Gilbert Holmes is a long time board member and now Executive Director of ACLU of Indiana. He is a graduate of Southern Illinois University, University of Southern California, and the Indiana University School of Law. He has had a distinguished career in both government and the private sector including Commissioner, Indiana Bureau of Motor Vehicles (BMV) and President/CEO of Indianapolis Public Transportation Corporation (IndyGo).

Desmond Wood was baptized as a Lutheran but drifted away from the church as he matured. He converted to Islam in 2000. During this time, he traveled to the Middle East and studied Arabic. In 2005, he began to hang out and study with an esoteric group in Indianapolois. After a year with them, he began to study diverse subjects on his own and discovered Center for Inquiry Indiana. He is a serious student of philosophy and religion as well as studying the art of classical music and jazz on the classical guitar.

Making Humanism Relevant to African Americans

Jamila Bey is a journalist and comedian living in Washington, DC. Born to a Southern Baptist convert to Catholicism and a non-practicing Black Muslim, Jamila has formally renounced her "confused" belief in the supernatural and is now an out and proud Atheist. Jamila began her career covering government in her hometown of Pittsburgh and moved to DC where she was an editor for four years at National Public Radio. She's been a writer for hire for the better part of the last decade and is devoted to spreading the gospel of Logic, Reason, and Science to all those who may hear. Check out her article, "Black Women Who Use the "A" Word

HASTI www.hasti.org

Toni joins us to talk about Charitable Choice and the work of CFI DC.

( Note: We apologize for noise in the recording due to technical difficulties.)

She wrote three books about Star Trek: Letters to Star Trek, Star Trek Speaks! (with co-authors Fred and Stan Goldstein) and The Making of Star Trek: The Motion Picture, with co-author Gene Roddenberry.

Another book, Star Trek: The First 25 Years, co-authored with Gene Roddenberry, was not published but became the basis of the 1994 book, Star Trek: Where No One Has Gone Before: A History in Pictures, by J. M. Dillard. Susan's Star Trek memoir, Inside Trek, was published  in 2002.

It was Gene Roddenberry who introduced Susan to humanism. She has been president of the Humanist Society of Greater Phoenix  since 2000. The chapter received "Chapter of the Year" from the American Humanist Association for 2001.

Sean O'Brien is our special guest host.  

Austin DaceyâFriday, April 25â7:00 pm The Secular Conscience: Why Belief Belongs in Public Life (Prometheus Books, 2008) at the Center For Inquiry, Indiana.

Austin serves as a representative to the United Nations for the Center for Inquiry. He is also on the editorial staff of Skeptical Inquirer and Free Inquiry magazines. His writings have appeared in numerous publications including the New York Times.  In 2002 Austin earned a doctorate in philosophy. He lives in New York City.

 Featured Book and Book Tour:
The Secular Conscience: Why Belief Belongs in Public Life

Who holds the monopoly on morality?  Cultural conservatives from the Vatican to Washington tell us that ethics presupposes religion, and so religion belongs in public life.  Secular liberals counter that conscience is a private matter, a personal choice free from shared standards of truth or right.  Conservatives charge that conscience without standards is relativism.  Liberals didnât lose their moral compassâthey gave it away.

In his incisive new book, The Secular Conscience (Prometheus Books, March 2008), philosopher Austin Dacey breaks this ideological deadlock by boldly rethinking the nature of conscience and its role in public life.  Inspired by an earlier tradition he traces to Spinoza and John Stuart Mill, Dacey urges secular liberals to reclaim the language of objective values.

Dacey seeks nothing less than to interrupt a suicide, and he has written a beautiful primer on how our secular tradition can be rescued from self-defeat.  The Secular Conscience reveals how simplistic notions of privacy, tolerance, and freedom keep dangerous ideas sheltered from public debate. This is an extraordinarily useful and lucid book.
    â Sam Harris, author of The End of Faith and Letter to a Christian Nation