Sean Faircloth

Sean Faircloth is an American writer and politician from Maine. Faircloth is the author of Attack of the Theocrats! How the Religious Right Harms Us All – and What We Can Do About It, an attorney and five-term state legislator. While in the legislature, Faircloth was appointed to the Judiciary and Appropriations Committees. In his final term, Faircloth was elected Majority Whip. In 2009 Faircloth became executive director of the Secular Coalition for America, advocating for separation of church and state, and for greater acceptance of nontheistic viewpoints in American life. In September 2011 he became the Director of Strategy and Policy for the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science and was the opening speaker for Dawkins' book tour. Faircloth's first book published by Pitchstone Press, Attack of the Theocrats! How the Religious Right Harms Us All - and What We Can Do About It was released in February 2012.

Faircloth had the idea for the Maine Discovery Museum in 1996 and led the project from concept to completion in 2001. Maine Discovery Museum was then the second largest children's museum outside Boston in New England.

Richard Dawkins

Clinton Richard Dawkins FRS FRSL (born 26 March 1941) is an Englishethologist, evolutionary biologist, and writer. He is an emeritus fellow of New College, Oxford, and was the University of Oxford's Professor for Public Understanding of Science from 1995 until 2008.

Dawkins first came to prominence with his 1976 book The Selfish Gene, which popularised the gene-centred view of evolution and introduced the term meme. In 1982, he introduced into evolutionary biology the influential concept that the phenotypic effects of a gene are not necessarily limited to an organism's body, but can stretch far into the environment. This concept is presented in his book The Extended Phenotype. In 2006, he founded the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science.

Dawkins is a noted atheist, and is well known for his criticism of creationism and intelligent design. In his 1986 book The Blind Watchmaker, he argues against the watchmaker analogy, an argument for the existence of a supernatural creator based upon the complexity of living organisms. Instead, he describes evolutionary processes as analogous to a blind watchmaker. In his most popular book, his 2006 book The God Delusion, Dawkins contends that a supernatural creator almost certainly does not exist and that religious faith is a delusion. He is an opponent of creationism being taught in schools. He makes regular television and radio appearances, predominantly discussing his books, his atheism and his ideas and opinions as a public intellectual.