If Youth Knew, If Age Could 19 — Archimedean Pivot: To Take a Stand and to Move the Earth

By Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Dr. Herb Silverman is the Founder of the Secular Coalition for America, the Founder of the Secular Humanists of the Lowcountry, and the Founder of the Atheist/Humanist Alliance student group at the College of Charleston. He authored Complex variables (1975), Candidate Without a Prayer: An Autobiography of a Jewish Atheist in the Bible Belt (2012) and An Atheist Stranger in a Strange Religious Land: Selected Writings from the Bible Belt (2017). He co-authored The Fundamentals of Extremism: The Christian Right in America (2003) with Kimberley Blaker and Edward S. Buckner, Complex Variables with Applications (2007) with Saminathan Ponnusamy, and Short Reflections on Secularism (2019), and Short Reflections on American Secularism’s History and Philosophy (2020).

Here we talk about taking a stand.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: In life, our wills, characters, and true stances will be tested. This seems like an inevitability. I’ve had several myself. Many cost me, dearly. Some, I’m still paying the costs in different ways.

Nonetheless, I don’t regret them, taking the stands. I doubt I ever will. You need to take a stand. It may cost you. No one does anything alone, though. However, you can make a change…