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Two letters came the other day. Mama opened and read the first one with a smile and slipped it back into the envelope. She read the second one out loud: Your rent is long overdue. Either you pay within five business days or vacate the premises, the rent lady wrote. One week later we were …

Thomas W. Flynn died suddenly August 23, 2021. Those who knew him personally and professionally were shocked and saddened. We had looked forward to many more years of his contributions, even though at the time of his death at age sixty-six he had accomplished much more than most people. Flynn was a scholar and a …

I do not remember when or under what circumstances I first met Tom Flynn, but I do know why we hit it off right away. Like me, Tom was devoted to reviving the public’s memory of Robert Green Ingersoll (1833–1899). He was the only person I knew who was as outraged as I was by …

Edward Tabash When we are steeped in promoting controversial ideas that shouldn’t be controversial in an educated society, it’s rare that a colleague comes along who is a true polymath. It’s so unusual to find someone with such a large repertoire of skills that we come to rely on such a person for literally everything. …

Tom Flynn’s The Trouble with Christmas was originally published in 1993 (Prometheus Books) and republished in 2011. The following excerpt initially appeared in the Fall 1993 issue of Free Inquiry. Flynn went on to present his arguments against atheists celebrating Christmas in lectures and media appearances. As associate editor of Free Inquiry and coeditor of …

In memory of Tom Flynn 1. shadows … shadowing … Tom Flynn … to the dark 2. shadows … shadowing … Tom Flynn … shadowing … in the dark 3. shadows … shadowing … Tom Flynn

time seemingly so much time yet not for us only so much time for us and then it ends … life seemingly so much life yet not for us only so much life for us and then it ends … love seemingly so much love yet not for us only so much love for us …

For Tom Flynn I saw you more than once loaded with papers & slides, & pictured what was on the inside, like a piñata, jumble of rational treasures that tumble out now, scattered thought, measures of logical light you continue to spill, far beyond fools’ empty fields & death’s visionless night.

For Tom Flynn How can I believe you’re dead? It’s only something someone said. Would you leave us here to grieve, when you could give the lie to, instead? Perhaps yet live & not let go, for we do remember so— remember then, remember when, at last though remember best, were you here again.

As an atheist and former theist, I am occasionally asked what it would take to change my mind on a central metaphysical question. What met conditions or circumstances would reincorporate into my worldview the conviction that God exists and, more specifically, that Christianity offers the best explanation for the world we observe? However we may …

Often, when explaining to a religious person why I believe faith is a morally reprehensible practice, I encounter this response that dismissively avers: “Oh, that’s blind faith, and I’m as much against it as you are. It’s not the faith I exercise.” It seems, indeed, religious folk everywhere are eager to distinguish their own faith …

On December 25, 2017, my husband and I were visiting Quito, Ecuador, after having spent the prior week exploring the Galapagos Islands. There wasn’t much to do that day. It was Christmas and everything was closed. Though atheists (of course!), we popped into a few churches in the historic downtown, hoping to see some pageantry …

As humanity faces immense global challenges, such as the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and the increasingly visible effects of global warming, a new school of thought has emerged. Its essence is that we should investigate possibilities for “moral enhancement”: that is, we should consider how to alter human nature so that it becomes …

Tom Flynn was a moralist and a pragmatist. He rejected religion on moral grounds. He knew that the alliance of religion with morality was spurious. But in light of the power and intensity of the anti-abortion movement, he was pragmatic enough to side with those who defended abortion in ways that would circumvent monotheistic furor. …

We’ve been having to say goodbye a lot lately. We’ve been having to say it to vast swaths of life that we took for granted and assumed would always be there. Political sanity, reasoned public discourse, longer life expectancies, and above all the sense of a future. Not just our own personal futures, but a …

Movements need a sense of history and tradition to inspire respect and loyalty in their members. Tom Flynn’s enthusiasm and research in creating the Freethought Trail and establishing the Robert Green Ingersoll Birthplace Museum reflected his keen awareness of the importance of educational and public relations in maintaining the heritage of secularism and valorizing its …

Kurt Westergaard, the creator of the most provocative of the famous Danish Muhammad cartoons, has died of natural causes at age eighty-six. Born on July 13, 1935, in the village of Døstrup, Denmark, Westergaard grew up in a conservative Christian home but turned from these roots in high school when he was introduced to cultural …

35 Years Ago “… I think it a fundamental misuse of language to equate religion with secularism when the latter refers to different aspects of experience. This is linguistic definition by capricious legislation, a form of definition-mongering. Anyone has the right to misuse language if he so wishes, but there is something basically unethical about …

World Population Re: “Will World Population Drop Far Enough, Fast Enough?,” FI, August/September 2021. Tom Flynn’s essay arguing that the earth is already overpopulated with us was spot on. In the mid-1960s, I had occasion to ask M. King Hubbert, he of Hubbert’s Peak fame and then the greatest living geologist, if he thought we …

In fond memory of Christmas archnemesis Tom Flynn Once again, we arrive at that most wonderful time of the year. I refer to Christmastime, the season—in the United States, anyway—of decked-out pine trees, gag-reflex-inducing TV specials, and fresh, righteous, Starbucks cup–sparked outrage. And, not to be overlooked, your local paper will likely reprint the 1897 …

