Fayfreethinkers featured in U of A Newspaper article

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Fayfreethinkers featured in U of A Newspaper article

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Fayetteville Freethinkers featured in newspaper article on the rise of atheism:

Atheism on Rise Among Young Adults

By Shelby Gill

Image

"Doug Krueger (left), Kevin Lyon (center) and Darrel Henschell (right) are members of the Fayetteville Freethinkers,
a secular society that has been active in Fayetteville for the last 14 years. The group has regular meetings at the
Fayetteville Public Library to promote “Free Thinking”, which they categorize as “a method of arriving at conclusions,
not a set of beliefs.”

Excerpt:

"In the past decade, religious affiliation and belief has decreased by 13 percent in the U.S., with young adults making up the bulk of those moving away from religion, recent surveys show.

People are generally confused about atheism, said Camille Richoux, an anthropology major from Camden, Ark. Richoux also is president of Occam’s Razors, a secular student society.

“They think that it means you believe that there is no God, but I just don’t have a belief in a god,” Richoux said. “I don’t say, ‘there is no God’ instead I say, ‘show me the evidence.’ God really doesn’t have an effect on my life. I live my life by treating other people well and maybe leaving this world better than when I came into it. For me, that’s always been enough.”

There’s a good base in northwest Arkansas for an alternative to religious groups, Richoux said.

“One of the things that gives the atheist movement a lot of hope is that among the 18-to-26 age group, non-belief is at its highest levels ever,” said Douglas Krueger, philosophy and world religion professor at Northwest Arkansas Community College. Krueger is also author of “What is Atheism?”

From 2005 to 2012, individuals who identify themselves as religious fell from 73 percent to 60 percent. In comparison, atheism has increased from 1 percent to 5 percent, according to WIN-Gallup International’s “Global Index of Religion and Atheism.”

Seventy-one percent of Americans believed that religion is losing its influence on American life, according to a 2011 Gallup religion poll.

Ages 18-to-29 make up 31 percent of people who identify themselves as “unaffiliated”, according to the Pew Forum, “U.S. Religious Landscape Survey.”

“There’s a large group of people who are not interested in religion, or they’re agnostic. They don’t believe in God, but that doesn’t necessarily follow mean they accept the term ‘atheist.’ The category of atheist doesn’t represent the group that doesn’t believe in God because it’s a term that has a lot of baggage over the years,” Darrel Henschell, co-founder of the Fayetteville Freethinkers.

Fayetteville Freethinkers promotes “a method of arriving at conclusions, not a set of beliefs.” The group has been active in Fayetteville for the last 14 years. Although many members are atheist, Fayetteville Freethinkers is not an atheist group, Henschell said.

“We have people who sit on church boards and come to the (FreeThinker) meetings,” Henschell said. “One fellow said he goes to church for his heart and comes to our meetings for his head.”

Thomas Senor teaches philosophy of religion at the UA. The question of God comes up in his class all the time and “for the most part students are interested” in learning about the different arguments for and against God, he said.

In recent years, students, in particular, are becoming more tolerant of atheism, Krueger said."

The rest...

The Arkansas Traveler
"I'm not a skeptic because I want to believe, I'm a skeptic because I want to know." --Michael Shermer
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