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Throughout history, a clear pattern is visible: Religious believers sometimes kill doubters or throw them in prison as criminals. It began in ancient Greece, the first known place where scientific-minded thinkers questioned supernatural claims. Socrates was sentenced to death for “refusing to recognize the gods” of Athens. Aspasia, beloved mistress of Pericles, was tried for …

(From the Diary of Joseph) April 15, 2019: Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris, the Cathedral in honor of my girl Mary, has been ravaged by fire. Early reports suggested that it would burn to the ground. There was a suspicion that Islamic terrorists were behind the devastation, but French police attributed the fire to an electrical …

When the treasured Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris suffered a devastating fire in 2019—beginning on the evening of Monday, April 15, and burning for over twelve hours—few could ignore the irony. Occurring during Holy Week (Easter Day was April 21), the horrific event may have seemed to supernaturalists to represent the wrath of God unleashed, or …

“Humanists know something must be done. We know that it is only by coming together and figuring out what kind of world we want to live in, only by giving our attention to why ‘values’ have been eschewed and why so many people seem to have given up, that we can pursue our vision, the …

“Tribalism ultimately, however, is a distortion of the values of religion, a perversion that poses serious dangers not only to world peace but to the American ideal. The danger is not so much religion as tribalism; and, when one group insists that its morals, teachings, view of life, and cultural values are the only correct …

Author Response to Letters I wish Arthur Jackson of San Jose, California (FI, June/July 2019), would learn how to read and think before he accuses me of “missing the mark” and suggest that because I did not define science and religion it is “difficult to take my comments seriously.” I thought that by now the …

Climate change is real and threatens our whole planet. It is anthropogenic, caused by humans. Media coverage of it is spotty and inadequate. And the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has advised that we have only a dozen or so years left to get serious about dealing with it. Meanwhile, U.S. President Donald J. Trump …

God, if you’re reading this, a word of advice: Hire an editor. By now even you must be aware that most of the time your followers haven’t a clue what you’re talking about. I wish I had a full collection plate for every time I have heard the likes of “… and then I realized …

There is a wicked, wanton war going on. It disrespects, disparages, and denies the American constitutional right to religious freedom for the military men and women serving our country. The U.S. Constitution prohibits our secular government (which includes the military) from promoting or endorsing a religion. The U.S. Supreme Court has continuously confirmed this constitutional …

Sixteen years ago, Free Inquiry published a remarkable and prescient article by Laurence W. Britt about the encroachment of fascism in various nations throughout the world, including the United States (“Fascism, Anyone?,” Spring 2003). This writer wishes to revisit the essence of that article—or perhaps, oracle—with the intention of alerting, and even alarming, all readers …

Cover Image: T.C. Boyle, Wikipedia   Santa Barbara, California—It’s like he’s saying, “I’ll take you there.” When it comes to freethinkers, American author T. C. Boyle (Distinguished Professor of English Emeritus at the University of Southern California) is the Daliesque prince, a commentator for the tragicomedy that is our mutual existence. When the subtle meets the …

People who reply “Happy holidays” to a “Merry Christmas” cheer have been caught in their own trap. When secular therapists boycotted any hint of religion because it was not evidence-based, they left themselves wide open to reproof by scientific study. And by a two-to-one margin, these studies report better outcomes when religion is indeed integrated …

The Founding Myth: Why Christian Nationalism Is Un-American, by Andrew L. Seidel (New York: Sterling, 2019, ISBN 978-1454933274). 343 pp. Hardcover, $24.95.   The term game changer is tossed around too often in publishing these days. That’s a shame, because every now and then, a book comes along that really does change the game. However, …

The Tyranny of Opinion: Conformity and the Future of Liberalism, by Russell Blackford (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2019, ISBN 978-1-3500-5600-8). 244 pp. Paperback, $26.95.   A liberal Muslim who opposes Islamists, is critical of Islamic fundamentalism, and calls for Muslims to accept secular government is labeled an anti-Muslim extremist by the Southern Poverty Law Center. An …

The Uninhabitable Earth: Life after Warming, by David Wallace-Wells (New York: Tim Duggan Books, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, 2019, ISBN 9780525576709). 320 pp. Hardcover, $27.00.   So, how bad do you think climate change is going to be? Take a minute. Nah. It’ll be way …

The Case Against Education: Why the Education System Is a Waste of Time and Money, by Bryan Caplan (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2018, ISBN 978-0-17465-5). 395 pp. Hardcover, $29.95.   This truly awful screed is reviewed here only because it has received peculiarly favorable ratings on Amazon and because it was extruded by, and therefore …

I found a maple branch on the ground after a windstorm, bearing growths of lichens varying in appearance: one coating the length of the branch like a skin treatment, another like moss with gray berries, and a third like lettuce unfurling its leaves. Apparently, they live off the air and their growth is a sign …

I wish I could say I was seated at my desk behind a stack of papers so preternaturally smart my red pen hadn’t moved                                           or I was lost in a poem by Kenneth Patchen, …

Our self conception is very important. The way we understand ourselves as a species here on this planet—the who we are and the why we are here, our overall sense of how we human beings fit into the whole cosmic scheme of things—matters enormously. Whether it is subconscious or conscious, accurate or false, our subjective …

After reviewing the “The Affirmations of Humanism: A Statement of Principles,” which appears in many issues of Free Inquiry, one might consider the following as an accurate paraphrase: “In addition to the commitment to a number of basic values, hard knowledge, and rational calculation … it is an obstinate will to erode by inches the …

