ALL ARTICLES
Appreciating the Achievements of the Enlightenment
The Enlightenment Vision: Science, Reason, and the Promise of a Better Future, by Stuart Jordan (Amherst: Prometheus Books, 2013, ISBN 978-161614-640-5) 284 pp. Hardcover, $26. Thanks to the thinkers and activists of the seventeenth and eighteenth century period in Western Europe and America called the Enlightenment, increasing numbers of people have enjoyed a better life …
Behind Beguiling Error, a Call to Action
What to Expect When No One’s Expecting: America’s Coming Demographic Disaster, by Jonathan V. Last (New York: Encounter Books, 2013, ISBN 978-159403-641-5). 230 pp. Hardcover, $23.99. The title of this book riffs archly on a current mega–best seller (What to Expect When You’re Expecting), which should give you a clue about author Jonathan V. Last’s …
Mormon Marriage Made Funny
“It’s Not About the Sex,” My Ass: Confessions of an ExMormon ExPolygamist ExWife, by Joanne Hanks as told to Steve Cuno (Self-published: 2012, ISBN 978-1-105-99740-2 paper) 171 pp. Paperback, $15.97. Available in paperback or Kindle on Amazon.com; available in hardcover, paperback, Kindle, Nook, iBook, and eBook at www.itsnotaboutthesexmyass.com. We seldom review self-published books, so let’s …
Untitled
Unsong the morning Preen it from its pinks Unstar the fallen Their light no longer keeps Uncrib the branches This kingdom needs no throne Unwish the wind its strength I need it for my own Uncrow the pines Don’t let the vultures land Unblue the sky Bring them back again
Vision
After snow, I widen squinched-up eyes, watch tips of pine floating trunkless over muffled ridges—or seem to. What flickered once is holding now, the first clear light after nights that almost closed their eyes for good—like you, like me, snowed in for years, as disembodied as the wintry pines, our final talk dead as year-end …
Introduction
The U.S. military is a stronghold for Christian-nation evangelism. That statement may sound inflammatory, but it accurately represents the convictions of many in the chain of command that, among other things, the United States is a Christian nation founded on Christian principles and that it is not only legal but required to utilize personal rank …
Note from the Editor
Some Free Inquiry readers may find the articles in this special section controversial. Most of these articles share the view that the best solution to tensions posed by a growing nontheistic/nonreligious contingent within a U.S. military steeped in “Christian nation” ideology is to expand the scope of military chaplaincy to encompass nontheistic/nonreligious service members. Some …
The State of Our Christian Military (and What to Do About It)
In this article, I will spotlight several of the many examples of the overt, light-of-day Christian promotion and proselytizing going on even at the highest levels of our military. Each is individually outrageous. Every non theist and even every non-Christian serving in the military is presented immediately and frequently with the clear message that Christianity …
The Ravages of Wartime Moral Injuries
As chief medical officer at the Denver Military Entrance Processing Station, my duties involve determining the physical and psychological fitness of men and women who wish to join the armed forces. Sadly, some applicants who have previously served and wish to reenlist suffer from combat-related illnesses, injuries, and experiences that have led to post-traumatic stress …
Seeking Reform from Within
Bigotry (big-ot-ry) noun—stubborn and complete intolerance of any creed, belief, or opinion that differs from one’s own. —Dictionary.com Question: What does it take to be recognized as a humanist in the military? Answer: Can’t happen. The chaplaincy dictates to the military personnel offices what religious preferences can be claimed in official military records. No …
Freethought Enjoys Smoother Sailing at the Naval Academy
On April 19, 2011, Rev. Fredric Muir, senior minister at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Annapolis (UUCA) received an e-mail from Military Association of Atheists andFreethinkers (MAAF) head Jason Torpy, asking whether a humanist contingent within the congregation might be interested in supporting humanist midshipmen atthe U.S. Naval Academy (USNA). Rev. Muir contacted me because …
Why Chaplains Should Be Contracted, Not Commissioned
The Air Force Chaplain Corps provides spiritual care and the opportunity . . . [for Air Force members] to exercise their Constitutional right to the free exercise of religion. —From the U.S. Air Force Chaplain Corps History and Mission (airforce.com) I have always questioned the presence of, say, a dharma wheel or Jewish tablets adorning a chaplain’s …
Apocalypse Nation
In his 1871 essay titled “Democratic Vistas,” Walt Whitman warned a post–Civil War America that it was still being morally tested. He predicted that unless the nation matched its tremendous materialistic progress with a comparable spiritual advancement, it was bound for a fate “equivalent … to that of the fabled damned.” Here we are 141 …
The Argument from Death and Meaninglessness—Again
Without God, our lives have no meaning. The faithful can take comfort in eternal life, in knowing that they and their loved ones will survive death. The atheist can have no hope, no solace, because for the atheist only the grave awaits. How often have we heard these claims? Too often, but recently we’ve been …
Yes, Virginia, There Was a Twentieth Century
Reader alert: the sentence that follows will include more slashes than I have ever penned—oops, I’m showing my age, keyboarded—in my life. If any topic in our movement has liberated more virtual ink than the current debate/flame war over feminism/misogyny in atheism/secular humanism/secularism/freethought, I don’t know what it is/might be. Phalanxes of words have been …
What Does Religion Provide?
