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Even among the world’s best-educated and most scientifically literate populations, ridiculous belief systems abound. Huge numbers of people believe in such things as astrology, television psychics, crystal divination, the healing powers of magnets, and the prophecies of Nostradamus. Many suppose that the pyramids were built by aliens, that the Holocaust never happened, or that the …

Who would have thought in 1972 that “ethics” would ever become fashionable? That was when my Nucleoethics: Ethics in Modern Society was published in the same sociological series as Ger maine Greer’s The Female Eunuch (1970). Today, ethics is everywhere. The hitherto-obsolescent Hippocratic Oath for doctors has been joined by codes of ethics for advertisers, …

Secularism is a scary word for some, especially those on the religious Right. Moreover, as we are now officially into the 2012 presidential election campaign, you can expect to hear a lot more about the alleged evils of secularism. Before his recent political implosion, self-appointed intellectual Newt Gingrich was busy inveighing against secularism in articles, …

Recently, in a special two-part episode of Point of Inquiry, the Center for Inquiry’s podcast, cohost Chris Mooney changed places and became the interviewee. In the first part, an edited version of which is presented below, CFI President and CEO Ronald A. Lindsay asks Mooney about his stance of accommodationism regarding science and religion. In …

Science and Religion: Accommodationism or Confrontation? Re “Science and Religion: Accommodation or Confrontation?” FI, June/July 2011: Both P Z Myers (“The Need for Confrontation”) and Victor Stenger (“Why Religion Must Be Confronted”) present cogent arguments for a principled response to creationists. Eugenie C. Scott (“The Need for Accommodation”) and Chris Mooney (“Toward Common Cause”), on …

As sociologist and author Phil Zuckerman notes in this issue, the study of unbelievers as a demographic group in its own right is finally gathering steam. Until recently, everything social scientists and pollsters could tell us about nonreligious Americans was “by-catch”—tangential information acquired in the course of studying religious Americans.* This state of affairs could …

Reporting on the capture of the mass-murdering General Ratko Mladic by the Serbian government on Memorial Day, the New York Times summarized the newly created political situation like this: “Critical questions remain about precisely who protected Mr. Mladic. The pro-Western government of President Boris Tadic says it will investigate, a politically delicate examination that could …

Fifty years after the onset of the modern feminist movement, sexual violence remains a primary issue, especially for young women asserting their right to dress or undress as they choose. The “slut walk” is the latest protest gimmick, inspired by the stupidity of a Toronto police officer who advised women (rather unoriginally) to “avoid dressing …

Why has there been so much hype in the ongoing debate about public funding for stem cell research in the United States? The answer is simple and can be summarized in one word: abortion. Some forms of stem cell research involving the use of embryos require embryo destruction to extract a stem cell. Others, involving …

One of the pleasanter changes in morals and manners over the last few decades has been the marginalization of ugly talk about “the Xs”—the Jews, the Mexicans, the Chinese, the queers. Thoughtful people don’t talk like that anymore, and what a relief that is, grumbles about political correctness notwithstanding. The old style now reeks of …

On May 4, Bob Barr, a conservative Republican constitutionalist, wrote a blog post whose headline should define a fundamental issue in the 2012 elections: “With Bin Laden Dead, It’s Time to Restore the Bill of Rights” (The Barr Code, May 4, 2011). I was not surprised at the source of this call. When President Bill …

Although this article was written prior to the political unrest in Egypt and the fall of the government of Hosni Mubarak, we are assured by the author that the situation described here has not materially changed. —Eds. Many middle-class women in Egypt, who entered the work force after being granted the right to equal employment …

Students can now study secularity. They can even get a degree in it. Pitzer College, one of the Claremont Colleges in Southern California, has formally approved the formation of a secular studies department – the first such department in the United States, and I think, the world. I’m very proud to be a part of …

On May 11, Education Week published this letter of mine: The four states discussed in the article “GOP Lawmakers Press Voucher Expansion in States” (April 27, 2011) are among the 39 states whose constitutions prohibit tax aid to religious institutions, but, tellingly, are not among the 14 states (including the District of Columbia) where voters …

