Registration is now open for the
CFI Student Leadership Conference 2013
As a leading secular organization, we believe that it is an important part of our mission to train student leaders and to pass on the collective knowledge that we've gained from decades of grassroots organizing and advocacy. For more than 15 years, CFI has inspired and educated the secular leaders of tomorrow so that they can expand on the limits of our knowledge and bring reason to the coming generations. With these goals in mind, we work to connect students with the people who will help them deliver science, reason, and secular values to their communities.
Each year, CFI hosts a Leadership Conference focused on grassroots organizing, activism, advocacy, and the real skills that student leaders need to run an effective group and do effective outreach. The CFI Student Leadership Conference is the meeting place of young secular activists, passionate freethinking group leaders, and the professionals and thinkers who shape our world. Many of the presenters you'll meet are former student leaders and young people who gained experience by being a part of the movement, and now it’s time for us to give you a foot up by sharing our expertise.
If you're a CFI student group leader, or if you're a student starting a group at your high school or college, don't miss this event!
A Fifth Grader’s Response to the CFI Board’s Statement
The first thing you notice is that there are words. The words are strung together according to grammatical rules of English, and they form sentences. These sentences express complete thoughts. The thoughts are what you see in your head when you read and understand the sentences.
You’re In College: Now What About Your Parents?
Young adulthood can be an incredibly awkward time for a whole host of reasons, but one of the most difficult is navigating the transition of your relationship with your parents from an hierarchical to an equal one. So how do you do it? Particularly when you’re a skeptically minded, independent thinking young adult, how do you recognize that your parents may still see you as their little kid? There is, of course, no right answer to this question. Everyone has a slightly different relationship with their parents, but there are some main themes that emerge no matter who you are and how you relate to your parents. Here are some things you might want to consider as you move into adulthood, and some considerations about how to navigate them.
Support Your Local Ex-Muslims
Sam Harris's Twitter feed is an interesting place. Here is a recent tweet of his that stuck out in my mind:
Safety and Liveness: Applying Information Assurance Policies to Belief and Mental Health
My current research applies formal logic to the analysis of information assurance. Blah Blah Blah, right? Well I'll be damned if I didn't just have a conversation with my therapist about the application of information assurance policies to fighting my depression. And what's more, they also apply to the skeptic's dilemma of trying to minimize one's false beliefs or maximizing one's true beliefs. This might be obvious to you, but my brain works funny, so I am just discovering it.
Music Monday: Arcade Fire - “Abraham’s Daughter”
Yeah, I read The Hunger Games. Yeah, I was excited for the movie. Yes, I'm excited for the next installment of the trilogy (November 11, 2013). However, I was more than pleasantly surprised with the soundtrack for the motion picture. The first track from The Hunger Games: Songs From District 12 and Beyond was by none other than the Montreal-based indie group responsible for the heretical 2007 album Neon Bible. For the indie hipsters out there, I am of course talking about Arcade Fire. The rest of the album is quite good too, but the first track "Abraham's Daughter" is an ode to the forgotten and/or nameless warriors out there who fight oppression and religious fanaticism simply because it is the right thing to do.
Digital Resources
