ALL ARTICLES

Candidate Without a Prayer: An Autobiography of a Jewish Atheist in the Bible Belt, by Herb Silverman (Charlottesville, Va.: Pitchstone Publishing, 2012, ISBN 978-0984493289) 255 pp. Hardcover, $22.95. Herb Silverman is quite well known to all insiders of the secular humanist, atheist, freethought, rationalist, Brights, Ethical Culturalists, and Humanistic Jewish movements. His autobiography—Candidate Without a …

The Messiah Game: A Comedy of Terrors, Book I, by Tom Flynn (Tucson: See Sharp Press, 2012. ISBN 978-1-937276-04-1) 245 pp. Paperback, $11.95. Who but Tom Flynn could have written such a book? Anyone familiar with his keenly insightful and humorous essays will discover in these pages that his skills as a teller of tales …

I saw it that way from the couch— the many-masted ship of ivy in the bottle of the world with sprays of laurel rising behind— as we argued the message of luck come to me, for fortune had tost, this time, her waves my way. Jealousy overwhelmed your staunchness, then you overcounted the bounty. And …

Gore Vidal, a laureate of the International Academy of Humanism (a Council for Secular Humanism program), recently died at the age of eighty-six. Academy secretary Stephen Law said: “Gore Vidal has been an inspirational figure to a great many people, myself included. Of course, he will be remembered for being urbane, fiendishly talented, and terrifyingly …

One cannot discuss modern sociology without understanding the contributions of Irving Louis Horowitz. One of his best-known accomplishments is the system he created for measuring quality of life in societies by comparing a state’s aggressiveness toward its citizens in terms of rates of imprisonment and more-violent actions such as executions as opposed to the civil …

Every two months, subscribers to Free Inquiry magazine enjoy reading a new issue filled with enlightening articles about secular humanism and related topics. As the director of outreach for the Council for Secular Humanism’s supporting organization, the Center for Inquiry, I am fortunate to encounter people every day who are living the values of secular …

In 1877 at the age of twenty-six, Felix Adler founded the Ethical Culture Society, a humanistic congregational social movement dedicated to ethical practice. His founding address spoke of the need for communities dedicated to moral action and ethical improvement—congregations that, without reference to God, would work together to solve the social ills of the late …

Who cares? We do! “The happiest people I have known have been those who gave themselves no concern about their own souls, but did their uttermost to mitigate the miseries of others.” These words, spoken by social activist Elizabeth Cady Stanton around the turn of the twentieth century, still ring true today. It is exactly …

As atheists and skeptics, we face a unique problem in that we are among the least-liked and least-trusted minority groups in America. You’re probably familiar with the statistics, but it is worth reviewing a few of the more startling ones. A study from the University of British Columbia suggests that Americans find atheists less trustworthy …

I love the beauty of stained-glass cathedrals. They evoke fond memories of smiling family during my First Communion. Unlike many of my black friends who were Baptist, I don’t have the stories of revival and rebirth. I had ritual. It was tied to a repeated narrative of freedom through suffering, a familiar tale. Although I …

The key insight that comes from being an atheist is that this life is the only one we have. We don’t have religious people’s luxury of explaining away real-time misery as a test of eligibility for a comfortable afterlife or as just retribution for an ignoble previous incarnation. This life is all we have. From …

Caretaking, the most traditionally feminine of roles, was not the way I expected to enter a movement. I’ve been an activist my entire adult life. And yet, I find myself joining the uprising of unbelievers not as a firebrand or organizer but as founder of a community of comfort and compassion. Grief Beyond Belief (GBB) …

One of the greatest pleasures in life is to be able to help those we care about, even if it’s a stranger on the street or a stray cat. And conversely, one of the greatest torments is to be unable to help those we care about—we may lack the knowledge, talent, money, or opportunity to …

