This is quite an endorsement for the Secular Student Alliance, courtesy of the Real Time with Bill Maher blog:
A group called the Secular Student Alliance is starting to get requests from teens who want to start atheist clubs at their high schools. These are kids who happen to believe that life can be lived fully and ethically through reason, and that studying is much more effective than prayer for, say, preparing for an American History final.
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The kicker is the Florida high school that refuses to approve an atheist club on the grounds that it doesn’t allow any religious clubs. But an atheist club, by definition, is not a religious club. That’s the whole point. Atheism is a religion like abstinence is a sex position. Like not being hungry is a meal. Like not believing in magic is a trick. What is it about non-belief that believers find so threatening?
Maher doesn’t get all the details right at the end regarding when high schools are required to allow atheist groups and when they can legally say no, and it’s not like the information he cites is new… but no matter. His support means a lot.
Now when’s he going to invite a representative from the SSA on his show? 🙂 (Incidentally, Maher invited a member of the Center For Inquiry On Campus — before it was called that — to appear on the panel for his old show, Politically Incorrect, back in the late 90s.)