I see these press releases from churches every week in the newspaper. One of them in particular caught my eye. A little shrine near where I live was having a special Adoration of the Virgin Mary event, and the description of it included a “procession in praise of the Sacred Virgin Mary,” followed by a …

Susan Jacoby, in her book Freethinkers: A History of American Secularism (2004), wrote about the “Golden Age of Freethought” and specifies the years 1875 to 1914 as freethought’s heyday. Understandably, Robert Green Ingersoll was the era’s standard-bearer for the freethought cause. Ingersoll was probably the most-heard speaker in the United States before the advent of …

A RELIGION of just being kind would be a pretty good religion—don’t you think so? But a religion of kindness and useful effort is nearly a perfect religion. We used to think it was a man’s belief concerning a dogma that would fix his place in eternity. This was because we believed that God was …

The Roman Catholic Church is in an uproar, but it’s not about its pedophile priests or the bishops who diligently cover for them. This venerable institution has its theological panties in a wad because some of the faithful might have received “invalid sacraments.” Michael Stechschulte’s August 24, 2020, article in America, a Jesuit publication, gives …

The Bible begins with the book of Genesis, in which we read that the first humans, Adam and Eve, were forbidden on pain of death to eat the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. Nevertheless, beguiled by the Serpent, they did so and were duly punished (by exile from Eden and …

What It Means to Be Moral: Why Religion Is Not Necessary for Living an Ethical Life by Phil Zuckerman (Berkeley, California: Counterpoint Press, 2019, ISBN 978-1-64009-274-7). 360 pp. Hardcover, $28.00. Where does contemporary morality, with its historical emphasis on anything connected to sex, come from? Peter Heather, renowned English scholar, tells us in his marvelous …

Once there was a man who had been taught to believe something that didn’t really make sense. The man kind of knew that it didn’t really make sense, but he had also been taught that believing it—even if it didn’t make sense—made him a better person. He was a good man, and he wanted to …

Religionists often say: “What about faith? Shouldn’t there be a place for faith? Why do we have this ability if it is not intended to have some useful purpose? Where did it come from?” “Are not most if not many things taken on faith? Atheism is a faith. Believing in science is a faith. Evolution …

Today many nonbelievers accept as a matter of course the presumption of atheism, the position that the idea of a creating god is so fantastical that the burden of proof lies with those who believe in such a being. This position has elicited some aggressive responses. The American philosopher Alvin Plantinga, for example, has claimed …

As Étienne Gilson (1884–1978), French philosopher and historian of philosophy, once observed of Medieval Europe: It is often said, and not without good reasons, that the civilization of the Middle Ages was an essentially religious one. Yet even in times of the Cathedrals and of the Crusades, not everybody was a saint; it would not …

A miracle is usually defined as an event supposedly unexplainable by nature. But such a definition is predicated on a logical fallacy called arguing from ignorance—that is, from a lack of knowledge. It is like saying, “We don’t know; therefore, we do know.” Anglican writer C. S. Lewis (1898–1963) succinctly defined a miracle as “an …

How well situated is humanism to face the challenges of the twenty-first century? In particular, what solutions can humanism contribute to the global ecological crisis from which the climate emergency is emerging as the defining crisis of our times? The omens don’t look good, because for a long time, humanism has associated itself with a …

While many of us fret about unaffordable housing or traffic jams caused in part by population pressures, a trending chorus of depopulation doomsaying laments that there are too few people—or will be shortly. Underneath this lament lies something that is factually true. Birthrates are dropping, and people are living longer.1 Human population ballooned in the twentieth …

There were many times when Gail1 thought she’d hit rock-bottom, only to fall even further and land with an even harder thud. Her childhood was rough. Her mother was encumbered with undiagnosed and untreated depression, and her father was bipolar—also undiagnosed and untreated. Part of his mania manifested in his packing up the family to move …

Race Relations In the October/November 2020 issue of Free Inquiry is the article “Farewell to the Pink Race!” by S. T. Joshi. The article celebrates the death of the European race, claiming that “no one need lament their obliteration from the earth.” I want us to live in a society where there is no hate …

I write in mid-July, deep into yet another summer of our discontent. Wildfires that make their own weather, relentless heat waves, and murderous floods driven by “thousand-year” rain events abound. Under such conditions, it’s easy to wonder whether human civilization can survive our naive cleverness. Our relentless fecundity. When you get down to it, our …

The collapse seems to be speeding up alarmingly. I lived through one portent of the acceleration in late June, along with much of Oregon, Washington, and British Columbia, in the form of a heat wave that broke all records and jumped up and down on them. The peak here in Seattle was 108°, which frankly …

In 1894, French historian and educator Count Pierre De Coubertin conceived of an inclusive worldwide youth movement and great sports festival. It would emulate the pre-Christian tradition of Ancient Greece but be rooted in universal fundamental Enlightenment principles. The ethos was to be an alternative to the aristocratic British imperialist sporting ethos of “muscular Christianity” …

Christianism—like Islamism—refers to the determination of religious ideologues to use the coercive power of the state to enforce religious morality. This is not supposed to happen in the West, where Enlightenment rationalism and its secular legacy have established a rigid separation between church and state. On the other hand, there is no English or French …

Studies by University of Melbourne researcher Nick Haslam and his collaborators have demonstrated a trend, beginning in the late 1970s or early 1980s, for concepts related to harm to expand their meanings and applications. For the past forty years or so, many people have contributed, deliberately or otherwise, to concept creep for such words as …