August Berkshire is the vice president of Atheist Alliance International, past president of Minnesota Atheists and member of the board of Camp Quest of Minnesota. He was president of Minnesota Atheists for a long time and is one of the prime movers in the organized “nice guy” atheist movement.
August attended a talk here in the Twin Cities by Ken Miller, author of Finding Darwin’s God, and he wrote up a review of the talk which has been published on Quiche Moraine. Go have a look: Losing Miller’s God by August Berkshire
The last paragraph of Berkshire’s piece says it all.
The degree to which the human mind can rationalize a belief in the face of contrary evidence can be truly amazing. I once asked someone how it is that he can believe in creationism and a young earth despite the good evidence supporting evolution and a very old universe and Earth. His answer was that God had created a world in a short amount of time and yet purposefully made it appear to look much older, creating the entire fossil record in an instant. I was astounded by this mental device: he had built himself an escape clause that would allow him to disregard out of hand any evidence contrary to his belief.