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I read with interest Tom Flynn’s editorial “Smearing Humanism” (FI,June/July 2017). I have read Yuval Noah Harari’s book Sapiens. Flynn’s last sentence of his piece, “We’ve got a lot of work ahead of us,” is so very true.

With Donald Trump’s accession to the presidency, his appointment of billionaire Betsy DeVos as education secretary, and his choice of ultraconservative former Indiana governor Mike Pence as his backup, the stage is being set for something we might call the “Kuyperizing” of American education.

The United Kingdom’s June 2016 vote to leave the European Union was of a piece with the general tendency since the latter part of the twentieth century toward secession, fragmentation, and “local control.”

Humanists have an identity problem, and it’s a problem at multiple levels. I remember very clearly the first time I told my Mormon brother that I was a humanist in a discussion on Facebook.

Editor’s Note: This essay by Britain’s longest-serving atheist activist harkens back to a time when most unbelievers assumed that the cosmos was eternal.

Most of us think that moral norms are binding on us. For example, “Don’t kill a child for pleasure” is not a rule we can simply choose to follow or not, depending on our current desires and attitudes. Indeed, one point of the institution of morality seems to be to subordinate our personal preferences to the common good.

If you think a lot has happened in the past few centuries, then, to echo Bachman Turner Overdrive, you ain’t seen nothing yet. Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow by Yuval Noah Harari echoes the increasingly popular refrain that humans are on the brink of becoming superhuman. Harari, an Israeli history professor and author of the best-seller Sapiens, uses his scholarly worldview to take an unflinching look at a range of possible futures, most of them dystopian.

This is your lone atheist crouching / In her foxhole / Not so many of us, it appears

“The issue driving the government’s
motivation to keep the blasphemy law was the holy book of a specific
eligion and its prophet, not holy books and prophets in general.”

“In one severe abuse of freedom
of religion, religious freedom has been amalgamated with political strategies or policies of protecting the reputation of religions against defamation.”

“To understand the real reason behind the Catholic Church’s ban on women priests, one must examine the Aristotelian and Thomistic foundation of Catholic dogma.”

“Evolution should occur on planets with mild temperatures such as we have on our planet Earth, with no need whatever for intervention by a divinity.”

“If we want our dreams for a better world to come true, we have to recognize the significance of reducing human numbers.”

“There is nothing to suggest that Julian’s visions are anything more than imaginative meditations. They contain mostly the dogmas and iconography of the period.”

“Corporate CEOs are the
new clergy; social media,
the new church.”

“Yuval Noah Harari … has presented an extreme and factually untethered critique of humanism.”

“For all we know, lots of Ice Age hunter-gatherers were not religious. The problem is that there’s no way to tell.”

“We think of bullying as something children and adolescents do to each other, but really it’s pervasive.”

“1517 is usually taken as the beginning of the Protestant Reformation, and this year is its five hundredth anniversary.”

“Conservatives yearn for the fixed, unchanging order that belongs to God or nature, but their actions often
precipitate radical disruptions.”

“UNFPA reduces
worldwide maternal mortality.”“More countries, including all of America’s traditional allies, contribute to UNFPA than to almost any other United Nations humanitarian agency.”

A sense of purpose is available to all, no faith required.

“The Democratic Party establishment is not innocent when it comes to prejudice against atheists.”

In his capacity as chair of the United Nations (UN) NGO Committee on Freedom of Religion or Belief, Michael De Dora, the Center for Inquiry’s Director of Public Policy, recently helped to coordinate a special visit to Washington, D.C., by Ahmed Shaheed, the newly appointed UN Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Religion of Belief.

Letters in response to Free Inquiry Vol. 37, No. 3.

“Australia’s Great Barrier Reef, so large that it is visible from space, is dying.”

Ambrose Bierce, the compleat cynic whose insights sear even as they sparkle.

“Pray, v. To ask that the laws of the universe be annulled in behalf of a single petitioner confessedly unworthy.”

“Equating a human life with a heartbeat is emotionally powerful but objectively false.”

“To imply that the supernatural and clearly nonexistent character known to us as Jesus, the son of God, was based on a real person named “Yeshua” reeks of desperation.”

Review of The Rabbi’s Atheist Daughter: Ernestine Rose, International Feminist Pioneer, by Bonnie S. Anderson

Review of Star Map: A Journey of Faith, Doubt, and Meaning, by Lewis Vaughn

Review of Why I Left / Why I Stayed: Conversations on Christianity Between an Evangelical Father and His Humanist Son, by Tony Campolo and Bart Campolo.

Poem: Outside the House of Learning / I said to Sol: / what does it mean

“Our technologies are certainly changing us and our planet.”

“The profits of those best able to game the system have taken precedence over the integrity and stability of markets.”

“It may strike some as incredible that soldiers ‘treat their enemies with respect,’ even as they line them up in their crosshairs.”

“It remains to be seen whether nanotechnology will suffer lapses such as those of medical science.”

Whatever answer to an ethical dilemma the car industry might lean toward will not be satisfying to everyone.

“We can begin to experiment
with ways to enhance our moral reasoning with drugs and devices to become even better citizens.”