Setting the Agenda: Secular Humanism's Next 30 Years - A Free Inquiry subscriber's conference

Ed Buckner, president of American Atheists, is a former executive director of the Council for Secular Humanism. A longtime secularist activist, he is coauthor of Quotations that Support the Separation of Church and State, a contributing author to Fundamentals of Extremism: The Christian Right in America, and author of several articles in The New Encyclopedia of Unbelief.

Richard Carrier is the renowned author of Sense and Goodness without God and Not the Impossible Faith, as well as numerous articles online and in print. He received his Ph.D. in ancient history from Columbia University in 2008 and now specializes in the modern philosophy of naturalism, the origins of Christianity, and the intellectual history of Greece and Rome.

Richard Dawkins has authored ten books, including: The Selfish Gene (1976); The Extended Phenotype (1982); The Blind Watchmaker (1986); Climbing Mount Improbable (1996); Unweaving the Rainbow (1998); The Ancestor's Tale (2004); The God Delusion (2006); and The Greatest Show on Earth (2009). The God Delusion has sold more than two million copies in English, and is published in more than 30 languages. He is chairman of the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science (RDFRS).

Christopher diCarlo is assistant professor of science and ethics at the University of Ontario Institute of Technology and one of Canada's most prominent humanist activists. Dr. diCarlo is a past visiting research scholar at Harvard University, where he conducted research for two forthcoming books he is currently writing titled The Comparative Brain: The Evolution of Human Reasoning and The Evolution of Religion: Why Many Need to Believe in Deities, Demons, and the Unseen. His book, How to Become a Really Good Pain in the Ass: A Practical Guide to Thinking Critically (McGraw-Hill Ryerson), is now being re-edited for a wider audience in the United States.

Shadia Drury is Canada Research Chair in Social Justice at the University of Regina and a Free Inquiry columnist. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and the author of books including The Political Ideas of Leo Strauss; Terror and Civilization: Christianity, Politics, and the Western Psyche; and Aquinas and Modernity: The Lost Promise of Natural Law (2008)

Sean Faircloth is executive director of the Secular Coalition for America. He served a decade in Maine's legislature and was elected majority whip. An accomplished legislator, Faircloth spearheaded more than thirty laws, including the Deadbeat Dad Child Support Law, saving hundreds of millions of dollars. Faircloth graduated from the University of Notre Dame and chaired a sex-crime commission and an early childhood commission.

Tom Flynn is executive director of the Council for Secular Humanism and editor of Free Inquiry.

Gordon Gamm is a graduate of Tulane University law school, where he studied comparative law of nations throughout the world. He has represented the Center for Inquiry in court on church/state issues, where he was asked to explain humanism. He founded the Bragg Symposium on Humanism in Kansas City and the Boulder International Humanist Institute in Boulder, Colorado.

Sam Harris is the author of the New York Times best-sellers The End of Faith (winner of the 2005 Pen Award for Nonfiction) and Letter to a Christian Nation. Mr. Harris's writing has been published in over fifteen languages. He and his work have been discussed in Newsweek, Time, The New York Times, Scientific American, Nature, Rolling Stone, and many other journals. His writing has appeared in Newsweek, The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The Times (London), The Boston Globe, The Atlantic, The Annals of Neurology, and elsewhere. He is co-founder and CEO of The Reason Project, a nonprofit foundation devoted to spreading scientific knowledge and secular values in society.

Jennifer Michael Hecht is the author of award-winning books of philosophy, history, and poetry, including: Doubt: A History (HarperCollins, 2003); The End of the Soul: Scientific Modernity, Atheism and Anthropology (Columbia University Press, 2003); and The Happiness Myth, (HarperCollins in 2007). Her work appears in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The New Republic, and The New Yorker. Hecht earned her Ph.D. in History from Columbia University in 1995 and now teaches in the graduate writing program of The New School University.