This is a question a lot of atheists and humanists have been asking themselves: What does religion provide to people? What do people get out of it? Why do they like it? Why do they stay with it even when they don’t like it? And how can atheists and humanists provide some or all of …
Should We Abolish Morality?
Should We Abolish Morality? Prominent philosopher Joel Marks has published a new book on the topic of moral skepticism: Ethics without Morals: In Defense of Amorality (Routledge, 2013). Marks was formerly a moral realist with essentially Kantian intuitions, but in recent times he has had something of a (de)conversion experience, coming to the view that …
The Decay of American Democracy, Part 2
The Decay of American Democracy, Part 2 In the first part of this essay (FI, October/November 2012), I argued against the American inclination to think that democracy is the best form of governmen t and that all good things come with democracy. Instead, I maintained that like any other form of government, democracy needs at …
The Brain of Ariel Sharon
Ariel Sharon has been in the news over the past few months even though he has not moved a muscle, uttered a word, or showed any sign of consciousness since 2006. The fact that he is able to make headlines while in a permanent vegetative state shows both the impact the “Lion of Israel” had …
Domestic Drone Danger Deepens
News you may have missed: in July 2012, Congress passed—and President Barack Obama went on to sign—the Federal Aviation Administration Reauthorization Act, which authorized the domestic use of pilotless drones by units of government, including intelligence agencies and local police. A number of police agencies had already been using drones for surveillance (that is, without …
Here Come the ‘Evatheists’
Newly elected Arizona Congresswoman Kyrsten Sinema isn’t a believer in God, which is not news. But now it seems that she’s not a nonbeliever either. Intellectuals prick up their ears when informed that a logical dichotomy, such as “believer or nonbeliever,” is in fact a false dichotomy. Let philosophers rethink where logic fails. We need …
Greece Grapples with Blasphemy
Nowhere is the European crisis that followed the Wall Street crash of 2008—and especially the subsequent effort to combat it—felt more sharply than in Greece. The country is suffering an economic depression after five years of rapidly declining output with no end in sight as it fails to meet the demands of the European Union …
Existentialism: A Philosophy for Secular Humanists
When I came of age in the 1950s and slowly began to think about life, I developed a strange feeling that the world is senseless, irrational, and chaotic. Forty million people had just been killed in World War II, and everyone said how noble and heroic it was. The “Big One” was only the latest …
Tracing ‘Secular Humanism’
Tracing ‘Secular Humanism’ Since the mid-1970s, “secular humanism” has been the bête noire, scapegoat, and whipping boy of the religious Right. Francis Schaeffer, Jerry Falwell, Tim LaHaye, and their legions of followers and imitators blamed the world’s troubles on “secular humanists,” whom they claimed control the government, courts, media, public schools and universities, and the …
Letters
Beyond Current Law Thanks for Tom Flynn’s article “When ‘Current Law’ Is Not Enough” (FI, February/March 2013). As an escaped Catholic, I am sensitive to the smothering affect that Christianity has had on the development of our country in my lifetime. I hope that someday this nation, and maybe the world, will find a …
PBS’s First Freedom
On December 18, 2012, PBS broadcast a ninety-minute documentary titled First Freedom: The Fight for Religious Liberty. An excellent introduction to the subject, it traced the evolution of religious freedom in the United States from early colonial times to shortly after 1800, coming down nicely on the side of church-state separation and using a great …
Answer to Stalin
I recently encountered a YouTube commenter who posted: “I would never rely on the words of an atheist, no matter how much of an expert he is.” Of course, I had to reply. “Why?” I wrote, “Is it simple religious bigotry, or your own ignorance about what it means to be an atheist? I suspect …
Twenty Christian Questions
So you think you know your Gospels? Test your mettle with this multiple-choice quiz (answers appear on page 54): 1. What year was Jesus born? A. 4 BCE, when Herod the Great ruled over Judea B. 6 CE, wh en Cyrenius (or Quirinius) was governor of the province of Syria 2. Was Jesus born …
A Response to Michael Shermer
