Karis Burkowski
A spirited elder/feisty Crone, Karis draws on lived experience when addressing topics like the purity programming of girls in the 1950s, the perceived freedom of the ‘60s, the trauma of an abusive marriage and the struggles of single motherhood.
After leaving her Christian faith as an adolescent, Karis Burkowski became fascinated with religions and the astounding things people believe. Her journey has taken her from the Crystal Cathedral in California to the Baha’i Lotus Temple in New Delhi, from Newgrange in Ireland to the Chamundeshwari Devi temple in Mysore. She has publicly debated an imam about Sharia law; participated with celebrants in temples, mosques and masjids, synagogues, cathedrals, gurdwaras, and meeting houses, as well as in forest circles and sweat lodges; and has walked the El Camino de Santiago to experience first-hand the transformative power of pilgrimage. Ultimately finding a spiritual home in Humanism, Karis became involved with the Officiant Training program and is now a Humanist officiant, offering secular ceremonies for people to honor their significant life events. She is also a member of Interfaith Grand River, an assembly of about 40 leaders representing various faith tradition in her region, and through an organization called Encounter World Religions, she has facilitated multiple sets of public lectures and site visits to help build understanding and religious tolerance in her community. Now happily remarried with six grandchildren, she feels compelled to expose the systems that undermine women, and tackles the big questions regarding the origins of patriarchy, how it continues to be maintained, and what actions can be taken to address it. Karis is also the co-author of the book Why Men Made God. She lives in Waterloo, Ontario Canada with her husband Forbes Burkowski, associate professor emeritus of Computational Biology at the University of Waterloo, as well as a backyard burrow of foxes. |
David Fitzgerald
David has been a passionate advocate for atheism, civil rights, counter-apologetics and secular humanism his entire adult life.
Over the years he has worn many hats in the secular community; including being Director and Co-Founder of both the world’s first Atheist Film Festival and Evolutionpalooza!, San Francisco’s oldest annual Darwin Day celebration. Among other roles, he has served on the Speaker’s Bureaus for the Center for Inquiry and The Secular Student Alliance, and co-founded the Godless Perverts Story Hour. An historical researcher and long-time atheist activist, David been a guest speaker for American Humanist Association, American Atheists, Skepticon, Apostacon, Ask-a-Scientist, Darwin Day, the Sheffield UK Freethought Convention, Rapture Day, The Garrison-Martineau Project, California Freethought Day, Canada’s BAHACon and many other organized events. He has debated and lectured at Stanford and UC Berkeley, and his writings have appeared in print and online in Secular Inquirer, Slate, Secular World, American Atheists Magazine, and elsewhere. He can be seen on YouTube and in several films and television shows, including: The Atheist Experience (2018), Batman & Jesus (2017), My Week in Atheism (2014), Marketing the Messiah (2020), and others, and he is a frequent guest on many podcasts. David is also the author of The Complete Heretic’s Guide to Western Religion series (including The Mormons); NAILED: Ten Christian Myths That Show Jesus Never Existed At All, Jesus: Mything in Action, and PLAYING GOD: An Evolutionary History of World Religion. With his wife, actress and author Dana Fredsti, he is also co-author of the science fiction trilogy Time Shards from Titan Books, UK, and a new dark fantasy novel Tarou: The Fall from Blackstone Publishing. In 2020, they left their beloved Bay Area after 30 years, and bought a home in the beautiful Victorian seaside town of Eureka, in northern California. |