The Rev. Barry W. Lynn has served since 1992 as executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, a Washington, D.C.-based organization dedicated to the preservation of the Constitution's religious liberty provisions. An accomplished speaker and lecturer, Lynn has appeared frequently on television and radio broadcasts to offer analysis of First Amendment issues. News programs on which Lynn has appeared include PBS's "News Hour," NBC's "Today Show," Fox News Channel's "O'Reilly Factor," ABC's "Nightline," CNN's "Crossfire," CBS's "60 Minutes," MSNBC's "Countdown with Keith Olbermann," Fox News Channel's "Hannity & Colmes," ABC's "Good Morning America," CNN's "Larry King Live" and the national nightly news on NBC, ABC and CBS.

Mark Johnsonis the professor of philosophy and Knight Professor of Liberal Arts and Sciences at the University of Oregon. His research has focused on the philosophical implications of the role of human embodiment in meaning, conceptualization, reasoning, and values. He is co-author, with George Lakoff, of Metaphors We Live By (1980) and Philosophy in the Flesh (1999) and author of The Body in the Mind (1987); Moral Imagination: Implications of Cognitive Science for Ethics (1993); and The Meaning of the Body: Aesthetics of Human Understanding (2007).

Barry Kosmin, research professor in the Public Policy & Law Program at Trinity College and founding director of the Institute for the Study of Secularism in Society and Culture. A sociologist, Dr. Kosmin has been a principal investigator of the American Religious Identification Survey series since its inception in 1990 as well as national social surveys in Europe, Africa, and Asia. His publications on the ARIS include One Nation under God: Religion in Contemporary American Society (1993) and Religion in a Free Market (2006).

Lawrence Krauss is foundation professor, director of the Origins Initiative, and a co-director of the Cosmology Initiative at Arizona State University. An internationally known theoretical physicist with wide research interests, he is the author of more than 250 scientific publications as well as numerous popular articles on physics and astronomy and several acclaimed popular books, including the best-selling The Physics of Star Trek. He is the recipient of numerous awards for his research and writing, including the Presidential Investigator Award and the American Association for the Advancement of Science's 1999-2000 Award for the Public Understanding of Science and Technology.

Paul Kurtz is founder and former editor-in-chief of Free Inquiry, former chair emeritus of the Council for Secular Humanism and the Center for Inquiry, professor emeritus of philosophy at the State University of New York at Buffalo, and author of books including The Transcendental Temptation, Forbidden Fruit, Living without Religion and many others.

Ronald A. Lindsay is President and CEO of the Council for Secular Humanism and the Center for Inquiry. He is author of Future Bioethics: Overcoming Taboos, Myths, and Dogmas and a contributor to the New Encyclopedia of Unbelief.

Chris Mooney is 2009-2010 Knight Science Journalism Fellow at MIT, co-host of the Center for Inquiry's acclaimed podcast Point of Inquiry, and author of three books: The Republican War on Science, Storm World, and Unscientific America. An activist with the Council's Campus Freethought Alliance in his college years, he also interned and spent time on staff at the Center for Inquiry.

PZ Myers is a biologist at the University of Minnesota-Morris who, in addition to his duties as a teacher of biology and especially of development and evolution, likes to spend his spare time poking at the follies of creationists, Christians, crystal-gazers, Muslims, right-wing politicians, apologists for religion, and anyone who doesn't appreciate how much the beauty of reality exceeds that of ignorant myth.

Robert M. Price, fellow of CFI's Committee for the Scientific Examination of Religion and co-host of it's acclaimed podcast Point of Inquiry. He is a professor of theology and scripture studies at Coleman Theological Seminary and the author of books including The Reason Drivien Life, Deconstructing Jesus, and The Incredible Shrinking Son of Man.

James "The Amazing" Randi is founder of the James Randi Educational Foundation and the world's most tireless investigator and demystifier of paranormal and pseudoscientific claims. His many investigations include his expose (in collaboration with Free Inquiry) of faith-healer Peter Popoff, which he announced on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson and which inspired the Steve Martin movie Leap of Faith. His book Film-Flam! is regarded as a skeptical classic.

