Religion & Law

Gob Smacking

By John Pieret

Some things in life just have to be filed under "Huh?"

James Madison University has a campus club of Freethinkers that meets Wednesday night. Nothing very surprising there. Okay, the fact that a staff member of the JMU Campus Crusade for Christ chapter regularly attends is perhaps a little unusual but if freethinkers can't tolerate opposing views, who can?

"I think it's really good that they come," said [Shannon] McKernin, the Freethinkers secretary. "Otherwise, it could just be a bunch of atheists sitting around saying 'Hey, we agree with each other.' "

At one point, more Christians than atheists were regularly attending Freethinkers meetings, said Melody Matheny, a founding club member who graduated in 2003.

On Oct. 29, the Freethinkers helped sponsor an on-campus lecture on intelligent design by Salvador Cordova, a graduate student at the Johns Hopkins University applied physics laboratory.

Cordova, an evangelical Christian who spends much of his spare time advocating for intelligent design theory, has had a several-year friendship with the Freethinkers and made a similar presentation several years ago, also sponsored by the club.

"It's kind of a relationship that no one would have expected," said Cordova, who found the Freethinkers and began attending some of their meetings a few years ago, while he was in flight school at the airport in Weyers Cave.

"The animosity you would expect [toward Christians] just isn't there," Cordova said.

"[The Freethinkers] have shown great integrity by giving the opportunity for all viewpoints to be heard ? and have followed the highest traditions of open inquiry, fair debate and healthy skepticism," he said in an e-mail.

Full post as published by Thoughts in a Haystack on December 04, 2008 (boomark / email).