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  Humanist Chaplains? In his editorial “Humanist Chaplains in the Military: A Bridge Too Close?” (FI, October/November 2011), Tom Flynn states: “Discussions with the chaplain are protected by clergy confidentiality. Your commandi ng officer will not learn that you sought help, and the visit won’t go into your personal file. . . . A servicemember’s …

According to the United Nations, the world’s population has passed seven billion. (The U.S. government says that milestone will occur early in 2012.) Just twelve years ago, the number reached six billion; twelve years before that, it passed five billion. By any reasonable criterion, such growth is unsustainable. Consider that 48 percent of the globe’s …

So what is this atheism that upsets so many people? It is really just the refusal to believe in God because of the absence of sufficient reasons. It is a nonbelief—not something believed to be the case. Thus there can be atheists with a great variety of different outlooks on innumerable topics. They are all …

Does God hate Texas? As I write this in early September 2011, the state is being ravaged by wildfires after suffering through a devastating drought during the historic heat wave of the spring and summer . Is God laughing at Texas? The fires have been fueled by the winds of tropical storm Lee, which is …

If God is powerful enough to stop earthquakes, hurricanes, floods, and tsunamis, then why doesn’t he? In the first part of this essay (FI, October/November 2011), I argued that C.S. Lewis, in his efforts to resolve this “problem of evil,” ends up defending a hideous God who purposely inflicts gruesome suffering and death on innocent …

The putative link between religion and happiness is fiercely contested. Richard Dawkins is on record as calling it “dangerous nonsense,” while Christopher Hitchens opines that religion does “not make its adherents happy.” And yet if you take a broad cross section of Americans and ask them if they are satisfied with their lives, you’ll find …

In the weeks leading up to May 21, 2011, billboards boasted that the end of the world as we know it—the “Rapture,” to be exact—was upon us. Harold Camping, a Christian radio broadcaster and self-proclaimed eschatologist who previously had predicted judgment days on May 21, 1988, and September 7, 1994, had decreed the new 2011 …

Apparently, this is all the rage among the cool kids nowadays: condense a subject down to such a short summary that you could explain it during a short elevator ride. On the one hand, it shortchanges ideas that take years to even adequately grasp and panders to short attention spans. On the other hand, it’s …

“The Threats to a Crucial Canopy: Deaths of Forests May Weaken Controls on Heat-Trapping Gas” was the headline of a two-page report by Justin Gillis in the New York Times on October 1, 2011. Color maps accompanying the comprehensive article made dramatically clear that our planet’s forest cover—a primary reservoir for long-term sequestration of carbon—is …

Twisted, brittle, and aged bone Bearer of stories Keeper of time Speak From the Dreamtime of the Primitives Speak to me of sunlight and shadow Of ages long past Of mammoth hunters outlined on the gray sky Of mists and Pleistocene rains and Aeolian winds Of white and sacred stones Old One—relic! Grinning Cave-wrested, the …

God of Liberty: A Religious History of the American Revolution, by Thomas S. Kidd (New York: Basic Books, 2010, ISBN 978-0-465-00235-1) 298 pp. Cloth, $26.95. Thomas Kidd is associate professor of history at Baylor University and a senior fellow at the Institute for Studies of Religion. He has appeared on the Glenn Beck television program …

Revolutionary Deists: Early America’s Rational Infidels, by Kerry Walters (Amherst, N.Y., Prometheus Books, 2011, ISBN 978-1-61614-190-5) 279 pp. Paper, $20.00 Most everyone who writes a book claims it fills a “gap in the literature.” So often is this claim made that it’s all the more surprising when one actually comes across a book where the …

Gregory Benford and George Zebrowski, eds., Sentinels In Honor of Arthur C. Clarke (Overland Park, Kansas: Hadley Rille Books, 2010, ISBN 978-0-9825140-7-8) 399 pp. Cloth, $29.95 Arthur C. Clarke was one of the three towering figures of science fiction’s Golden Age, standing alongside Isaac Asimov and Robert A. Heinlein. He is perhaps best loved in …

