Palm founder Jeff Hawkins joins Secular Coalition of America

Palm Pilot inventor Jeff Hawkins has joined the advisory board for the Secular Coalition of America, which includes authors Salman Rushdie and Christopher Hitchens.

In addition to founding Palm Computing and Handspring, Hawkins started the Redwood Neuroscience Institute, now part of the University of California, Berkeley. He is currently the founder of Numenta, a company that builds computing platforms modeled after the human brain.

Hawkins said he supports the Secular Coalition because it lobbies for the separation of church and state, an idea that is very important to him personally.

"A lot of America's success is because we're an open society and haven't brought dogma or religious influence into the American political process," Hawkins said. "I think it's an extremely important cause, a founding principle of this country and it would be very dangerous if we lost track on that."

Hawkins said he was raised in a non-religious fashion and doesn't have any religious affiliation of his own, though he hesitates to label himself an atheist. He agreed that residents of Sillicon Valley, where he lives, are more likely to embrace a similar worldview than citizens in the rest of the country.