Last Tuesday, I received an e-mail from Mike Demory tearing into the Atheist & Agnostic Society and calling us cowards for not accepting his invitation to debate the existence of God. This prompted me to look back at past e-mails to see what he was referring to.

I found that on Dec. 17 — during Finals Week — he had sent the e-mail with his proposed idea to debate.

On the same day, our then-president sent an e-mail that did not accept or deny his invitation, but rather informed him that it was a busy time for college students.

I quickly e-mailed Demory back to ask him for more information and to inform him that our group went through a presidency change over break as well.

On Wednesday, Demory’s letter entitled “ISU club fails to address blasphemy questions” appeared in the Daily and leveled similar criticisms to that of his e-mail he sent us the day before.

As you may have assumed, the Atheist & Agnostic Society gets many e-mails from theists, some of which deserve to be taken seriously and others that do not. Demory’s original e-mail fell into the latter category, so it was forgotten about over winter break.

Why was his e-mail overlooked? Between criticisms launched by him in the e-mail and his Daily article, he has made the following errors:

He didn’t know the name of our group and mistakenly thought a national Web site for student groups was actually our own.

Demory claimed that we participated in “Blasphemy Days” last September. This is also false.

I wrote an opinion piece for the Daily and our Web site that discussed the value of free speech and the Blasphemy Day activities of the UNI Freethinkers and Inquirers.

Demory made the comment that we were unsuccessful in challenging evangelist Tom Short.

In fact, we held a mostly silent protest when Tom was here last year, and the Daily covered it. You can read about it all online.

He has said several times that we challenged people to a debate, apparently meaning in a formal setting, and have since backed out because we can’t support our beliefs.

I am not opposed to the idea of a debate, but in the three years I have been a member of the Atheist & Agnostic Society, we have never issued a challenge to engage in a formal debate.

I have continually supported criticizing religion as a way of generating an open dialogue, but he ultimately accepted a challenge that was never proposed.

If we were truly afraid and incapable of publicly defending our beliefs, then why would we have a weekly “Ask an Atheist” booth set up on campus when its purpose is to help initiate that dialogue?

Demory clearly has issues fact checking, even when the information he needs is all available online.

Maybe next time he should also wait longer than two hours for a reply before writing a factually incorrect letter to the editor.

If he can’t take the time to fact check anything about our group, then why should we waste time taking him seriously?

Brian Gress is the president of the Atheist & Agnostic Society and a senior in psychology.