The Conspiracy against the Human Race, by Thomas Ligotti (New York: Hippocampus Press, 2010, ISBN 978-0-9844802-7-2) 246 pp. Paper, $15.00. Some secular humanists accept that the universe is unauthored and was unintended and that life taken as a whole is inherently meaningless (though human beings may attach to it rich, if contingent, meanings of their …

  Mormonism must be done away with by the thousand influences of civilization, by education, by the elevation of the people. —Robert Green Ingersoll, 1884* The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has come a long way since the “Great Agnostic” could recommend to a newspaper reporter that the “influences of civilization” should simply …

Given that I’m a proud, barely famous atheist and skeptic, people are often surprised and fascinated to learn that I am a former Mormon (or as I like to say, a “Formon”). After the obligatory polygamy jokes and questions about the “magic underwear,” people are generally curious to know why I left the Church. This …

I have been convinced for some time that Joseph Smith’s claims about the discovery of the Golden Plates were a hoax, that Smith himself wr ote the Book of Mormon, that he forged the “Reformed Egyptian” writing he showed to Professor Charles Anthon, and that the whole imposture grew out of Smith’s earlier career as …

The story of Joseph Smith, the Book of Mormon, and the eventual rise of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS) is one of the more colorful, even outlandish, tales American history has to offer. Yet one of its more fascinating postscripts is undeservedly overlooked: the story of a freethinking journalist who, albeit …

Are all Mormons devout and orthodox believers? Or are some of them freethinkers? And if there are freethinking members inside this religion with a reputation for conformity, are they marginalized? If so, why would they stay? Religious belief and affiliation serve many different needs. They offer adherents a sense of purpose and meaning, a sense …

Preserved in a bottle in the magnificent Basilica of St. Anthony in Padua, Italy, are the tongue and larynx of that eponymous saint. Visitors are informed that when Anthony’s remains were exhumed for transfer to the newly completed basilica in 1263, thirty-two years after his death, these organs had survived intact in miraculous testament to …

I am an atheist, but I grew up Mormon. My children have asked their grandparents and others about religious belief and how it works in order to try to understand it. But for all of their interest and curiosity, I doubt they’ll ever completely understand what it’s like to be a part of a religious …

When people wish others a “Happy Holiday Season” or just “Happy Holidays,” what exactly do they mean? This “season” usually begins around Thanksgiving and lasts through December until the first day of January, “New Year’s Day.” Thanksgiving in the United States commemorates that mythical occasion when the “Pilgrims” and the “Indians” shared a joyous meal …

The topic of life after death raises disreputable connotations of past-life regression and haunted houses, but there is a large number of people in the world who believe in some form of persistence of the individual soul after life ends. Clearly, whether humans possess immortal souls is an important question, one of the most important …

Sometimes the best is the enemy of the good. A new campaign sweep-ing the humanist/atheist/freethought movement exemplifies this dilemma. The campaign is well meant, but I fear it pursues a seductive short-term benefit at the expense of greater long-term goals. At the same time, it actively endangers principles that secular humanists value highly. Along the …

A May 2011 episode of the Center for Inquiry podcast Point of Inquiry featured Center for Inquiry President and CEO Ronald A. Lindsay interviewing science journalist Chris Mooney, the POI cohost. In the first part of the program, adapted for publication in the August/September issue of Free Inquiry, they discussed Mooney’s stance of accommodationism regarding …

Are Unbelievers More Resilient? Re “Are Unbelievers More Resilient?” by Tom Flynn (FI, August/September 2011). “Go ahead, make my day” is a line from a Clint Eastwood movie that I have used as the basis for my personal motto: “Make my day. Prove me wrong.” This challenge is a win/win for me. If proven wrong …

