MNSU’s atheist club believes in the right to not believe
AnaRose Hart-Thomas
Staff Writer
Each week, the Mavericks Atheist/Agnostic Secular Students gather in the basement of Armstrong Hall to discuss topics of interest presented by its club members.
Dalton Campbell, a third-year finance major, explained a typical meeting as, “We have a rotation of officers who make their own PowerPoints about a particular subject. Last week we did one on where morality comes from.”
Meetings are conducted in an open forum fashion where members can openly discuss their minds. The club participates in ‘Ask an Atheist Day’ as well that happens twice a year. On those days, anyone can ask questions about atheism to atheists.
John Arsenault, a senior studying history, said, “For me, it is a place of free thought. It is not so much about one thing like atheism, but a place to openly discuss religion and theology.”
Frank Vondura, a sophomore transfer student studying music industry and theater design, added, “It is a group of people to see each week that are different from the norm who have interesting mindsets and views on things.”
MASS has existed in some way on campus for roughly 10 years, but was revamped two years ago to be the group it is today. “When I came here, I was looking for an atheist club but there was nothing. There were 20-plus religious organizations, so the goal was to have something for secular people, so they didn’t have to feel ostracized,” Raghen Lucy, the club president, said.
Michael Diercks, an MNSU alumni, said, “The one thing I always liked about this club is the sense of community. Sometimes it feels like I’m he only non-religious person but then I come here and there is a whole group of like-minded individuals.”
Campbell defined atheist and agnostic as, “Atheist to me, deals with the lack of the belief in God, whereas agnostic deals with the knowledge of something meaning you don’t know something for a fact.”
Information on how to join can be found on posters throughout the campus. Weekly meetings are held Thursdays at 7 p.m. in Armstrong Hall 39.
“We are open to anyone of any religious faith as long as you bring an open mind,” Arsenault said.
Header photo: Students exchange their views on the extinction of dinosaurs at the Mavericks Atheist/Agnostic Secular Students Features meeting in Armstrong Hall Thursday, Feb. 20, 2020 in Mankato, Minn. (Mai Tran/MSU Reporter)
I hear that over there in the Terran System, the advanced primates believe that God begat an advanced ape so that he could save them from their impure sexual thoughts, their religious texts filled with endless rants about the evils of committing adultery in their hearts.
We advanced ungulates, genius giraffes, here on Kepler 22B, had a similar religion, but grew out of it after a few million years of laying out on the savannah and looking up at all those hundreds of billions of galaxies with hundred of billions of stars in each one and then realized that with ten percent of the stars being G 2 type stars capable of sustaining carbon life forms and another ten percent being K type stars also capable of sustaining carbon based life forms (though we have discovered that the harsher M type red dwarfs have evolved silicon life forms capable of withstanding constant onslaughts of ultra violet and x ray emissions from those periodic flare ups typical of those types of stars)–it is really difficult at this stage in our evolution to entertain such ridiculous beliefs as what are still being proselytized on Earth.
Pingback: MNSU’s atheist club believes in the right to not believe – MSU Reporter | Prometheism Transhumanism Post Humanism