Jessica Ahlquist Decision Reached

Edit: Please encourage other students to do things like this by contributing to the Jessica Ahlquist scholarship fund set up by Hermant Mehta (the Friendly Atheist) available here.

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I just got done reading the official court decision in the Jessica Ahlquist case written by U.S. District Court Judge Ronald R. Lagueux. Jessica is currently a 16 year old high school student in Providence, RI. An overtly Christian prayer has hung in her high school since the 1960s. She's an atheist and was suing the school for violating her constitutional rights.

She won the case, whose decision was announced today. I met Jessica along with two other high school students -- Zack Kopplin and Damon Fowler -- at the CFI Student Leadership Conference in April. The judge's comments in the decision reflect what I thought both of her and the two other high schoolers:

Plaintiff [Jessica Ahlquist] is clearly an articulate and courageous young woman, who took a brave stand, particularly in light of the hostile response she has received from her community.

The Dossier of Reason

Recently, a former pastor (now apostate) posted a very lengthy document to the atheism subreddit (post is here.) This was a compendium of all of the arguments against his former theistic beliefs that he had compiled. It's also a collection of arguments that convinced him that his former beliefs were false. It's a spectacular collection of arguments, so I wanted to link to it here. Link: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1f6ZewV_Ro5HLixACGE_wgJrnlFNVKVxTfuVALqARNEs/preview?hl=en_US&pli=1&sle=true