Founded and organizes Backyard Skeptics, a local southern California atheist group and the largest one in Orange County.
Directs Orange County’s only secular conference called the Orange County Freethought Alliance Conference each May.
Publishes the only reason- based e-newsletter in southern California called the Secular Gazette
Produces the only atheist-based cable TV show in California called the Orange County Atheist TV Show, also availble on Youtube
Was on the 2010 and 2011 Board of Directors of Atheist United in Los Angeles
Bruce Gleason was born in Long Beach, CA in 1955 to two wonderful parents. He grew up in Anaheim, CA, went to Long Beach State University and studied electrical engineering. He worked at ABC Television during the 1984 Olympics and soon after started his video production company.
In 2009 at Calvary Chapel, Costa Mesa, after Bruce completed a lecture entitled “Why I Am An Atheist” to a group of students in a masters divinity program, he was asked what happened to him as a child to make him an atheist. The answer – he started thinking and then said rejecting invisible friends when he was 12 years old. He did no have any extreme negative experience as a child which made him turn to rational thinking or against God. This is a common presumption by the theists that an atheist must have had some experience to take him/her away from religion.
Bruce lived most of his like as an ‘soft’ atheist, examining different religions and the superstitions each believe. Then, 9-11 happened. Bruce say’s “it was like a light switch went off” and he started reading about Islam and Christianity from the skeptics viewpoint. He started reading other books as well and became more knowledgeable about the contradictions and arguments why God does not exist.
Soon he was a fixture at many skeptic and atheists groups in Orange County. In 2008 he struck out on his own with a more organized meeting format which soon included speakers and science-oriented field trips.
Bruce says he feels that what he is doing is making a better world. By encouraging believers to think about how their behavior, which stems from a religious belief and harms others, he hopes that those religionists will consider how their tenants beliefs do not make the world free from intolerance, but promotes intolerance and hate.