Psychopaths are fascinating, in a repugnant sort of way. Whether we read about Ted Bundy or Paul Bernardo or see psychopaths depicted in fictional characters s uch as Hannibal Lecter, we are forced to wonder how a human being could ever do such horrible things. We are also forced to wonder whether we ourselves could …

What happens to atheism in a liberal democracy when religious beliefs are respected? And more important, how can atheism show its respect for the right to believe as one wishes while considering such beliefs contemptible? Much work done on religious pluralism elevates religion to a place of sanctity and often confuses the right to believe …

The Prince of War: Billy Graham’s Crusade for a Wholly Christian Empire, by Cecil Bothwell, second edition (Asheville, N.C.: Brave Ulysses Books, 2010, ISBN 9781456325909) 215 pp. Paper, $16. Billy Graham has had public and private facilities named after him and been called the “preacher to presidents” and “God’s ambassador.” He is an icon of …

Divinity of Doubt: The God Question, by Vincent Bugliosi (New York: Vanguard Press, 2011, ISBN 978-1-59315-629-9) 352 pp. Cloth, $26.99. Vincent Bugliosi has been a personal hero of mine since I saw the CBS television movie Helter Skelter in 1976. He successfully prosecuted the self-styled Antichrist Charles Manson in the face of police incompetence and …

Pox: An American History, by Michael Willrich (New York: Penguin Press, 2011, ISBN 9781594202865) 400 pp. Cloth, $27.95. During the first years of the twentieth century, smallpox, that most feared of scourges, became known as the “fool killer.” One simply had no excuse for catching it anymore. Any physician worth his salt knew the clinical …

God and Human Beings, by Voltaire; first English translation by Michael Shreve, Introduction by S.T. Joshi (Amherst, N.Y.: Prometheus Books, 2010, ISBN 978-1-61614-178-3) 183 pp. Paper, $18. God and Human Beings is a little-known work by Voltaire (1694–1778). It was published late in his life, when he was seventy-five years old, and just recently translated …

In The Rambles of the Alhambra, Coming upon a Bronze of a Naked Man Subjugating a Goat Angel Ganivet Monument, Granada Simply holding fast to his position, a man— naked and dappled with afternoon sunlight (oddly reminiscent of the Medici Fountain in Paris)— here, oddly intimates the swan dominating Leda. It is possible that we …

When the Council for Secular Humanism celebrated its thirtieth anniversary at last October’s gala conference in Los Angeles, one of the most-anticipated sessions was a panel discussion on freethinkers’ attitudes toward religion. Should secular humanists, atheists, agnostics, and others of our ilk approach religion from a presumption of confrontation—or one of accommodation? New York Times …

Five years ago, I was in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, at the Kitzmiller v. Dover trial. The trial concerned the legality of a policy of teaching intelligent design (ID) in Dover, Pennsylvania, public schools. The National Center for Science Education (NCSE), my organization, acted as advisor to the plaintiff’s legal team on scientific, pedagogical, and religious issues …

I’m going to begin with where I entered this conflict—and make no mistake, it’s a real battle—with my experience in science education and specifically with the teaching of evolution. Biology has been a lifelong passion for me, and when I first began teaching back in the 1980s, it was a shock to discover students who …

Speaking as a physicist, I would like to give you several examples from my own field where the unwillingness of scientists to engage in serious confrontation with religion results in the public being widely misinformed about what science says about religion and spirituality. Most professional scientific societies have followed the lead of the National Academy …

I believe we should, for the most part, be “accommodating” toward religion (though I don’t like that term). And I believe that we atheists and humanists and freethi nkers should strive to avoid fighting among ourselves about religion. We share 99 percent of our intellectual DNA; it only makes sense that we should be able …

