ALL ARTICLES

Finding Purpose in a Godless World: Why We Care Even If the Universe Doesn’t, by Ralph Lewis, MD (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2018, ISBN 978-1-63388-385-7). 352 pp., Hardcover, $26.00.             At Least Know This: Essential Science to Enhance Your Life, by Guy P. Harrison (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2018, ISBN 978-1-63388-405-2). …

But for the guard I would have docked in America and killed myself there. Here, I am closer to Paris. The last of the Europeans, what would I have done in New York, an exhibit in the classroom cage of The New School? Mourned the library I left behind? Choked among the bourgeois working class? …

One Sunday night at home all alone in the century just before this one I read in the Tribune‘s science section the universe is endless, here forever, but the earth will be destroyed, whether by burning or freezing I don’t remember, and I felt so alone I had to call you and you were home alone too, and …

1. to sleep … I always keep my eyes shut … & I never move … to awake … I always keep my eyes open … & I never move 2. then, to sleep … I always keep my eyes shut … & I never move … then, to awake … I always keep my …

In my February/March 2019 editorial “Humanism’s Chasm,” I sounded an alarm: the conditions experienced by the current generation of nonreligious Americans have become so different from those familiar to past generations that existing national humanist, secular humanist, and atheist organizations risk becoming irrelevant. Owing mostly to the rise of the Nones—an enormous growth in the …

Progressives hope for an America where health care is a human right for everyone, women’s right to choose remains secure, gays are safe from cruelty, people of all sorts are welcome equally in a multicultural society, college is affordable without crushing debt, marijuana no longer brings jail terms, safety measures curb gun massacres, sensible steps …

In the 1950s, more than 95 percent of Americans identified as Christian. Sixty years later, much has changed. The number of self-identified Christians now hovers around 70 percent, and there has been a striking increase in the number of people who, when asked to name their religious preference, reply by saying “none.” As a member …

The political landscape after the 2018 midterm elections presents us with opportunities and challenges. The fact that the House of Representatives is under new management will hopefully put an end to some of the worst attacks on our secular democracy. In this more favorable climate, we can reasonably expect to see some movement on legislation …

Something incredible has been happening in the United States in the past twenty or so years: the number of adults who reject religion is skyrocketing. Such a radical shift toward a naturalistic worldview can substantially change U.S. politics, and therefore policy, for the better. But that doesn’t mean we can be complacent. Nonreligious Americans are …

In 2011, the Canadian National Household Survey discovered that 24 percent of its sample chose “none” when asked about religious affiliation. According to Pew Research’s analysis of the Canadian data, “Young adults, males, single adults and college graduates” were “more likely to be religious ‘nones’ than older adults, females, married people and those with less …

To the degree that Free Inquiry has an intellectual platform, moral objectivity has been part of it. In his 1988 book Forbidden Fruit, Paul Kurtz influentially described a humanist morality that is neither the authoritative command of a divine law-giver nor a subjective matter of preference. “Secular humanists hold that ethics is consequential, to be …

This article begins with a critique of four propositions—one that is religious and three that are philosophical—that summarize many failed attempts to define and defend the existence of “objective morality.” After explaining the linguistic trap that objective morality presents for secular humanists, I will propose a replacement for the illusory goal of objective morality in …

Fundamentalism emerged from respectable traditions of revivalism and evangelicalism in the closing decades of the nineteenth century and quickly acquired a thoroughly independent identity. Specifically, fundamentalism was a reaction to liberal Protestant theology, which was attempting to accommodate Christianity to scientific, intellectual, and theological developments occurring at the time. The doctrinal foundation of fundamentalism was …

I very much appreciated Tom Flynn’s editorial “The Signature of Freedom” (Free Inquiry, October/November 2018), which refuted the unfounded presumption that, by definition, suicide results from mental illness. In exposing that intellectual cop-out for what it is, Flynn breaks the false, presumed-causal connection between mental illness and suicide. Building on that, I would like to …

More Templeton Mischief. Free Inquiry has frequently reported on the vastly wealthy John Templeton Foundation, which since its founding in 1987 has made grants totaling many tens of millions of dollars to promote the notion that science and religion are compatible. Some of them backfired. In “Have Christians Accepted the Scientific Conclusion That God Does …

Christchurch, New Zealand, is a beautiful, peaceful city located on the country’s south island. Its people have suffered in recent years from a series of earthquakes (2010 to 2012) that ruined much of the city’s infrastructure and cultural heritage. Christchurch became internationally notorious on March 15, 2019, when a fanatical racist and anti-Muslim bigot, subsequently …

When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, the United States found itself the sole superpower of the world. Instead of relishing this great stroke of luck; instead of enjoying this “unipolar moment”; instead of reducing its military footprint around the world; instead of focusing on its people, their health, education, and opportunity, it decided to …

Here we are, half a century after the first moon landing, and not much new has happened regarding humans in deep space. Yet with SpaceX, Virgin Galactic, Blue Origin, and talk of deep space tourism, moon bases, mining asteroids, and Mars colonization, it might look like Homo sapiens is about to become a space species. …

I’ve figured out who it is that President Trump really reminds me of—not Roy Cohn, not Hitler, not Bernie Madoff, though they all certainly resemble bits of him. The guy who all but shouts “Donald Trump” is the original Peak Narcissist himself, Mister God. Don’t get me wrong. I don’t think that’s a good thing. …

“… Puritanism is not the American tradition, it is one among many. From Anne Hutchinson down to Ben Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Paine, James Madison, Abraham Lincoln, Franklin Roosevelt, and Adlai Stevenson, our history is rife with alternatives to orthodoxies sired during the Middle Ages and the Reformation, orthodoxies that are dependent upon a literal, …