Many life stances are present in the European Union (EU); adherents of Catholicism, Islam, Judaism, Orthodox Christianity, and Protestantism are widespread. There are also smaller groups of Buddhist or Hindu denominations. These stances, together with secular humanism, form a patchwork of beliefs. Religious and life-stance pluralism is therefore accepted as a major principle of the …

The purpose of this essay is not to determine the historicity of Jesus or the validity of apologists’ historical claims. Instead, this paper accepts at face value the key evidence for the resurrection (namely, the empty tomb and appearance stories) and proposes that they are most plausibly interpreted as the result of a confluence of …

In the highly politicized vaccination wars raging in the United States right now, Ethan Lindenberger is a hero. In March, as a high school senior, the Ohio teen testified before Congress about how he defied his mother’s rabid anti-vaxxer views and started getting himself vaccinated. Lindenberger came to understand that his mother’s views were simply …

In “Humanism’s Chasm” (FI, February/March 2019), I reflected on the differences between older and younger unbelievers, especially regarding their views of themselves as members of a marginalized group (the young tend not to see themselves this way) and the importance they attach to antireligious activism (the young tend not to see the point). My essay …

Seven years ago, I was sitting alone in my room in Malaysia, having earned my diploma the month before. I was filled with depression and despair while many of my friends who had just graduated were filled with happiness and were set to either continue their studies or get to work. My student visa in …

In the wake of the 2001 Boston Globe exposures that did the most to uncover the depth of the Catholic pedophile scandals, many imagined that the issue would recede with time. That is not happening. Instead, increasing numbers of governments are mounting large-scale investigations into incidents of abuse within their borders, and the Church of …

I am a man—and I am beginning to be ashamed of that. The great majority of men, it would appear, somehow manage to scrub from their minds the multitudinous, indeed incalculable, ways in which women have been subjugated, degraded, and scorned over countless millennia; it is, quite frankly, too horrible a prospect to face honestly. …

“Most individuals would be outraged to learn that the academic study of religion is fundamentally an atheist project. … However, these heated reactions are unnecessary. The word atheist comes from the Latin atheos, and means ‘without god.’ … [T]he question of the existence or non-existence of a god, gods, or goddesses is irrelevant when studying …

“Socrates argued in Plato’s Euthyphro that justice precedes piety; merely to pray to the Gods is no guarantee that an act done in obedience to what the gods dictate is any more moral than one done in the light of reflective examination of the merits of the case and in terms of the ethical principles …

Good News Misunderstood I just read Tom Flynn’s Op-Ed in the April/May 2019 issue of Free Inquiry. As usual, I agree with much of what Flynn writes. However, as he predicted, he may be courting controversy in the second part of the essay, the part about immigration. I agree that the uncontrolled population growth in …

During “Holy Week” in April 2019, the Notre-Dame cathedral in Paris, an architectural gem dating back 850 years, was seriously damaged in an apparently accidental fire. Restoring it will cost about a billion dollars. The big question is: Who will pay for the extensive restoration? As the building is technically owned by the French government …

I live in the Salt Lake City metropolitan area. As some of you may be aware, more than a few Mormons live here, too. Thanks to this unique religious demographic— Oops. My bad. I meant to say that more than a few members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints live here. These …

Although mostly ignored in anthologies of American literature, Philip Freneau is still recognized as “The Poet of the American Revolution.” During the War of Independence, he was unyielding in his criticism of the British and in his praise for the colonists’ patriotism, bravery, and sacrifices. In his poem about the Battle of Eutaw Springs, Freneau …

We have been God-like in our planned breeding of our domestic plants and animals, but rabbit-like in our unplanned breeding of ourselves. —Arnold Toynbee Some time ago, in some lab somewhere, some fruit flies were put into a closed container of some size, given some nectar, and patiently observed. The nectar supply kept up with …

As everyone knows, human life—and, in most cases, life of any kind—begins when a single egg is fertilized by a single sperm, thus setting in motion a process of gestation and growth that leads in time to the emergence of what we know as life in some form or other. Until that instant, that particular …

A long time ago as a graduate student, I found Arsenal for Skeptics (Richard W. Hinton, ed., 1934) on a college bookstore’s bargain table. I was trying to decide if the Christianity I’d been taught as a child was true or not. I had had problems from the first: the nun who’d said only Catholics …

Reader Paula Prince questioned the accuracy of a photograph we published in our December 2018/January 2019 issue that purported to show suffrage leader Matilda Joslyn Gage among a group of suffrage demonstrators (Letters, FI, April/May 2019). Prince argued that the clothing depicted was inappropriate for the claimed date of 1876; she argued that the photo …

A Meaning to Life, by Michael Ruse (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019, ISBN 978-0-19-093322-7). 216 pp. Hardcover, $21.95.             “What is the meaning of life?” That is the kind of question that philosophers are presumed to address, yet many professional philosophers never ponder the issue, at least not explicitly. Surely, …

Disenchanted Lives: Apostasy and Ex-Mormonism among the Latter-day Saints, by E. Marshall Brooks (New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 2018, ISBN 978-0-8135-9218-3). 258 pp., $34.95.   Studies of people’s religious beliefs follow two basic forms. Most commonly, many people are surveyed and from their answers we learn about general trends in the population. Gallup, Pew, and …

Dangerous Illusions: How Religion Deprives Us of Happiness, by Vitaly Malkin, translated and adapted from the Russian by an unknown party (or parties) (London and New York: Arcadia Publishing, 2019, ISBN 9781911350286). 416 pp. Hardcover, $30.00.   Vitaly Malkin, sequentially a physicist, banker, Russian senator, and billionaire oligarch, aspires to a new (fifth?) career as …