I’m Austin Edwards, and I am a senior at Kettering University. I’m studying Mechanical Engineering and Engineering Physics. I was encouraged by the gentleman who invited me to this community to tell the story of how a club I founded at my university was started. I hope this is a good icebreaker.

First, a little background about me. Growing up, I was raised by my mother who primarily followed New Age doctrine. Until about 12 years old, I suppose that I believed what my mom did. I believed that a swinging pendulum could answer questions about the future, I believed that chanting spells and making concoctions would bring me things like love, good grades, and make all the lights green on the way to school. I believed that rocks had powers to control your “energy”, luck, and prosperity. I believed that people had auras and that I could see them. I believed that we have multiple lives and that I, according to my mom, had an old soul – wise and yet playful. I believed that the lady at the new age shop had healed my ear infection and that she could see my past life, where I owned a house in Ireland that I would eventually go back to in this life. Heck, I even thought for a brief period of time that I could stop a rolling pencil.

All the while, in the back of my mind, I had doubts about the efficacy of my actions and the actions of these other people who believed this too. Could the pendulum really know about the future (through spirit guides)? Could stones really grant me better luck if I kept them on me? Could there really be this thing known as chakra? Did chanting spells really make the lights green on the way into school?

As I gained knowledge of the world (something my friends say I may still lack) and a stronger sense of causality, I began to understand that the things I was doing weren’t doing anything but making me look like a fool. I realized that the pendulum only worked if I was holding it. Further, it always seemed to side with what I wanted it to say… imagine that. I realized that the pencil came to a standstill because it had lost all of its momentum to the table, not because I made it lose momentum. I realized that the lights were going to behave how they will no matter if I chanted or not.

For a great while, I hadn’t really even thought about Christianity or God, only that they were probably just as worthwhile as the other stuff in which I formerly believed. Then, in my last two years of high school, I met two critical thinkers. One of them was a Christian and the other was more of a deist. We had hours upon hours of conversation about God, Christianity, the meaning of life, etc. You name the big topic, we discussed it. From that, I fleshed out that I was most certainly not in agreement with them and that I was confident - but not 100% certain - that there was no God. Confidence is nice, but I had to be sure, so I began to look into it by reading books and talking to people. After high school, I went off to Kettering University and met the other two founders of Secular Skeptics at Kettering (SSK). We had much more than atheism in common; nonetheless, it was a bonding commonality. One of the founders, Jason, has a girlfriend who goes to Michigan State. She mentioned that Michigan State had a club that was partnered with this organization known as “Center For Inquiry (CFI)” and she noted that I might enjoy the organization due to my keen interest in non-theist matters. I looked it up and didn’t really understand what it was about. So, for probably another half a year, I didn't make much progress.

Eventually, something roused my attention in CFI once more and I began to look into the organization more thoroughly. Upon discovering that CFI is exactly what I was looking for, I approached Lance and Jason about starting a club on campus. They were apprehensive about it, to say the least. How were we going to find the time? Who would even join? What would we do? There were a lot of questions to be answered and only one way to find out – to try it and see. Kettering University’s schedule works a little differently than most schools. Kettering University breaks the year into quarters. In the first and third quarters, Lance, Jason, and I work at an internship in the field of our study. During the second and fourth quarters, we are at school studying hard. Each quarter is referred to as a “term”.

We began our club - Secular Skeptics at Kettering - in the spring of 2014 with a discussion style meeting every Tuesday afternoon. We would bring some topic and present on it and then we would open the floor for the attendees to give their two cents. We mainly had our friends show up, but sometimes it was just us three.

The meetings were nice and informative, but they weren’t effective. Even when we got a free microwave and gave out free popcorn, the attendance was sparse at best and the ideas we wanted to promote on campus weren’t reaching anyone that we weren’t friends with and who already knew our positions well. We wanted more and the term quickly came to an end.

Over the next summer, we were informed of a leadership conference hosted by CFI and we gladly took off work to attend it. It was wonderful! Lance, Jason, and I came away from that conference tired and as a result bickering on the way home, but overall full of a newfound direction and a plan for our club for the upcoming school term.

So what did this newfound direction and plan do for us? How did it take shape? First, we got organized. We wrote a constitution, we found some core values to stand upon, and we built an organization that will allow for expansion.

We began with our mission. We decided that our mission is to encourage secularism, skepticism, critical thinking, freedom of inquiry, and humanism on Kettering’s campus and in the community at large; and to foster a safe environment where individuals can question beliefs without judgment. In that statement, you’ll notice something. You’ll notice that we left out atheism. Mainly it was a marketing decision, but it was also about a principle. We are not on campus to convert people to atheism or even to promote it. We are on campus to encourage a diverse set of ideas - to encourage critical thinking about topics that are typically taboo. If through doing so, people became atheists, then so be it, but that is not our goal.

We start off each term with enthusiasm. We go to the club expos. We host weekly meetings (one general meeting and one meeting for philosophical thinkers), and work with local groups and our student government to bring speakers to campus such as Dan Barker (Morality without God), James Croft (Humanism), Molly Bernard (Sexual Assault Awareness and Prevention), Greta Christina (LGBT+ Issues and Feminism), Ed Brayton (The Necessity of Secularism), and our university's president Bob McMahan (Astrophysics and the Big Bang). We've had presentations from professors from the University of Michigan talking about Norse Mythology. We've had the Bat Conservation Society come in and give a presentation about nocturnal animals. We've even had discussions about the power of language.

We are shaking the core of this traditionally conservative private university, and we’re honestly not surprised. We frequently get surprised looks when people hear of the positive things we are doing on campus. One thing that has really kept us going is that there are a large number of people who have come out of the woodwork saying that they are non-theist and that they are overjoyed to find that Kettering has a club for secular students like them.

When we started, the most impressive feat we were able to accomplish was gaining traction. With three people, no funding from the school, very little time, and a strong will we have been able to not only attract attention to our club but also bring in big name speakers. We were able to make a name for ourselves at Kettering University, and we have been able to challenge the religious and conservative ideologies on campus. As we've progressed, we've gained the trust of our fellow students.

Whether it is through leadership conferences, the local student groups on nearby campuses, or even the like-minded people on our campus, we are building a movement and because of that we are making a difference. As one of our speakers pointed out during his speech at our campus, student groups like ours were all but non-existent some 30 years ago. Now, we are springing up left and right – from liberal public universities and high schools to private universities like Kettering University. So where is this movement leading? What is SSK’s vision for this movement? Our vision is to unite - to make a stand. We want to let people know that the “nones” are here and we aren’t going away. We want to ensure that the government stays secular, that humanist values like women's rights, gender equality, and many others are furthered, and we want to encourage skepticism and critical thinking.

So, that's me. That's my club. Those are my values. You've now had a bit of an insight into who I am and what I stand for and I'm excited to join this community and meet all of you. I'm looking forward to us getting to know each other. As I become more familiar with this community, I'll get a better idea of my content will look like in the future. Whatever I contribute, I promise to make it thought provoking.