In my years of attending church services, I heard the following story many times: Now as they went on their way, he entered a certain village, where a woman named Martha welcomed him into her home. She had a sister named Mary, who sat at the Lord’s feet and listened to what he was saying. …

“I’m sorry, Your Honor, but I haven’t been sworn in yet.” As I stood in the courtroom in Bartow, Polk County, Florida, in August of 2011, the judge looked at me in utter confusion. His clerk had administered the typical religious oath to the mass of defendants awaiting their turn at the bench. My attorney …

Last October, the thirty-member-strong Mid Ohio Atheists decided to run a billboard campaign in the city of Mansfield in order to let other atheists know they weren’t alone. Director of Communications Michael Adams posted a message on both the group’s blog and Facebook page asking for design submissions but received no responses. While members were …

The original Catholic Encyclopedia (which I shall hereafter refer to as CE1907) was published in fifteen volumes over the period 1907–1913. It is an impressive, respectable production. Largely, I cannot argue with its introductory claim, to be a work of “the foremost Catholic scholars in every part of the world . . . with the …

In the United States, politics dominates the news as we gear up for the fall elections. Not only will we have to decide on a president, but there are contests for Congress and most state legislatures, as well as state referenda on numerous issues, some of which have important public policy implications. It’s at times …

Last May, science journalist Chris Mooney attended the 2012 World Skeptics Congress in Berlin, where he heard disturbing reports of a new form of creationism—namely, Islamic creationism—gaining traction in Europe. There he spoke with Johan Braeckman, who has been following this development closely. Braeckman is a professor of philosophy of science at Ghent University in …

  Faith Behind Bars In “Triple Play: Faith Behind Bars, Measurement in Chains” (FI, June/July 2012), Tom Flynn writes that there may be greater than expected religious affiliation reported in the prison inmate population. Much as I wou ld find a wry satisfaction in evidence that religious affiliation correlates positively with crime rates, or at …

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. . . .” That Dickensian chestnut sums up the state of traditional marriage today. Surveys confirm that Americans have less use for the institution than ever. More of us are now single than married. Few progressives get excited about weddings unless they are …

For doctors, the old saw “Gag me with a spoon” no longer applies. Today it is “Gag me with a (a) toxic chemical, (b) gun, or (c) transvaginal ultrasound probe.” This appears to be the new ethics of medicine for doctors in America. Why are we letting state legislators, religious zealots, and big business tell …

The gods are all dead. Science killed them. When beliefs are tissues of fantasy papering over ignorance, all it takes is honest inquiry to destroy them . . . and what we’re seeing now in the centuries after the Enlightenment is an erosion of god-belief. As a scientist, it’s hard to avoid bursting out in …

Here in Australia, as in many other parts of the world, there is an ongoing public debate about proposals to extend marriage to same-sex couples. As marriage falls within the federal jurisdiction under the Australian Constitution, this has led to public consultation processes involving the federal houses of Parliament (the House of Representatives and the …

Sometimes evolution seems to bestow a sort of karmic recompense upon certain hard-working members of a species. Sometimes the individual who demonstrates the greatest Protestant work ethic will, in fact, reap the greatest reward. A male Australian redback spider who courts a female for fewer than one hundred minutes may get a chance to enjoy …

In all the continuing debates, pledges, and dead ends involved in education reform, the many ever-present school dropouts are seldom urgently dealt with. What happens to those youngsters? When I cover the imprisonment of youthful offenders, I find one answer. The majority are dropouts. The others? Who knows or cares, except maybe their families? In …

Attending the Center for Inquiry (CFI)’s “Women in Secularism” conference in Arlington, Virginia, May 18–20, 2012, was an inspiring experience. Having worked for CFI for six years, I have become used to the male-dominated culture that is prevalent in secularism. It was therefore refreshing to hear so many women speaking one after the other on …

In the United States, atheists and humanists are among its most vilified and distrusted citizens. One of the most effective ways of countering this prejudice is to offer a vivid reminder that some of the world’s leading moral, cultural, and scientific figures are indeed humanists. A good place to start is with the past and …