Thirty-four-year-old Bei Bei Shuai came to Indianapolis from China ten years ago. She opened a restaurant, met a guy, and planned to get married. But last year she found out that the man was already married and was unwilling to leave his wife for her. She was so depressed that just before Christmas, on December …

It seems to me nothing short of extraordinary and embarrassing that a well-advertised white-supremacist lunatic should have had the time to assemble the ingredients of what seem like two possible fertilizer detonations—the most commonplace type, that is to say—and then to explode them in a vulnerable part of the capital city of a Scandinavian democracy. …

The so-called problem of evil belongs to Christianity in a way that it does not belong to Judaism or Islam. In Judaism and Islam, God’s power is fundamental, but his goodness is questionable. When the God of the Old Testament behaves badly, the Israelites usually talk back. Every time God decides to slay the Israelites …

Since leaving the Supreme Court, Sandra Day O’Connor has been devoting much of her time and passion to spurring the education of our young as to what it means to be American—even while civics classes continue to diminish with results, she says, that are “predictably dismal.” (See also my column, “Our Constitution: How Many of …

The typical American really does not like atheists—and is not afraid to say so. According to a Gallup poll in June of this year, only 49 percent of Americans would vote for an atheist for president. Atheists are at the bottom of the pile, below gays and Mormons, and so it’s hardly surprising that few …

Editors’ Note: Jason Torpy, president of Military Association of Atheists and Freethinkers, was invited to reply to Tom Flynn’s editorial in this issue. Humanist chaplains can afford the humanist movement a high-visibility stamp of approval from the government. When President Barack Obama mentioned “nonbelievers” in his inaugural address, nonbelievers spent months patting themselves on the …

On Friday, July 22, I had the amazing opportunity to stand up at a nationally televised town hall meeting at the University of Maryland and tell President Barack Obama that I am an atheist—with a smile on my face. Then I asked him why he was still allowing faith-based organizations that receive taxpayer funding to …

American mainstream media have long criticized discrimination against Jews, African Americans, and Hispanics, yet they’ve been doing an excellent job of playing down, if not outright ignoring, chronic bigotry against atheists. The rarity of atheist-friendly op-eds on major papers’ opinion pages has been a reflection of this bias. Having conducted groundbreaking research on the links …

Operating largely below the public’s—and the media’s—radar is the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), an ultraconservative policy shop founded in 1973 by Paul Weyrich (one of the founders of Jerry Falwell’s Moral Majority). Its mission is to influence state legislatures, far too many of whose members are only too happy to accept “expert” advice. ALEC …

On July 24, 2011, my home state of New York became the sixth—and by far the largest—state to legalize same-sex marriage. The historic bill, called the Marriage Equality Act, was approved by a 33–29 vote in the State Senate amid a whirlwind of drama. After passing the State Assembly (as it did in 2007 and …

A Wicked Company: The Forgotten Radicalism of the European Enlightenment, by Philipp Blom (New York: Basic Books, 2010, ISBN 978-0-465-01453-8) 361 pp. Cloth, $29.95. Though Philipp Blom’s newest book is classed as philosophical history, A Wicked Company addresses issues that resonate with the rationalist and humanist movements of today. This engrossing work is about the …

C.M. Kornbluth: The Life and Works of a Science Fiction Visionary, by Mark Rich (Jefferson, North Carolina, and London: McFarland & Co., Inc., Publishers, 2010, 9780786443932) 439 pp. Paper, $39.95. Cyril M. Kornbluth, born in New York City in 1923, was educated at City College and the University of Chicago; received a Bronze Star for …

As he watched his blood flow through a tube into a bottle, He thought of a saved life enforcing a foreign policy, with no way to avoid the thought. A married life goes home, then out again to finally die on a mission of empire. But the blood donors, the tax payers, the voters are …

In this article, I shall focus on the contribution made to this oft-discussed question by the eminent New Testament scholar Bart D. Ehrman, professor of rel igious studies at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. Ehrman’s many books make him prominent among scholars in the field who, as Jacques Berlinerblau observes in The Secular …