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Freethought Festival
Freethought Festival is a student-run freethinking convention held annually in Madison, Wisconsin by the student group Atheists, Humanists, and Agnostics at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Speakers give talks relating to atheism, freethinking, skepticism Skepticism, also spelled scepticism, is a questioning attitude or doubt toward knowledge claims that are seen as mere belief or dogma. For example, if a person is skeptical about claims made by their government about an ongoing war then the p ..., and other topics. Description The Freethought Festival is a free, student-run secular conference held annually in Madison, Wisconsin. It is organized and hosted by Atheists, Humanists, and Agnostics (AHA) @ UW-Madison. Authors, bloggers, activists, and scientists from around the country come to speak on secular and scientific issues. The event is funded by AHA through an annual operations budget received from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.AHA Funding' Past Fes ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Freethought
Freethought (sometimes spelled free thought) is an epistemological viewpoint which holds that beliefs should not be formed on the basis of authority, tradition, revelation, or dogma, and that beliefs should instead be reached by other methods such as logic, reason, and empirical observation. According to the ''Oxford English Dictionary'', a freethinker is "a person who forms their own ideas and opinions rather than accepting those of other people, especially in religious teaching." In some contemporary thought in particular, free thought is strongly tied with rejection of traditional social or religious belief systems. The cognitive application of free thought is known as "freethinking", and practitioners of free thought are known as "freethinkers". Modern freethinkers consider free thought to be a natural freedom from all negative and illusive thoughts acquired from society. The term first came into use in the 17th century in order to refer to people who inquired into the bas ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Greta Christina
Greta Christina (born 1961) is an American atheist, blogger, speaker, and author. Early life Christina was born in Chicago in 1961. She graduated from Reed College in 1983. She legally changed her name in her twenties, dropping her family name and taking her middle name as her last name. Career Christina has written for AlterNet, ''Free Inquiry'', and ''The Humanist''. She started writing her own "Greta Christina's blog" in 2005; it was later incorporated in to the Freethought Blogs network. In 2016 she co-founded ''The Orbit'', which she described as "the first atheist media site founded explicitly to work on all forms of social justice". In 2009, Hemant Mehta at ''The Friendly Atheist'' ranked Christina's blog in the Top Ten most popular atheist blogs. She also created the "Atheist Meme of the Day" on Facebook. She has been writing professionally since 1989, and has been a full-time freelance writer and speaker since 2012. Her writing about atheism has appeared in print in ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Festivals In Wisconsin
A festival is an event ordinarily celebrated by a community and centering on some characteristic aspect or aspects of that community and its religion or cultures. It is often marked as a local or national holiday, Melā, mela, or Muslim holidays, eid. A festival constitutes typical cases of glocalization, as well as the high culture-low culture interrelationship. Next to religion and folklore, a significant origin is agriculture, agricultural. Food is such a vital resource that many festivals are associated with harvest time. Religious commemoration and thanksgiving for good harvests are blended in events that take place in autumn, such as Halloween in the northern hemisphere and Easter in the southern. Festivals often serve to fulfill specific communal purposes, especially in regard to commemoration or thanking to the gods, goddesses or saints: they are called patronal festivals. They may also provide entertainment, which was particularly important to local communities before ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Indre Viskontas
Indre Viskontas is a Lithuanian-Canadian neuroscientist and operatic soprano. She holds a Ph.D. in cognitive neuroscience and a M.M. in opera. She is a Professor of Psychology at the University of San Francisco and serves on the faculty at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. She is also the Creative Director of Pasadena Opera. Early life Viskontas's parents emigrated from Lithuania to Canada just after World War II, and Viskontas grew up in Toronto. Scientific career Viskontas's research has explored the neurological basis of memory, reasoning and self-identity, while also studying creativity in people with neurodegeneration. Techniques used in her research include single-unit recording in patients with epilepsy, high-resolution functional magnetic resonance imaging, eye-movement tracking, voxel-based morphometry, and various behavioral tasks in healthy adults, patients with epilepsy, and patients with neurodegenerative diseases such as frontotemporal dementia, semantic de ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Faisal Saeed Al Mutar
Faisal Saeed Al Mutar ( ar, فيصل سعيد المطر; born 1991) is an Iraqi-American human-rights activist, writer, and satirist who was admitted to the United States as a refugee in 2013. He is founder of Global Conversations and Ideas Beyond Borders and formerly worked for Movements.org to assist dissidents in closed societies worldwide. He became an American citizen in June 2019. Biography Faisal Saeed Al Mutar was born in Hillah, Iraq, in 1991. He later moved to Baghdad. Al Mutar grew up in a religiously moderate Muslim family in Iraq, though he remained nonreligious throughout his upbringing. He described growing up under Saddam as being exposed to the "motherlode of misinformation". Al Mutar's writings and secular lifestyle made him a target for threats and attacks by al-Qaeda. He survived three attempted kidnappings. His brother and cousin were also killed by al-Qaeda in sectarian violence there. Al Mutar visited Lebanon and then Malaysia where he founded the Globa ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
James Randi
James Randi (born Randall James Hamilton Zwinge; August 7, 1928 – October 20, 2020) was a Canadian-American stage magician, author and scientific skeptic who extensively challenged paranormal and pseudoscientific claims. Rodrigues 2010p. 271/ref> He was the co-founder of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry (CSI), and founder of the James Randi Educational Foundation (JREF). Randi began his career as a magician under the stage name The Amazing Randi and later chose to devote most of his time to investigating paranormal, occult, and supernatural claims, which he collectively called "woo-woo". Randi retired from practicing magic at age 60, and from his foundation at 87. Although often referred to as a "debunker", Randi said he disliked the term's connotations and preferred to describe himself as an "investigator". He wrote about paranormal phenomena, skepticism, and the history of magic. He was a frequent guest on ''The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson'', famously expo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lindsey Doe
Lindsey Takara Doe (born ) is a sexologist, sex educator, and host of ''Sexplanations'' on YouTube. Personal life Lindsey Takara Doe was born in . , she had three non-biological children: a five-year-old foster son and two teenaged daughters. Their lack of sex education drove Doe to create ''Sexplanations''. In 2015, when one of her daughters complained about a boy who would not stop pestering her for a date, Doe took the opportunity and published a video addressing such harassment from boys; the video received international attention, spirited debate, and over 76,000 views in ten days. In 2010, Doe's photograph was featured alongside a personal statement as part of The Strong Women Project, exhibited at the Maureen and Mike Mansfield Library in Missoula, Montana. She was originally photographed "in a pressed collared shirt, slacks and matching jewelry", but felt she was misrepresenting herself; Doe returned to the shoot hours later, stripped to her underwear, and slathered ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Susan Jacoby
Susan Jacoby (; born June 4, 1945) is an American author. Her 2008 book about American anti-intellectualism, ''The Age of American Unreason'', was a ''New York Times'' best seller. She is an atheist and a secularist. Jacoby graduated from Michigan State University in 1965. She lives in New York City. Life and career Jacoby, who began her career as a reporter for ''The Washington Post'', has been a contributor to a variety of national publications, including ''The New York Times'', the ''Los Angeles Times'', ''The American Prospect'', ''Mother Jones'', ''The Nation'', ''Glamour'', and the ''AARP Bulletin'' and ''AARP Magazine''. She is currently a panelist for "On Faith," a ''Washington Post''-''Newsweek'' blog on religion. As a young reporter she lived for two years in the USSR. Raised in a Catholic home (her mother was from an Irish Catholic family), Jacoby was 24 before she learned that her father, Robert, had been born into a Jewish family. Jacoby explored these roots in her 2 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Wisconsin Institutes For Discovery
The Wisconsin Institutes for Discovery is a public-private research and outreach partnership that is located in the Discovery Building on the University of Wisconsin–Madison campus. It consists of two institutions: the privately funded Morgridge Institute for Research, and the publicly funded Wisconsin Institute for Discovery. Both institutes opened in 2010. The publicly funded institute is headed by Jo Handelsman, and the privately funded institute is led by chief executive officer Brad Schwartz. Both institutes are housed in the same facility, the ground floor of which serves as a "town center", providing several small and large meeting and collaboration areas and variety of dining options. This town center design is based on the philosophies presented in the Wisconsin Idea. Above the town center on the ground floor, the building has three floors of modular, non-traditional research and lab space, designed to promote collaboration amongst researchers. The building is also desi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jamie Kilstein
Jamie Alexander Kilstein (born May 17, 1982) is an American writer, radio host, and stand-up comic. He grew up in Pennington, New Jersey, and is the oldest of five children. He lives in Austin, TX. Career Writing Kilstein's writing has appeared on left-leaning sites including ''Wonkette'', which featured a recurring column in summer 2012 titled ''Sundays with Jamie Kilstein and the Lord''. The column covered topics like pundits' penchant for overusing 9/11 analogies and " anchor babies". In September 2013, Kilstein came out publicly as suffering from both alcoholism and an eating disorder in a front-page article for ''Jezebel'', "I'm an Alcoholic Dude With an Eating Disorder. Hi." He and Kilkenny (his ''Citizen Radio'' co-host and wife at the time) wrote the book ''Newsfail'', which was released on October 14, 2014. The book covers topics including Palestine, trans rights, feminism, atheists, and factory farming. Comedy Kilstein's first comedy album, ''Please Buy My Jokes'', ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Dan Savage
Daniel Keenan Savage (born October 7, 1964) is an American author, media pundit, journalist, and LGBT community activist. He writes ''Savage Love'', an internationally syndicated relationship and sex advice column. In 2010, Savage and his husband, Terry Miller, began the It Gets Better Project to help prevent suicide among LGBT youth. He has also worked as a theater director, sometimes credited as Keenan Hollahan. Born in Chicago to Roman Catholic parents, Savage attended the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign where he received a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in acting. After living in West Berlin from 1988 to 1990, he moved to Madison, Wisconsin, where he befriended Tim Keck, co-founder of ''The Onion''. When Keck moved to Seattle, Washington, Savage moved as well to become an advice columnist for '' The Stranger'', which Keck founded; he had offered Savage the position after Savage wrote a sample column which impressed him. Savage has since become a sex columnist and ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Katherine Stewart (journalist)
Katherine Stewart is an American journalist and author who often writes about issues related to the separation of church and state, the rise of religious nationalism, and global movements against liberal democracy. Her books include '' The Good News Club: The Christian Right's Stealth Assault on America's Children'' (2012) and ''The Power Worshippers: Inside the Dangerous Rise of Religious Nationalism'' (2020). Career As a writer and speaker, Stewart has shown interest in controversies over religious freedom and the separation of church and state. She has also written about public and science education, public funding of faith-based initiatives, anti-LGBT initiatives on the state level, faith-based political organizing, the U.S. Supreme Court, homeschooling, and bullying in schools in the U.S. Stewart began her journalism career working for investigative reporter Wayne Barrett at ''The Village Voice''.Shimron, Yonat (March 6, 2020)"Katherine Stewart on Christian nationalism's ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
