is well-known atheist activist Bart Aikens, who plays a rabid Baptist father of a wayward daughter. The movie was directed and produced by Dwayne Walker, who has produced several movies concerning religion. The movie lasted 35 minutes.

• February 2008 - Jai Ghorpade, SDSU business professor, spoke on "God, religion and atheism in America". Prof Ghorpade recently had an interesting experience running a pro-atheist opinion article in the San Diego Union-Tribune.

• November 2007 - Professor Khaleel Mohammed, of the Religious Studies Department of San Diego State University discussed his views of Islam and the misinterpretation of the religion in the West.

• August 2007 - Heather Campbell discussed Omar Khayyam, an 11th century astronomer and poet.

• June 2007 - Judith Abeles discussed a few of the important archaeological sites in Israel and which refer to historical events described in the "Old" Testament (Scriptures) and other facts about life in ancient times.

• May 2007 - Harry Sutton spoke on the search for the Historical Jesus. What do we really know about the life of Jesus? Ultimately, almost nothing of a reliable nature.

• September 2006 - Dwain Deets reported on a recent national convention of Icelandic atheists which he attended.

• May 2006 - Rex Dalton spoke regarding missing link fossil discoveries Mr. Dalton is the U.S. West Coast correspondent for Nature. He discussed recent "missing link" fossil discoveries, including the 375-million-year-old fish discovered in the Canadian arctic that appears to be an intermediate between fish and land-dwelling animals, as well as early hominid fossils. Before joining Nature in 1999, Dalton covered medicine for the San Diego Union Tribune.

• March 2006 - Diane Anshell spoke about STUN (Superstition, Talking Snakes, Unjust Taxes, and Nonsense) TV programs. She has had her own Public Access show for 15 years and is well-acquainted with the red tape of getting a show on the air. Also, she has put a lot of time into getting the STUN programs to be scheduled.

• January 2006 - Jeff Archer, president of Atheist Coalition, spoke about his new book, The Mother of All Battles, written under his pseudonym Malcom Lagauche.

• October 2005 - Bill Wexler of the National Speakers Association Hall of Fame spoke on the topic: Insights on Giving Effective Speeches.

• September 2005 - First Amendment attorney Randal Morrison spoke on church and state legal issues, emphasizing the "frontier cases" now in the lower courts, some of which will eventually be decided by the U.S. Supreme Court.

• August 2005 - Bart Aikens of Atheists United in Los Angeles. Together with the late Lauren Peck, Aikens produced the hour-long TV show STUN (Superstitions, Talking Snakes, Unjust Taxes, and Nonsense), which ran for 13 years. Aikens talked about Lauren Peck's legacy and the STUN show.

• June 2005 Darrel R. Falk, professor of biology at Point Loma Nazarene University. Falk's book "Coming to Peace with Science: Bridging the Worlds Between Faith and Biology" has been favorably reviewed by the National Center for Science Education. Aimed at fundamentalist Christians, the book explains why it is important that evolution and the deep age of the Earth be accepted among the public, and how believers can integrate both faith and science into their world-views. Falk's research interests include molecular genetics. He holds a PhD from the University of Alberta.

• May 2005 - Kevin Cornwall, a parent in the Poway school district, He spoke about his efforts to establish an alternative to the recitation of the current Pledge of Allegiance as the state prescribed daily "patriotic activity".

• April 2005 - Bobbie Kirkhart, President of the Atheist Alliance International spoke on the topic "AAI: What are they up to now?" Bobbie Kirkhart is a contributing author of The Fundamentals of Extremism: The Christian Right in America. Retired from the Los Angeles Unified School District, Adult Division, Kirkhart has made numerous radio and TV appearances.

• March 2005 - Jeff Archer, president of Atheist Coalition, spoke about his new book, The Sledgehammer and the Ant: The 12-Year U.S.-Iraq War, written under his pseudonym Malcom Lagauche.

• February 2005 - Rowena Oesting of the La Jolla meeting of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers).

  Rowena Oesting has been a Quaker for over 30 years. She gave an overview of the doctrine and history of Quakerism, and discussed the future direction of the religion.

• January 2005 - Paleobiologist Dr. J. David Archibald, Professor of Biology and Curator of Mammals at San Diego State University.

  Professor Archibald received his Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley in 1977. He has written 150 articles, essays, reviews, and monographs on the systematics and evolution of early mammals, biostratigraphy, faunal analysis, and extinction. His field work has taken him from the American West to Middle Asia. His 1996 book Dinosaur Extinction and the End of an Era: What the Fossils Say (Columbia University Press) documents what we know of the fossil record at the time of dinosaur extinction. In February 2005 his edited book with Ken Rose The Rise Of Placental Mammals: Origins And Relationships Of The Major Extant Clades (Johns Hopkins University Press) will appear.

• October 2004 - Jeff Archer, president of Atheist Coalition, spoke about the history of atheism locally.

