Austin Dacey

Austin Dacey (born April 19, 1972) is an American philosopher, writer, and human rights activist whose work concerns secularism, religion, freedom of expression, and freedom of conscience. He is the author of The Secular Conscience: Why Belief Belongs in Public Life,The Future of Blasphemy: Speaking of the Sacred in an Age of Human Rights, and a 2006 New York Times op-ed entitled "Believing in Doubt," which criticized the ethical views of Pope Benedict. He is a representative to the United Nations for the International Humanist and Ethical Union and the creator and director of The Impossible Music Sessions.

Dacey was raised in the rural Midwest by liberal Catholics. His father Philip Dacey is a poet. As a young teenager, Dacey became an evangelical Protestant, playing in the Christian alternative rock band, The Swoon, which in 1990 released an EP produced by Charlie Peacock. While studying music and philosophy at The Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington, Dacey lost his religion, explaining later that "God stopped returning my calls." He studied applied ethics and social philosophy at Bowling Green State University in Bowling Green, Ohio, and was awarded a doctorate in 2002. In 2005, he debated Christian philosopher William Lane Craig over the existence of God.

Beginning in 1999, Dacey worked for the Center for Inquiry (CFI), a think tank that seeks "to foster a secular society based on science, reason, freedom of inquiry, and humanist values." He opened the New York City branch office of CFI and later served as the organization's representative to the United Nations. In 2009, Dacey left CFI and published a critique of the secular movement. In 2010, he created The Impossible Music Sessions, a forum in New York City for censored and persecuted musicians. He has taught ethics at the Polytechnic Institute of New York University.