Michael Shermer is very indignant about being criticized: he wrote a two-and-a-half-page article (“A Guy Thing? Secularism, Feminism, and a Response to Ophelia Benson,” FI, February/March 2013) for Free Inquiry in reaction to four paragraphs in an article of mine (“Nontheism and Feminism: Why the Disconnect?” FI, December 2012/January 2013) that criticized something he said …
Secular Humanism: Protestantism’s Gift to Us All
The Unintended Reformation: How a Religious Revolution Secularized Society, by Brad S. Gregory (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2012, ISBN 978-0-674-04563-7) 574 pp. Hardcover, $39.95. In the November 2012 issue of The Progressive, editor Matthew Rothschild opened his editorial by noticing what he took to be Paul Ryan’s “weird conception of rights,” …
How the New Testament Came to be Written
Beyond the Quest for the Historical Jesus: Memoir of a Discovery, by Thomas L. Brodie (Sheffield, England: Sheffield Phoenix Press, 2012 ISBN978-1-907534-58-4) xv + 256 pp. Paperback, $29.95. Beyond the Quest for the Historical Jesus: Memoir of a Discovery deserves attention because it is an honest and courageous statement of how the author has come, …
The Story of a Landmark Church-State Case
The Bible, the School, and the Consitution: The Clash That Shaped Modern Church-State Doctrine, by Steven K. Green (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012, ISBN 978-0-19-982790-9) 304 pp. Hardcover, $29.95. Steven K. Green is the Frank H. Paulus Professor of Law and an adjunct professor of history at Willamette University and director of the interdisciplinary …
Sherwin Wine’s Last Book
A Provocative People: A Secular History of the Jews, by Sherwin T. Wine (Farmington Hills, Mich.: International Institute for Secular Humanistic Judaism, 2012, ISBN 978-0-9851516-0-7) 508 pp. Papeback, $24.95 Sherwin Wine (1928-2007) was the founder of the Humanistic Judaism movement (the fifth strain of organized Judaism in addition to Reform, Conservative, Reconstructionist, and Orthodox), the …
Religious Liberty for Me and Thee?
In Freedom We Trust, by Edward M. Buckner and Michael E. Buckner (Amherst, N.Y.: Prometheus Books, 2012, ISBN 978-1-61614-644-3) 250 pp. Paperback, $18.00. In researching my e-book Roger Williams’ Little Book of Virtues, I came across a rather telling quote from Professor Romeo Elton that he penned during the Reconstruction Era: “At a crisis when …
Australia, New Zealand, America
Realising Secularism: Australia and New Zealand, edited by Max Wallace (Milsons Point, NSW, Australia: Australia New Zealand Secular Association, 2010, ISBN 987-0-646-52720-8A) 161 pp. Paperback. Australia, New Zealand, and the United States have much in common. All three are English-speaking, more-or-less democratic former British colonies that largely displaced indigenous peoples. They have similar histories and …
Hinges
Good mortises are difficult. The grain must be respected. Marking gauges trace a better line than you can draw by hand, and outlining will always leave a space. Only sound templates stay repeatable but must be stored with care. Before we met I never once installed a metal hinge correctly. I would hold the finished …
Introduction
As I write, significant swaths of New York and New Jersey remain uninhabitable more than a month after Superstorm Sandy churned ashore. Sandy followed in the footsteps of Hurricane Irene, which savaged much of the same territory just fourteen months earlier. Sandy seems to have marked a turning point in the way most media commentators …
What Can Biology Tell Us About Our Future?
Introduction: The Island Analogy This truly extraordinary point in Earth’s history has recently been categorized as a distinct geological time period–the Anthropocene–a period of significant human impact on the planet. Our species is unique relative to all other life-forms in that we have a developed sense of consciousness. Not only do our activities dominate …
The Anti-Gay Legacy of America’s Prophet
When I covered Billy Graham’s Crusade in Flushing Meadows, Queens, back in 2005, I did not realize that I was reporting on the end of an era for the man dubbed “America’s pastor.” Still, given his frail health at that time, I was not surprised when the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association (BGEA) announced that Graham’s …
A Humanist Perspective on the Sermon on the Mount
I received my religious education in Sunday school, as a Jew. It was shortly after the Holocaust, and the Jewish community was eager to ensure the perpetuation of Judaism. Intermarriage—even mere exposure to Christianity—were viewed as palpable threats. My religious education said nothing at all aboutChristianity. My parents’ understanding of Christianity was limited to a …