ALL ARTICLES

Short poem about death from a secular humanist perspective.

I expected to be frustrated when I searched Amazon.com’s Books department on the keyword afterlife. I wasn’t disappointed. (Or should I say that I was disappointed?)

Modern evolutionary approaches permit far richer naturalistic explanations of the phenomenon of belief in an afterlife than the conjectures of a century and more ago.

Traditional ideas about Heaven are conceptually incoherent, and that’s just the beginning of their problems.

Michael L. Martin, an American analytic philosopher and one of the most formidable academic champions of atheism, passed away unexpectedly at the age of eighty-three in Boston on May 27.

Avijit Roy’s widow addresses her husband’s killers and challenges the government of Bangladesh for its inaction.

Everything you need to know about the religious crucible that is Bangladesh.

Current Catholic teaching that a person’s birth sex should never be altered or blurred is contrary to the church’s centuries-long acceptance of castrated male singers.

Numerous religious scholars reject literal understandings of Christianity, often in terms average churchgoers would find disturbing to their faith. Secular humanists should do more to make their conclusions more widely known.

We can make the world a better place, but whether we do so depends on us—that’s both the promise and the challenge of humanism.

Science settled the question whether altruism is real, and most of us never noticed.

I am an atheist and very public about it; if I had been living in the Middle East and caught by the government or an Islamic militia, I could be in Badawi’s position.

Having an open mind doesn’t—and mustn’t—mean willingness to engage in dispassionate debate over reprehensible ideas.

A scrap from the dawn of the New Testament. Um, not really.

Letters in response to Free Inquiry volume 35, issue 4.

Two new books probe the Vatican’s most sensitive mysteries—the church’s finances and clergy sex abuse.

One day England will be ruled by a man who endorses pseudoscience, bullies scientists out of research positions, and has a far-too cozy relationship with Gulf-state royalty. Be very afraid.

Religiosity seems to correlate with criminal conduct . . . until you examine the data more scrupulously.

Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar unlocked the secrets of dwarf stars and black holes, but never needed the belief in God.

Looking back on a life in which there’s never really been room for God . . . or need.

A doorway conversion conversation goes other than as planned.

A review of Proof of Heaven: A Neurosurgeon’s Journey into the Afterlife by Eben Alexander, M.D.

A review of Animal Liberation and Atheism: Dismantling the Procrustean Bed, by Kim Socha.

A review of Living in the Crosshairs: The Untold Stories of Anti-Abortion Terrorism, by David S. Cohen and Krysten Connon.

A review of No Longer on Pedestals, by Carol A. Kuhnert.

Anne Nicol Gaylor, the principal founder of the Freedom From Religion Foundation (FFRF), died at the age of eighty-eight in Wisconsin on June 14.

A poem from the August/September 2015 issue of Free Inquiry.

Bangladeshi atheists and secularists are under attack from their government and Muslim extremists. In the last year, several leading Bangladeshi secularists have been murdered.

Too often, experts on climate change, environmental depletion, and species loss go out of their way not to discuss population’s relevance to their concerns.

Like aid workers and others, scientists need to speak out on the urgency of curbing overpopulation.

How can we make the dilemma of human overpopulation easier to grasp? Imagine seven billion wolves. . . .

Continual growth is not sustainable. Can we change the public mind-set in time?

Humanity’s extraordinary nonrenewable natural resource–enabled industrial lifestyle paradigm is an unsustainable one-time “blip” in our species’ history that must and will come to an end—soon.

Four perspectives on the population crisis: The challenges are vast, but there is hope.

Population growth is now exacerbating nearly every environmental problem in the U.S., and tends to erase any gains made from conservation and technological advances.

Achieving a stable, and eventually shrinking, U.S. population will require a radical overhaul of immigration policies.

A review of How Many Is Too Many? The Progressive Argument for Reducing Immigration into the United States, by Philip Cafaro.

Today’s myriad ecological crises can never be solved without a major commitment not just to control but to reduce human numbers.

For the critical thinkers of Bangladesh, Avijit Roy will stand as a very special hero.

A widowed victim’s cry for justice.