New organization to create environment for secular students

Tufts' new Secular Student Association (SSA) received recognition from the Tufts Community Union Judiciary last week, reflecting a growing segment of the student population that believes that all of existence takes place within a natural universe.

"It's not just atheists and agnostics" freshman Calvin Metcalf, co-founder of the club, said. "It also calls out for brights, humanists, skeptics, rationalists, nationalists, or just plain non-believers."

Metcalf stressed the open and positive nature of the SSA. "It's not negative at all, we're not trying to confront anyone," he said. "We want increased awareness and dialogue between atheists/agnostics and Christians [and other religious groups]."

Freshman Co-founder Dan Grant hoped to foster a comfortable environment for secular people. "If they realize that there are others like them, they will come out and discuss their beliefs."

Metcalf hopes the organization can provide "all the community aspects of religion without the intolerance and bigotry."

"We're not the Sodomite from Gomorrah trying to rape your daughter," Metcalf said. "We're normal people like you; [only] we draw our moral compass from common sense."

"I think it is exciting to see secular-minded people coming together -- both on this campus and across the nation. It helps to have support when trying to explore new ideas and share your thoughts with others" senior Cheryl Testa said.

The organization grew out of a desire to speak to the beliefs of underrepresented students in the University Chaplaincy.

After Metcalf wrote an article about secularism in Radix early this year, Chemistry Professor Samuel Kounaves noticed his work. Kounaves, who worked on the Mars Rover missions as an astrochemist, met with Metcalf and proposed starting a group to serve naturalist students.

Members discuss scientific facts as well as personal disillusionment with organized religion as factors that drew them to a rationalist worldview.

"Much of science has lain to rest supernatural things that were believed," Kounaves said. "I don't think science and religion are compatible. In the last 200 years, evidence has eliminated cause for irrational beliefs. Science itself is a passionate way to engage the mysteries of the universe. It is a powerful tool for investigating claims to knowledge."

"For one, I always thought it was extremely narcissistic of us to think that the maker of the world, the whole reason for life, was something that so closely resembled ourselves," Testa said. "Now that idea seems out-dated to me all together -- sort of like saying that the whole solar system revolves around the Earth. To me, it is even quite conceited to believe that our little brains could possibly conceive of the purpose or source of this possibly infinite universe."

Philosophy Professor Daniel C. Dennett, who has emerged as a figurehead of a nationwide movement of secular academics, who have dubbed themselves brights, said the SSA is part of an overall transition to a secular society.

"[A naturalistic worldview appears] everywhere in Academia with very few exceptions, and in the actual practices of just about everybody else," Dennett said. "People who own car rental businesses, people who make dishwashers, airline pilots, and fishermen: they all make decisions from evidence gathered naturalistically."

Dennett is undecided whether the recent apparent polarity between fundamentalism and religiosity reflects a genuine reversal, or whether it merely represents a "momentary screech" in a relatively smooth transition to a secular society.

"You compare the 21st century to the 18th or 19th, and you're not quite so impressed with the [fundamentalist] backlash," he said.

University Chaplain Father O'Leary offered no comment on why students might be drawn to a secular worldview, but expressed support for student organizations. "Anytime people want to get together in community, that's a good thing," he said.