Speaking at a gathering of local atheists, humanists, freethinkers and other non-theists in a chemistry lecture hall at Stanford University, David Silverman, president of American Atheists, a national advocacy group for nontheists, announced Tuesday that his New Jersey-based organization would launch the first television channel dedicated to atheism in July.

"Why are we going to television?" he asked the audience, a mix of about 100 students and people from the local community. "It's part of our strategy of going where we are not." ...