The debate of the existence of a god or higher being, be it Jesus, Allah, Moses or even Magneto, is never ending, and one man recently brought that dispute to Carbondale.

The Southern Illinois Atheists Meetup Group and the New Humanist Forum of Carbondale Humanitarian Fellowship welcomed speaker Richard Carrier to their first lecture event Saturday at Curbside Bar and Grill and Sunday at the Carbondale Unitarian Fellowship.

Carrier is an author, historian and atheist activist. He has degrees from University of California, Berkeley, and Columbia University, and has studied the philosophy of ancient civilizations, science and religion.

“Why don’t we pretend to live in the world of ‘Harry Potter’?” Carrier said. “Or what if the ‘X-MEN’ actually existed and were combating ISIS in the Middle East?”

Anne O’Day, founder of the group, said she belonged to a singles’ meetup group, a communal organization of people with similar interests, which became Christian without her knowledge.

She said she created a non-dating meetup group for atheists in Chicago. She initiated one in Champaign and another in southern Illinois in 2008.

“There are so many things out there that are like phantom forums,” O’Day said. “This is for people who actually want to meet face to face rather than just online.”

O’Day said Southern Illinois Atheists consisted of 50 members after its first year and now has 186.

Tom Godshalk and Amelia Ketzle, two members of the group, said they discovered Carrier after being involved in online intellectual debates and finding his lectures on YouTube. Ketzle said they asked Carrier to visit Carbondale after collaborating with the Rationalist Society of St. Louis to split his attendance costs.

“I think he’s one of the stronger voices in that community,” Godshalk said. “I really think he’s a great voice to bring to this community.”

Ketzle said she and her husband Godshalk, have been members of Southern Illinois Atheists since 2012 and have met a lot of friends through the organization.

“As cliché as it sounds, its nice to know you’re in a safe place to talk freely and not offend people’s sensibilities,” Ketzle said.

Bob Camp, coordinator of the New Humanist Forum, said the purpose of the Humanitarian Fellowship is to help people engage in social, political, environmental and justice based dialogue. Camp said it is important to bring lectures to the general public rather than only to the fellowship, especially to address different points of view from people in the southern Illinois area.

Carrier said it was particularly hard to find other atheists in the early 1990s before the take off of the Internet and the creation of the Secular Web, “a nonprofit educational organization dedicated to defending and promoting a naturalistic worldview on the Internet” according to the organization’s website.

“It’s real easy now, but back then it was really hard to find fellow atheists,” he said. “It took me half a year before I found a community that actually existed.”

Carrier said the first atheist association he discovered was in San Francisco in 1992.

“When I saw the booth for American Atheists at the Castro Street Fair, that was a really game-changing moment for me,” he said.

Carrier’s first lecture, “Arguments Against the Existence of God”, compared theories of the existence and non-existence of God. His second lecture, “The Philosophy of Naturalism and the Importance of Naturalism as a World View”, explored belief systems atheists should share and promote in relation to naturalism, or the view that only nature, not the supernatural, exists.

The SIU Chapter of the Secular Student Alliance also helped sponsor the events.