Secular ethics is a branch of moral philosophy in which ethics is based solely on human faculties such as logic, reason or moral intuition, and not derived from purported supernatural revelation or guidance (which is the source of religious ethics). Secular ethics comprises any ethical system that does not draw on the supernatural, such as humanism, secularism and freethinking.

The majority of secular moral systems accept either the normativity of social contracts, some form of attribution of intrinsic moral value, intuition-based deontology, or cultural moral relativism. A smaller minority believe scientific reasoning can reveal moral truth. This is known as science of morality. Approaches like utilitarianism, subjective moral relativism, and ethical egoism are less common, but still maintain a significant following among secular ethicists.^{[citation needed]} Little attention is paid to the positions of moral skepticism and moral nihilism; however, many religious and some secular ethicists believe that secular morality cannot exist without a god or gods to provide ontological grounding, or is at least impossible to apprehend apart from authoritative revelation.

Barbara Carroll Forrest is a professor of philosophy at Southeastern Louisiana University in Hammond, Louisiana. She is a critic of intelligent design and the Discovery Institute.

Forrest is a graduate of Hammond High School. She received her B.A. in English in 1974 from Southeastern Louisiana University, her M.A. in Philosophy in 1978 from Louisiana State University, and her Ph.D. in philosophy from Tulane University in 1988. She has taught philosophy at Southeastern Louisiana University since 1988 and presently is a professor of philosophy in the Department of History and Political Science.

She co-authored Creationism's Trojan Horse: The Wedge of Intelligent Design (Oxford University Press, 2004), with biologist Paul R. Gross. The book examines the goals and strategies of the intelligent design movement and its attempts to undermine the teaching of evolutionary biology. The authors analyze the absence of a scientific intelligent design hypothesis, ID's religious foundations, and the political ambitions of intelligent design proponents. They examine the movement's Wedge strategy which has advanced and is succeeding through public relations rather than through scientific research. They also highlight intelligent design creationism's relationship to public education and to the separation of church and state.

Daniel Turp (born April 30, 1955 in Verdun, Quebec) is a politician in Quebec, Canada. He has served as a Bloc Québécois Member of Parliament (1997–2000) and as a Parti Québécois member of the Quebec National Assembly (2003–2008).

Born in Montreal he was raised as a Roman Catholic, although converted to Presbyterianism. He is a member of the Church of St. Andrew and St. Paul in Montreal.

Turp studied law at the Université de Montréal and the University of Ottawa, and received his legal licence in Sherbrooke in 1977. He gained a Master's degree at the Université de Montréal in 1978. He has worked for the Canadian International Development Agency, and was called as an expert for the Bélanger-Campeau Commission on Quebec's constitutional future.

Turp also started teaching at the Université de Montréal since 1982. Since then, he has taught several law courses at the University of Paris X (1986–1996), The International Institute of Human Rights in Strasbourg (1988) and Harvard University (1996). He has also been a director of studies at the International law academy in The Hague (1995).

Sean Faircloth (born 1960/1961) is the author of Attack of the Theocrats! How the Religious Right Harms Us All -- and What We Can Do About It (Pitchstone Press, released February 2012). Faircloth, an attorney, served five terms in the Maine Legislature including appointments on 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.

Paul Zachary "PZ" Myers (born March 9, 1957) is an American scientist and biology professor at the University of Minnesota Morris (UMM) and the author of the Pharyngula science blog, hosted on both the Science Blogs and Freethought Blogs blog networks. He is currently an associate professor of biology at UMM, works with zebrafish in the field of evolutionary developmental biology (evo-devo), and also cultivates an interest in cephalopods. He has published numerous research papers in Nature and other notable scientific journals.

He is a public critic of intelligent design (ID) and of the creationist movement in general and is an activist in the American creation–evolution controversy. He is widely regarded as a confrontationalist.

In 2006, the journal Nature listed his blog, Pharyngula, as the top-ranked blog written by a scientist. Additionally, PZ Myers was the recipient of the Humanist of the Year award in 2009, and the International Humanist Award in 2011.

Asteroid 153298 Paulmyers is named in his honor.