“Vagina. The passage leading from the uterus to the vulva.” So says the 1998 Webster’s American Family Dictionary, a “family” reference work “to record the standard vocabulary of American English in a way that reflects the common ethical, moral, religious, social, and civic values of mainstream Americans.” This 1,124-page volume is so prissy that it …

The black body has always been an object of deep and abiding obsession in the American imagination. Be it cavorting with “funky” abandon on a dance floor, vaulting off a basketball court in dunk mode, suckling apple-cheeked white babies, trotted out in a police lineup, or greased down, poked, prodded, and displayed on a slave …

Religion for Atheists: A Non-believer’s Guide to the Uses of Religion, by Alain de Botton (New York: Pantheon Books, 2012, ISBN 978-0-307-37910-8) 320 pp. Hardcover, $26.95. Alain de Botton does n’t think God exists, but he regards thinking about God as only one among many things religion is good for. Subtracting God-belief from religion, in …

The Atheist’s Guide to Reality: Enjoying Life without Illusions, by Alex Rosenberg (New York: W. W. Norton, 2011, ISBN 978-0-393-08023-0) 352 pp. Hardcover, $25.95. Post-millennial atheist writers seem to have moved from stage one to stage two. The nonexistence of God was dealt with by Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, and others in the 2000s. Now …

What Jesus Didn’t Say, by Gerd Lüdemann (Salem, Oregon: Polebridge Press, 2011. ISBN 978-1-59815-030-8). IV + 133 pp. Paper, $18.00. When the members of the Jesus Seminar finished sifting through the sayings and stories of the Gospels, their goal was to construct a database from which one might reconstruct the career and teaching of the historical …

Letters from an Atheist Nation: Godless Voices of America in 1903, edited by Thomas Lawson (Langley, B.C.: Thomas Lawson Books, 2011, ISBN13 9781466397354) 347 pp. Paper, $16.95; e-book for Amazon Kindle only, $7.99. In 1903, the Blue Grass Blade—after The Truth Seeker and The Boston Investigator, perhaps America’s most successful national freethought newspaper during the …

Hannah Arendt: Radical Conservative, by Irving Louis Horowitz (New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction, 2012, ISBN 978-1-4128-4602-8) xii +100 pp. Hardcover, $29.95. By the end of this year, Hannah Arendt will have been the subject of at least five books devoted entirely to her thought, including Steve Buckler’s Hannah Arendt and Political Theory, Marco Goldoni and Christopher …

OK, Life, you with the grinning clown face, I know I’m not the main attraction here, and of course you’ve slapped me around, whacked me with bladders, booted my behind— but I want you to know that after all those pratfalls, I’ve finally got used to your jabs, your tweaks, your pinches, and— are you …

Prove to you who I am? You ask as if I’d know. This ID shot, slapped down indefinite years ago? If it’s all a matter of Matter, no cell of me, no atom of this old face is the same as that; if Form, the former has rather more than the latter. And look: a …

For more than three decades—and notwithstanding its deep absurdity—the claim that “America is a Christian nation” has never gone undefended. Yet what does it mean to ascribe this or that religious identity to a nation? If America is a Christian nation, does it have a soul? Was that soul stained by original sin? Did Jesus …

Once they begin to circulate, falsehoods—like counterfeit currency—are surprisingly tenacious. It doesn’t matter that there’s no backing for them. The only thing that counts is that people believe they have backing. Then, like bad coins, they turn up again and again. One counterfeit idea that circulates with frustrating stubbornness is the claim that America was …

When I was growing up in the fifties and sixties, almost no one in politics or everyday life went around proclaiming, “I am a Christian.” If indeed you were a Christian—that is, someone who considers Jesus Christ the Messiah—you identified yourself as a Lutheran, a Methodist, a Baptist, a Catholic, and so on in excelsis …