https://www.canadianatheist.com/2019/02/ask-herb-1-jacobsen/
 
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: What are the pragmatics or the first practical considerations of secular activism?
 
Herb Silverman: What to do, when to do it, and how to frame it? Those are the questions. Since open secularists are still a minority, we must pick and choose our battles. We do not ask for special rights, as many religions do. But we deserve and should demand equal rights in a country with a secular (and godless) Constitution, which does not favor one religion over another or religion over non-religion. We can focus on win-win situations, where we either gain equality or get sympathy for being discriminated against.

As a personal example, the Charleston City Council in South Carolina started its meetings with an invocation, usually a Christian one. Our local Secular Humanist group persuaded one council member to offer more diversity, and he invited me to give an invocation. But as the mayor introduced me, half the council members walked out because they knew I was an atheist. They didn’t return until it was time for the Pledge of Allegiance, and they turned toward me as they bellowed the words “under God.” Those who heard my invocation, including the mayor, thought it was fine.
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I didn’t expect such defiance, but it was an opportunity for the “Law of Unintended Consequences.” A reporter from our local newspaper wrote about the incident, along with comments from those who walked out. One councilman quoted Psalm 14: “The fool says in his heart there is no God. They are corrupt, their deeds are vile, there is not one who does good.” He then told me that the walkout was not personal. In other words, his religious beliefs compelled him to demonize an entire class of people he was elected to represent. Frankly, I would rather it had been personal. Another councilman said, “He can worship a chicken if he wants to, but I’m not going to be around when he does it.” I responded, “Perhaps the councilman doesn’t realize that many of us who stand politely for religious invocations believe that praying to a god makes no more sense than praying to a chicken.” (At least you can see a chicken.)

Here’s a discussion I had at a Cal Polytech Veritas Forum with Dr. Karen Pryor, from Liberty University, on the topic: Would Society Be Better Off Without Religion?​

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gvLaVB8vXHk

​https://www.canadianatheist.com/2019/02/silverman-jacobsen/
 
Herb Silverman is the Founder of the Secular Coalition for America. Here we talk about his life, work, and views. 
 
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: What was early life like for you, e.g., geography, culture, language, religion or lack thereof, education, and family structure and dynamics?
 
Herb Silverman: I was born in Philadelphia, where I lived for 21 years until I ran away from home to graduate school. My family consisted largely of Orthodox Jews, though my parents were more cultural Jews motivated by anti-Antisemitism. Having had relatives who died in the Holocaust, they did not trust any Goyim (Gentiles), and had as little contact with them as possible. We lived in a Jewish neighborhood and after public school I would go to an Orthodox Hebrew school. My mother was an authoritarian, who made all the family decisions. My father worked in a warehouse his entire life, packing Hershey bars that were shipped to underground subway stands. In another era, my mother would have had a job (other than cleaning house and “taking care” of me), which would have made both of us happier. 

https://www.postandcourier.com/opinion/letters_to_editor/letter-no-exorcists-needed/article_51151124-19b5-11e9-b5a2-3b7dd3d43d2f.html
 
An article in the paper on Jan. 13 relates that the Catholic Church needs to train more exorcists to meet national and local demands for exorcisms. Church leaders explain the need by claiming that more people are turning to expulsion of evil spirits because they have become “Godless.”

Speaking as a “Godless” atheist, I believe in no supernatural beings. No gods, no demons, and consequently no need for exorcisms. Father Bryan Babick, quoted in the article, got it partially right when he said, “Not everyone who thinks they are possessed is.” I would replace “Not everyone” with “No one.”

I may not be a trained exorcist, but I have a four-word solution to combat demonic possession that is more effective than anything an exorcist has in his arsenal: “Stop believing in demons.”

It is far more productive to develop a personal relationship with reality. Instead of thanking God for accomplishments and blaming Satanic forces for failures, we should take personal responsibility for our actions.
​
The late comedian Flip Wilson created a character, Geraldine, who always excused her bad behavior with “The Devil made me do it.” Flip got it right — attributing bad behavior to the Devil is just something to joke about. And we’d live in a happier and more peaceful world if we’d all embrace Flip Wilson’s devilish humor.
 

https://www.postandcourier.com/opinion/letters_to_editor/letter-real-science/article_76ec48ac-02d3-11e9-92ca-3f3ba1629260.html
 
I was pleasantly surprised to see in the Dec. 13 Post and Courier an informative and beautifully written science op-ed by Lucianne Walkowicz, an astronomer at the Library of Congress. She described the realities of space, dispelling common myths about gravity and black holes.I hope science articles like this will become a regular feature. Eliminating pseudoscience, including but not limited to the daily horoscope, would save space.

I worry about readers who believe that zodiac signs foretell future events. Astronomy is a science, but astrology is not. It has the same predictive power as fortune cookies. After a nice meal at a Chinese restaurant the other day, my wife and I exchanged fortune cookies. Hers seemed better suited to me and mine to her. Switching daily advice for Aquarius and Virgo would provide equally effective results. The paper recently published some fine articles and letters about problems and potential solutions regarding South Carolina’s education system. Please be part of the solution, not the problem, by educating your readers to distinguish real science from pseudoscience and mythology.
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Then again, perhaps I’m a skeptic because I was born a Gemini.

https://www.postandcourier.com/opinion/letters_to_editor/letter-symbol-of-freedom/article_600fc896-dd32-11e8-975c-13be80e3aefe.html  
​     
The “Again” in President Donald Trump’s slogan, “Make America Great Again,” obviously doesn’t refer to 1886. That’s the year the Statue of Liberty commemorated lasting friendship between the people of France and the United States. Today, under President Trump, our lasting friendship with France and other NATO allies has been replaced by distrust, animosity and disinterest in protecting human rights.The Statue of Liberty, a symbol of freedom and democracy, once inspired immigrants to seek a better life in America. Some of my relatives told me how they shed tears of joy as they passed through Ellis Island and saw the welcoming words on the statue: “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.”

Today, many would-be immigrants on our southern border are shedding tears of sorrow because yearning to be free is becoming an impossible dream. President Trump has called them rapists and terrorists, and prioritizes building a massive wall to keep them out. We might as well change Lady Liberty’s welcoming invitation to “Keep out your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.”Though there may be no easy answers about immigration, I wish Americans would show more empathy for the plight of people fleeing desperate conditions in their own countries. It is through pure chance of birth that many of us, myself included, are not fleeing to other countries to escape danger or find jobs to feed our families. After all, what would you do in that situation?
 

https://secularhumanism.org/2018/09/letters-6/
In “Infinity: Just One Damn Thing after Another” (FI, June/July 2018), Kenneth Nahigian unnecessarily complicates the concept. He brings in a version of Zeno’s Paradox, that an arrow goes halfway to its target an infinite number of times, so can never reach its target. Zeno was a philosopher, not a mathematician, living in an era before the concept of a limit (the basis of calculus) was discovered independently by Newton and Leibniz. They showed that infinite sums can converge to a limit. In Zeno’s case, we can begin with one half, then add half of that (one fourth) and keep adding halves. This infinite series has the limit 1, which is the Zeno target. 

​Placing Blame
https://www.postandcourier.com/opinion/letters_to_editor/letter-placing-blame/article_27949718-c733-11e8-95e6-c34a5d8dbe98.html
A Sept. 30 letter, “Bad theology,” takes issue with another letter for claiming God controls everything, including the weather, so there is nothing humans can do about it. The letter writer accepts overwhelming scientific evidence that human behavior is at least partly responsible for detrimental climate change, and that there are actions we can take to lessen future damage. I agree. However, the writer is also practicing bad theology when he claims science is a gift from the creator. That reminds me of people who survive delicate surgical operations and immediately give credit to God, rather than to the skilled doctors who perform the procedure.

​Here’s where you can watch a debate I had on September 9 with Bill Clute, Director of Reasonable Faith in Greenville, South Carolina on whether the Christian God exists. 
 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7aeid5N8oWA&feature=youtu.be

​ 
The Mathematicians Have Made a Covenant With the Devil
https://www.secularhumanism.org/index.php/articles/9775
Review by Ed Buckner
 
An Atheist Stranger in a Strange Religious Land: Selected Writings from the Bible Belt
 
Can anyone write an objective, reasonable review of an essentially autobiographical book about someone he knows well and admires? Perhaps not, but An Atheist Stranger in a Strange Religious Land: Selected Writings from the Bible Belt makes it seem easy. Dr. Herb Silverman takes great pride in giving appealing talks, always laced with well-polished jokes and anecdotes, with crucial matters of timing developed and carried out with care. His wife, Sharon Fratepietro, gets credit for coaching and editing with a fine sense of what works. A superficial listener to one of his talks, like a superficial reader of this book, might incorrectly conclude that the entertainment is the point, because the entertainment is well crafted and successful. (I don’t know what the equivalent of “timing” is in written anecdotes, but Silverman assuredly does.)
 
As much fun as Stranger is to read, fun is ultimately not really the point: the point is a description, and by implication a prescription, of how a man (or in this case, more precisely, a couple) should live. Atheism, or at least a lack of theism, is certainly part of this, because Silverman’s humanism has always emphatically been of the secular sort. But justice, compassion, decency, respect, and perspective (including, of course, a sense of humor and the ability to avoid taking oneself too seriously) matter more. Silverman, more than any other atheist or humanist leader in the nation today (and that includes many of my favorite people on Earth), has shaped modern humanism and atheism in the direction of being cooperative as well as competitive. The Secular Coalition for America was developed by many people, but Silverman was the founder. His dogged, cheerful persistence made that happen when others—including me—were not sure it ever would. (Chapter 6 of Stranger, though way too modest in presentation, provides more detail.)