Last Thursday members of WTAMU’s Secular Student Alliance (SSA) gathered in the Jack B. Kelley Student Services Center (JBK) from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. for Ask an Atheist day to answer questions from other students. Several members were present, and students who were mostly unaware that the group even existed until the protest that occurred on campus two weeks ago were encouraged to ask them anything they wanted to ask. The idea of Ask an Atheist day is to educate people on what exactly Atheism is.
“Ask an Atheist day is something that Atheists internationally have decided to do because there are a lot of myths and misunderstandings about what Atheism really is,” Ashley Farren, senior Environmental Science and Geology major and member of SSA, said. “One of the common things that we get is the thought that if you’re an Atheist, you can’t possibly have morals.”
Ashley Farren said Ask an Atheist day is a way for them to allow people who may have questions about what Atheism really is to just ask. When people are encouraged to ask questions, it tends to be less threatening. Founder and president of SSA, Bradon Cohorn, said Ask an Atheist day is important because many people, especially in the area of the Bible belt, don’t understand what it means to be anything besides a Protestant Christian.
“Another reason we are doing this is to build exposure,” Cohorn said. “With the protests that happened last week, that was great exposure and at our next meeting after that, we had five or six new people show up.”
Cohorn said most students don’t even know SSA exists and they want to get the word out to students who may have different beliefs than many of their peers and don’t feel like they have a group to belong to.
“Right off the bat this morning we had a young lady show up that said, ‘I didn’t even know y’all existed. I’m an Atheist and I’ve been an Atheist for a while and I didn’t even know that there was a group like this on this campus,’” Cohorn said.
All of the SSA members present agreed that it can be difficult coming out as an Atheist for some people, especially if admitting to being an Atheist could harm family relationships. According to Cohorn, there are actually members of SSA that haven’t come out as an Atheist to their family because they fear the consequences. SSA wants those people to know there is a place on campus they can go to get a sense of belonging. Cohorn also said through no specific fault of anyone, SSA messages tend to be removed or hidden before many people get a chance to even see it.
“A lot of times our signs and posters will get removed because people find it offensive,” Cohorn said. “How a flyer that says ‘You can be good without God’ is offensive is beyond my understanding.”
Ashley’s husband, Jamie Farren, is also a member of SSA, even though he is currently a student at Amarillo College who plans to transfer to WT soon. He is also co-founder and president of Free-thought Oasis, which is a non-profit organization in Amarillo, that, according to Jamie, does pretty much the same thing as the SSA does, but for the community.
“Ask an Atheist day has become, in the Atheist community, somewhat of a holiday,” Jamie Farren said. “It’s kind of a reminder that we need to be talking to people who aren’t just Atheists. What it’s really about is an educational process.”
Although some students may disagree with some of the messages that SSA promotes and some find SSA in itself offensive, other students think that educating people is always a positive thing.
“I think it’s really important for people to be informed,” Miranda Parman, junior Spanish major, said. “Even if you don’t agree with something, you need to understand why you don’t agree with it. People shouldn’t just decide that something is wrong and say it’s wrong, but then not have anything to back it up. That’s just being completely uneducated.”
Parman said she walked by the protests that occurred two weeks ago and was appalled to find out what it was all about.
“If I were to label myself, I would say that I am a Christian and I think that those people are exactly what Christians are not supposed to be,” Parman said. “The word Christian is from a Greek word that means ‘little Christ’ and if we’re being ‘little Christs,’ Christ wasn’t an [expletive]. He wasn’t a jerk and those people had no kindness in them.”
According to members of SSA, Ask an Atheist day was a success, as they were able to inform many people on both the existence of SSA and the truth about Atheism. Cohorn encourages anyone who is curious about SSA to visit their Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/SecularStudents.at.WT.
