Reginald Vaughn Finley, Sr.
Reginald Vaughn Finley, Sr., (born in 1974), is an Internet radio host and Podcaster in Atlanta, GA. He is also the co-founder of the Atheist Radio Network and founder of FreethoughtMedia.com. Finley is better known as "The Infidel Guy" and has been conducting his show for over 8 years.
IG is considered a pioneer in the internet radio field in that he is the first individual, a non-corporate entity, to earn a living conducting internet radio shows.
Biography
He is a former member of the group Forte' now called 112. He discusses the little known early history of 112 on his blog site.
His show features a wide-range of personalities from across the philosophical spectrum. Previous guests have been famous scientists Michio Kaku and Richard Dawkins, lawyer Michael Newdow, creationist Kent Hovind, Ali Sina of Faith Freedom International and Reverend Fred Phelps' son Tim Phelps.
As of November 2006 Finley is in the process of changing the format of his radio show and website, to be more inclusive and cover a wider range of topics beyond atheism and freethought.
Finley attended Methodist and Baptist churches in his teens and is a former Federal Correctional Officer and U.S. Army veteran. In college, he discovered religious history and philosophy courses. After his studies led him to a course AbOUT atheism at St. Leo College at Fort McPherson, Georgia, Finley announced he is an atheist.
"If people need their God belief to get through their pain, so be it. The biggest difficulty I have is when people in the political arena who have fundamentalist beliefs try to change laws to suit their fundamentalist belief systems. We can look at Afghanistan and see that doesn't work." - Reginald Finley, as quoted in the Atlanta Journal Constitution. Finley has participated in a number of traditional and Internet radio discussions with evangelists, advocating atheism and the rights of atheists.
His family appeared on ABC's reality show Wife Swap on November 28, 2005. Many fans and friends who knew the Finleys believe they were mischaracterized on the show. A program later produced by IG and his wife confirmed it. 1
The Origins of "The Infidel Guy"
Finley, on his site, states that, "An infidel is, One who doubts or rejects a particular doctrine, system, or principle...therefore, 'We are ALL Infidels!'"
Projects
FreeThoughtMedia.com is the brainchild of Finley and a talk show host who goes only by “Jake”. Finley and Jake built the first generation of FreeThoughtMedia on the Yahoo! GeoCities free hosting network as a web portal for a new radio program: Live with The Infidel Guy.
After a brief stint at freespeech.org, Reggie and Jake founded The Atheist Network, a full-spectrum web radio broadcast network featuring shows devoted to science, religion, music, and other cultural topics of interest. Because of the manual nature of network operations Jake and Reggie found themselves overwhelmed with the responsibilities of maintaining the streams. A third broadcaster named Juan (aka. Amoeba) joined Jake and Reggie to help administrate The Atheist Network. The addition of a new team member was much too late, and The Atheist Network was forced off the air for a brief hiatus.
In late 2003, the Atheist Network/FreeThoughtMedia.com made a return with Reggie at the helm. The new program lineup included a mix of atheist and free thought-oriented programs such as Maximum Rock & Roll, and the Non-Prophets. Headlining this new broadcast network was the longtime flagship program, The Infidel Guy Show.
The Atheist Network and FreeThoughtMedia.com continue to grow with new broadcasters and subscribers added almost daily. A wide variety of shows covering a wealth of social, political, economic, religious, and other cultural topics are broadcast weekly by teams and individuals across the world. The site was recently expanded to include a wide spectrum of other free thought related web forums and sites.
References
- White, Gayle (October 20, 2001). "Secular America: Atheists uncomfortable as wounded nation turns more to religion". The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, p. 1B.