Eugenie Scott, executive director of the National Center for Science Education, Inc. A former college professor, Dr. Scott is an internationally known expert on the creationism and evolution controversy and is called upon by the press and other media to explain science and evolution to the general public. The author of Evolution vs. Creationism: An Introduction, and coauthor (with Glenn Branch) of Not In Our Classrooms: Why Intelligent Design Is Wrong for Our Schools, she is the recipient of numerous awards from scientists and educators and has been awarded seven honorary degrees.

John Shook is director of education for the Center for Inquiry and a research associate in philosophy at the University at Buffalo. A forthcoming book is The God Debates (Blackwell).

Victor Stenger, adjunct professor of philosophy at the University of Colorado and emeritus professor of physics at the University of Hawaii. He is author of nine critically acclaimed popular-level books that interface between physics, cosmology, philosophy, religion, and pseudoscience. His 2007 book, God: The Failed Hypothesis, was a New York Times best seller. His last two books, both published in 2009, are Quantum Gods and The New Atheism: Taking a Stand for Science and Reason.

Eddie Tabash is a board member of the Council for Secular Humanism, the Center for Inquiry, and the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry. He is chair of the Center for Inquiry / Los Angeles, chair of the Council's First Amendment Task Force, an accomplished civil liberties attorney, and one of the nation's most prominent debaters against the existence of God."

James Underdown is the Executive Director of Center for Inquiry / Los Angeles

Robert Wright is the author of the New York Times best-seller The Evolution of God. Previous books include The Moral Animal: Evolutionary Psychology and Everyday Life (named by the New York Times Book Review as one of the best 10 books of the year) and Nonzero: The Logic of Human Destiny (which President Bill Clinton required White House staff members to read). Wright, a recipient of the National Magazine Award for Essay and Criticism, has been a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and has been named one of the Top 100 Global Thinkers by Foreign Policy Magazine. He has taught philosophy at Princeton and religion at Penn. He is a senior fellow at the New America Foundation and editor in chief of Bloggingheads.tv, which he co-founded. He has written for the New Yorker, The Atlantic, The New York Times, and many other periodicals.

Ray Abruzzo (Attila the Hun)- Stage actor and director and noted for his many TV roles, including playing Little Carmine Lupertazzi for four seasons on The Sopranos, and appearances on The Practice, Night Court, Dynasty, L.A. Law, House, and various CSI’s. (Trivia: Became an actor after appearing in Inherit the Wind in high school)

Susan Fallender (Emily Dickinson)- Stage, screen, and TV actress; appeared in a featured role in BBC’s All the World’s a Stage, and with Charlton Heston in the Ahmanson Theatre’s Detective Story; film work includes Heaven Help Us and Trading Places; and TV appearances include Hallmark’s Wild Hearts and The Last Dance. (Trivia: Originally a ballet dancer and trained at a London’s drama school)

Robert Forster (Galileo) appeared in more than 100 film and TV productions; nominated for a supporting actor Oscar for Jackie Brown; first film was Reflections in a Golden Eye, co-starring Marlon Brando and Elizabeth Taylor. (Trivia: Played lead role in Haskell Wexler's 1969 Medium Cool.)

Jack Maxwell (Steve Allen)- TV, film and stage actor; appeared in 24, House M.D., and Lost; theater includes Salome with Al Pacino, and a movie about that production, Wilde Salome, will be released soon. (Trivia: Lifetime member of the Actors Studio)

Frank Megna (Director) has written a number of plays, screenplays, and TV scripts (for shows like Crime Story, Wiseguy, Nasty Boys and Veronica Clair). He recently directed and co-wrote the indie feature film The Seekers. He is the founder and co-owner of Working Stage Theater in West Hollywood and has conducted many seminars and workshops on writing, directing, and acting.

Charles Shaughnessy (Charles Darwin). Appeared in more than 100 TV and film productions; played Maxwell Sheffield in TV's The Nanny and August Martin in TV's Saints and Sinners. (Trivia: Won a Daytime Emmy and appeared on Days of Our Lives.)