“Honest conversation with children, telling them that as parents (or teachers) we don’t have all the answers, but that we are willing to check facts and draw logical conclusions, is important. Standing firm on certain issues, such as the necessity for separation of church and state, or evolution as a fact, a disbelief in a …

Humanism’s Chasm Re: “Humanism’s Chasm,” FI, February/March 2019. Based on my own experience, many of the liberated view the “Organized Humanists” as yet another cult, albeit one somewhat less demanding and noxious than its more ancient and benighted competitors. In short, who needs such help in these times? This is not, contrary to appearance, a condemnation. …

Media coverage of the widespread, longstanding clergy sexual abuse and coverup scandals has been pretty good over the past year, triggered largely by the Pennsylvania grand jury report and similar actions in other states; the disgraces of Cardinals McCarrick and Wuerl in the United States; the civil-court convictions of cardinals in France and Australia; and …

Gadzooks. A shocking revelation just took down another politician. Nearby and on the same day, another cleric was busted, too. I shall withhold their names, not for legal reasons or discretion’s sake but because I’m writing weeks before they will have been caught and therefore don’t know who they will turn out to be. Still, …

Tertullian (Quintus Septimus Florens Tertullianus, c. 155 AD–c. 225 AD) was a quipster who might have enjoyed a Henny Youngman–type success had he been born about eighteen centuries later. The Henny Youngman of more recent fame became the king of one-liners: he concentrated on human incongruences for the sake of human humor. On the contrary, …

“No man is an island entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent” (John Donne), and so is every woman, and so is every person a part of the social world. Some countries have implemented bans against covering one’s face with cloth or other material in public.1,2 Countries with comprehensive bans include …

I was born in the Bronx in 1936 into a Christian family. Mother was a “Sunday Christian” who thought it was important to carry on the Christian tradition of her family and her Fundamentalist mother who lived with us. Dad attended church occasionally at the insistence of my mother. I suspect he was an unbeliever …

The Darkening Age: The Christian Destruction of the Classical World, by Catherine Nixey (Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2018. ISBN 978-0544800885). 315 pp. Hardcover, $28.00.   In the final centuries of the Roman Empire, the Christian Church, as part of “God’s will,” annihilated the classical world of architecture, sculpture, painting, and literature to …

Plagues and the Paradox of Progress: Why the World Is Getting Healthier in Worrisome Ways, by Thomas J. Bollyky (MIT Press, Cambridge, 2018. ISBN 978-0-262-03844-4). 272 pages. $27.95   This book explains the history of infectious diseases and plagues and shows how science has worked to overcome them; the author, Thomas Bollyky, argues that the …

Astounding: John W. Campbell, Isaac Asimov, Robert A. Heinlein, L. Ron Hubbard, and the Golden Age of Science Fiction, by Alec Nevala-Lee (New York: Dey St. [HarperCollins] 2018, ISBN 978-0-06-257194-6). 533 pp. Hardcover, $28.99.   In November 1988, Isaac Asimov asked me to introduce him at a major awards conference and ceremony held jointly at …

I used to breathe in water, somewhat salty. I saw dim shapes, felt wobble and jolt the constant companion of a beat, a soft mallet on a stretched skin I thought I wanted to evade until it became part of me and I panicked when it seemed to fade.  Sometimes a long hum, a sigh …

has no formula; it’s a composition of too many elements: oxygen greed, lust, iron, despair, hope, water, and minerals cells exchange with their permeable membranes, envy, grief…. How many times have some cried silently wanting the little candles to be more than wax, fire, and smoke, that the small red cups not be among so …

I don’t have one. But I imagine his voice, singing O Bel’ Alma Innamorata And I am Lucia, utterly beloved Then his softest feathers dry my eyes And firmer ones take my arm We dance till I am Zizi Jeanmaire Lovely as he knows I want to be. When I am shy he twinkles And …

Silence has reclaimed the desert. Only a chain-link fence separates the site From the rest of the desert scene; The Sacramento mountains rise to the east. Juniper and sage dot the sand. All that remains of the iron tower That rose one hundred feet in the air Is one twisted three-foot leg. The green glass …

Hundreds of victims suffered abuse at St. John’s School for the Deaf, a Catholic institution in St. Francis, Wisconsin, outside Milwaukee. In 1974, a priest was accused of having molested as many as 200 deaf boys at the school since 1950. The scandal proved hugely embarrassing and costly for the Milwaukee Archdiocese; the school was …

I began questioning orthodox Christian beliefs quite early. My mother and I lived with my father’s parents during his World War II military service, and I spent many subsequent summers with them. I have a clear memory of asking my paternal grandmother, when I was about seven, how there could be any people if Adam …

There is a little-known philosophy, well-founded in reality, that provides a sound basis for compassionate ethics and which will eventually become our predominant way of thinking. That’s partly because adopting this philosophy will give us the best chance of addressing the world’s problems, from the climate change crisis to the impact of artificial general intelligence. …

Blasphemy is the act of profaning the sacred. It is a crime as ancient as civilization itself. The gods apparently have always needed the protection of law to remain free from offense. I guess that makes them the beneficiaries of the first “safe spaces.” These days, the Center for Inquiry (CFI) fights blasphemy laws primarily …

Among its many frustrating attributes, the year-end holiday season is a graveyard for news stories. Want to make sure no one pays attention? Release your story in late December. That seems to be what happened, if perhaps inadvertently, to this December 20 item by veteran New York Times journalist Sabrina Tavernise: “Growth Rate in Population …

The literary critic Lionel Trilling wrote in Sincerity and Authenticity: “The concerted effort of a culture or of a segment of a culture to achieve authenticity generates its own conventions, its generalities, its commonplaces, its maxims, what Sartre, taking the word from Heidegger, calls the ‘gabble.’” test Trilling said that in 1970, but it hasn’t …