• September 2004 - David Christian, professor of history at SDSU and author of Maps of Time, An Introduction to Big History.

  Maps of Time is world history on an unprecedented scale. Beginning with the Big Bang, David Christian views the interaction of the natural world with the more recent arrivals in flora and fauna, including human beings. Professor Christain discussed his book and the concept of "Big History".

• August 2004 - Matthew Hess

  The August speaker was Matthew Hess of MGMBill.org, a local group that is trying to ban male circumcision for infants. Female circumcision/genital mutilation has been banned in the US, but not male. This issue explores the boundaries of separation of church and state.

• July 2004 - Jeffrey Mittman, Special Projects Manager of Equality California, and Southern California Field Director of Marriage Equality California.

  Mittman has been an activist for gay issues since the early 1980s and has been on staff for numerous political candidates over the years.

• April 2004 - Dr. Russell F. Doolittle, on Theism in the Scientific Community.

  Dr. Doolittle is a biochemist at UCSD with two distinct research efforts under way. One is very general and has to do with reconstructing the evolutionary histories of a wide variety of proteins. Among the questions he is trying to answer are: When did prokaryotic organisms diverge from eukaryotes? How many rudimentary families of proteins are there? How are "new proteins" invented? The second major research interest deals with the invention and evolution of vertebrate blood plasma proteins, and expecially the clotting proteins. Dr. Doolittle has been engaged in the ongoing "debate" with creationists. He discussed theism in the scientific community as well as evolution vs. creationism issues.

• March 2004 - Ellen Brown and Jim Hillegas of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, on Church/state separation issues.

• February 2004 - Ed Duliba on Civil Rights and Legal Status of Atheists.

  In 2004, there are atheist citizens of the United States that, by the laws or constitutions of several states, are not allowed to testify in court, not allowed to serve on juries, not allowed to work for the state or to occupy state elected offices. Immigrants cannot take the oath of citizenship without declaring belief in a goddess or god.

• January 2004 - Pentheism

  For our January meeting, several representatives of the local Pantheists, including Tom Brower, conducted a discussion regarding Pantheism. To read up on Southern California Pantheism, check out their web site.

• April 2003 - Dr. David Preston on his study of Zen Buddhists in Southern California

  In 1988 Dr. Preston published a book-length sociological study based on his, and other's, experience in the group he wrote about. In the meantime he became seriously involved in a spiritual practice that is more theist, but with much in common with Zen and similar sorts of spiritual paths.

  Dr. Preston a professor of sociology at SDSU and got his Ph.D. at the University of Illinois. He is an undergraduate advisor and he studies Sociology of Religion, Sociology of Knowledge, and Social Theory. He is currently on an early retirement program.

• March 2003 - Kim Blaker on The Fundamentals of Extremism
  
  

  The Fundamentals of Extremism: the Christian Right in America is not just another book on the Religious Right. John Shelby Spong retired Bishop of the Diocese of Newark, New Jersey and best-selling author of Rescuing the Bible from Fundamentalism calls Blaker's book, "a blockbuster expose of the activities of the Religious Right."

  In this stark and troubling account of the Religious Right's vision for America, readers come face-to-face with fundamentalist goals and tactics that have long been under way. The Fundamentals of Extremism is an in-depth examination of the causes and characteristics of Christian fundamentalism and its effects on women, children, African-Americans, gays and lesbians, politics, education, and American society.

  The Fundamentals of Extremism has received other endorsements by such celebrities and scholars as Richard Dawkins, Nadine Strossen, John M. Swomley, and Gerald A. Larue.

  Richard Dawkins, Simonyi Professor of the Public Understanding of Science at Oxford University, author of Unweaving the Rainbow: Science, Delusion and the Appetite for Wonder, The Selfish Gene, and other books:

  "I have just read this brilliant book from start to finish, almost without a break, and I am stunned and horrified by what I have learned. The fundamentalist Christian Right is America's Taliban. With the exception of the burqa (and even that, one feels, is missing only because St Paul forgot to mention it) all the ingredients are there: slavish adherence to a misunderstood old text; hatred of women, modernity, rival religions, science and pleasure; love of punishment, bullying, narrow-minded, bossy interference in every aspect of life. The Religious Right represents organized ignorance, organized bigotry, organized nastiness - and these people are on their way to taking over the Republican Party. Not least, the book persuaded me how muddled the fundamentalists are. They think they are patriots, yet they fight the letter of the Constitution and the spirit of the Founding Fathers every step of the way. The Religious Right is, in the deepest and truest sense of the word, un-American."

  Bio: Kimberly Blaker is editor and coauthor of The Fundamentals of Extremism: the Christian Right in America. She is a social advocate and syndicated writer and columnist who has been published in more than 90 regional magazines. Her opinion column on church and state, "The Wall^TM," appears regularly in newspapers and other publications. Her commentaries have also appeared in the Detroit Free Press, Detroit News, San Francisco Examiner, the Los Angeles Daily Journal and she has also written for the national Complete Woman Magazine.