The release of Bob Avakian’s book Away with All Gods! Unchaining the Mind and Radically Changing the World, and Sunsara Taylor’s promotional tour were significant steps to remedy that rift. Avakian is the Chairman of the Revolutionary Communist Party USA, and Taylor is a street activist and popular contributor to Revolution newspaper.

Taylor’s tour provided a timely opportunity for Atheist Talk Radio to challenge and expand the horizons of our target audience, and to provide them a glimpse of the breadth of the atheist community. I expected many in our audience to disagree with her, and so looked forward to a lively and informative audience interaction. I think it is unfortunate that Nathan Curland did not take advantage of the opportunity to question Taylor by phoning in or at least submitting questions by e-mail, yet engaged in ad hominem attacks in his web editorial.

For example, Curland writes that “she has mastered all the diversionary skills including rewriting history.” Throughout the interview she was given the opportunity to be thorough and expansive, but her answers were direct and never evasive. She is a serious student of history, despite Curland’s aspersions. Curland seems to be making much of a summary answer she gave when told that there was only a minute and a half left to the interview, when she derided the exaggeration that is accepted as conventional wisdom that in revolutionary China there were “many many many millions of people killed.”. I have listened to the podcast once again and find no justification for Curland’s accusations of lies and fear mongering.

Curland accuses Sunsara Taylor of “blind” commitment to ideology and throwing critical thinking out the window. Rather, she has strongly stated and, to Curland, unfamiliar opinions, but she does not shy from the examination that characterizes critical thought. I have seen her field questions from the audience after her presentation at the University of Minnesota. She answered even the rudest and most confrontational questions respectfully and seriously.

She said on the radio program “If somebody actually thinks that I am wrong and can substantiate it with evidence, I want them to bring that challenge, and if I am wrong I want to know.” That is a credo of which any critical thinker would be proud.

Too often we find that organized atheists are constrained by the narrow ideology of American political liberalism. For these dogmatic listeners, an hour of Sunsara Taylor is surely difficult and challenging. I disagree with her on many things but find her always well-informed and her opinions well-considered. Curland’s editorial admonishes us that “if we want to kill the American freethought movement, all we have to do is align ourselves with communism,” but by definition freethought is independent of every organization and political faction. At least Curland forced me to listen to the podcast once again, which I found well worth my time, and recommend to everyone.