Starting in the mid-nineteenth century, there was a widespread intentional and strenuous effort to compartmentalize organized religion on college campuses.1 That effort was largely successful. The modern academy has been widely regarded as a secular sphere; it allows religion as a private activity but does not advocate religiosity among its students. This is now changing. …

  Through the severe punishment meted out to him, Liu has become the foremost symbol of this wide-raging struggle for human rights in China. —Nobel Prize Committee (2010) Due to its impressive growth, the Chinese economy has now exceeded in size, if not in quality, that of Japan. However, such developments have not dulled Chinese …

The first decade of our twenty-first century opened with a series of disasters, most of human origin. In earlier times, human power remained too limited and localized to work ruin on a grand scale; big disasters had to be natural. Thus Voltaire in Candide, satirizing Leibniz for his cosmic optimism, takes a fictionalized Leibniz—Dr. Pangloss, …

This was it: graduation day. Comet Hale-Bopp was 122 million miles away, the closest it would ever come to Earth. The people inside the house began executing “The Routine,” a well-rehearsed s et of instructions detailing how team members would help each other wash down barbiturate-laced applesauce with vodka. Despite the work in front of …

What’s better than stirring up a bitter controversy with one of these editorials? Stirring up two bitter controversies, of course. White House Errs with ‘Interfaith Service Challenge’ In March, the White House Office of Faith-based and Neighborhood Partnerships announced the President’s Interfaith and Community Service Campus Challenge. This initiative encourages colleges and universities to design …

Part 1 of this Leading Questions interview appeared in the April/May 2011 Free Inquiry. Chris Mooney, a science journalist and host of Point of Inquiry, the Center for Inquiry’s podcast, talks with researcher Barry A. Kosmin about his work with the groundbreaking American Religious Identification Survey (ARIS), which has identified long-term trends in the religious …

Converting the Religious There is really no need to try and “convert” the religious to humanism by direct methods (“Do We Want to Convert the Religious?,” by Ronald A. Lindsay, FI, April/May 2011). As long as we have free dom of speech, competent education, and a willingness of humanists to express the ways of science …

Like many writers, I suspect, I have long been in love with the sound of my own sentences. But lately, even on a good day they provide at best a guilty pleasure; with everybody incessantly talking about everything, silence seems the better part of valor. (“Too much is sufficient,” my grandfather once said, and we …

A theme that often comes up in commentaries about contemporary American culture is the absence of firmly grounded and widely embraced basic values among the citizenry. While Americans have a coherent and stable enough legal tradition—albeit always a bit flawed and now in the process of gradual erosion—they seem to lack a basic ethics by …

Although exaggerated and flawed, the “Orientalist discourse” contains an undeniable kernel of truth. What is the Orientalist discourse? What are its flaws? And has it been dealt a death blow by the revolutions in the Arab world? The Orientalist discourse is a fancy term that was popularized by Edward Said in his celebrated book, Orientalism …

Ten years ago, sociologist Robert Putnam wrote a book that had the rare distinction—for a book by a sociologist—of causing shock waves in the mainstream media. In the book, Bowling Alone, he described how all the little social interactions that define a community—meeting with friends, knowing our neighbors, belonging to active organizations, and discussing local …

April Fools’ Day arrived three days late this year. The victims of the prank were the American people and the United States Constitution. The perpetrators were the five Supreme Court justices appointed by Presidents Reagan, Bush I, and Bush II. Here’s what happened. On April 4, the Supreme Court ruled 5–4 to reverse a decision …

The resonant voice of Ashley Montagu (1905–1999), London-born anthropologist, social biologist, and anatomist, rang throughout the twentieth century. He was an often controversial, highly influential scientist, humanist, and witness-participant in the world around him. Named Humanist of the Year by the American Humanist Association in 1995, Montagu sought to demystify the social sciences. His life’s …

Folks in Utah are proud to tell us that Utah’s founder, Brigham Young, had fifty-five wives. They don’t brag too much that many of those fifty-five were children or that history tells us that Brigham was complicit in the killing of 124 men, women, and children at Mountain Meadows in 1857. Few Mormons like to …