35 Years Ago in Free Inquiry

“When I visited Europe this past summer I found our Western European friends and allies—humanist and nonhumanist alike—aghast at the growth of fundamentalist religion in the United States. …

“[S]ecularist and humanist influences in many ways are far more advanced in the countries of Western Europe, and the influence of religion has been on the wane; yet these societies are thriving and enjoy a high quality of life. …

“[T]he influence of secularism continues to develop in various parts of the world in spite of complaints by theological reactionaries—from Falwell to Khomeini. These encouraging developments are no doubt made possible by the advances in science and technology, an increase in the standard of living, and the cultivation of education, free inquiry, and democratic institutions, which have all contributed to the weakening of the hold of ancient faiths and superstitions. Some in our midst no doubt would like to repeal the modern world, but fortunately they will find this a difficult task.”

—Paul Kurtz, “Religion and Secularization in Europe and America,”
Free Inquiry, Volume 5, no. 4 (Fall 1985)

Editor’s Note: Paul Kurtz (1995–2012) was the founder of the Council for Secular Humanism and Free Inquiry magazine.

25 Years Ago in Free Inquiry

“First of all, we evidently do have a representation of ourselves as a kind of inner being. That’s a representation that brains make, and it probably serves an important role in our cognitive economy. Therefore, it’s no surprise that it’s hard to get around the feeling that there must be an anatomical correlate of the self. It does look like the activity subserving the representation of self is distributed over a variety of regions. Probably thalamic structures are critical, and probably some cortical structures are critical.”

—Patricia Smith Churchland,
interviewed in “The Neurophilosophy of Patricia Smith Churchland,”
Free Inquiry, Volume 15, no. 4 (Fall 1995)

Editor’s Note: Patricia Smith Churchland is now UC President’s Professor of Philosophy Emerita at the University of California, San Diego. Trained in analytic philosophy, Churchland was a leading figure in the fields of neurophilosophy and philosophy of mind. She is a laureate of the International Academy of Humanism. In the quotation above, she is responding to a question by interviewer David Noelle about how modern notions of consciousness differ from the classical notion of the homunculus, or “inner self,” that receives perceptions and directs actions.