Source: Beliefnet

Wire Service: RNS

http://www.beliefnet.com/story/175/story_17562_1.html

On September 21, 2005 Religion News Service reported, "An upstart religion called Universism has named a new leader who hopes to spread the neo-Deist movement nationwide. Todd Stricker, 25, has been named executive director of the nonprofit organization and said he hopes to launch a new branch in Chicago. University of Alabama-Birmingham medical student Ford Vox started Universism in 2003, saying that Christianity, Islam, and to a lesser extent other world religions are harmful because they attempt to impose their own version of moral certainty on others. Through the Internet, Universism has recruited 8,000 atheists, deists, freethinkers and others who rally around the notion that no universal religious truth exists and that the meaning of existence must be determined by each individual. Stricker said he met Vox when they both showed up at an opposition rally to support the removal of a granite monument of the Ten Commandments placed in the state judicial building by former Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore."