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In her new book Wayward—A Memoir of Spiritual Warfare and Sexual Purity, noted actress Alice Greczyn (The Lying Game) describes a harrowing past rooted in some of the most popular and destructive fads to sweep Christian Right communities in recent decades. Among them are a focus on the “purity” of young women so extreme that …

A Parental Gift Barbara Lynne Conroy I was raised Catholic “light.” When I was a child, my family attended church only on Sundays and “required” holidays. I attended Catholic school until I completed fourth grade. I lobbied my parents hard to let me go to public school. When I was twelve years old (this was …

It has taken over twenty years, but Congress is finally holding hearings to limit the impact of the toxic Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) on civil rights. Two bills have been introduced in Congress that would carve back RFRA’s destructive reach—the Equality Act and the Do No Harm Act. Both focus on curtailing the capacity …

In 2011, Pitzer College offered the first—and still the only—college major in secular studies. The prime mover behind that initiative was Dr. Phil Zuckerman, who in 2011 wrote that he could “sense the thirst out there. So many students, perhaps galvanized by the New Atheists, wanted to take classes that challenged religious worldviews, explored the …

The year was 1979. I was publishing a racy, little state-of-the-art diagnostic medical ultrasound catalogue distributed to radiologists in the United States and Europe. Printed in Denver, the Clinical Ultrasound Purchaser’s Catalogue was disseminated via KLM Royal Dutch Handling Service in Holland. The Iranian hostage crisis made that a losing proposition—I had to scrap the …

In the past sixty years or so, historians and theologians have pointed to what one of them has termed “the biblical sources of secularization.” Others believe that at the time of the Protestant Reformation, the recovery of the Hebraic worldview did much to foster the growth of a naturalistic outlook in the West. “Hebraic culture …

In the February/March 2021 issue, I wrote a brief item noting the end of The Humanist, the longtime bimonthly journal of the American Humanist Association (AHA), as “a magazine of critical inquiry and social concern.” (Free Inquiry founder Paul Kurtz first came to prominence in the humanist movement as editor of The Humanist in the …

For the past four years, secular folks have been concerned with the threat posed by White Christian Nationalism and the Trump Administration’s subservience to the religious Right, particularly regarding the appointment of conservatives to the federal courts and the U.S. Supreme Court. The new president is a pious Catholic and regular Mass-attender, so we can …

Congress is currently (as I write this) working on a voting-rights bill. It’s depressing having to say that, because we thought it was done already, years ago, back in 1965. It happened in the wake of a horror known as Bloody Sunday, when state troopers and local police brutally attacked a group of civil rights …

Questions about religious toleration have arisen in many great civilizations, including those of China, India, and the Islamic world. In Western Christendom, however, they became most salient after the sixteenth-century Protestant Reformation triggered persecutions and wars across Europe, with such highlights (or lowlights) as the burning of Michael Servetus at the stake in Calvinist Geneva, …

In the Christian imagination, the hardship and suffering that human beings endure is seldom the result of bad luck, natural calamity, ignorance, or the folly of imperfect human beings. It is a function of intentionally malign forces and diabolical conspiracies inspired by the Devil. The only consolation is that Satan is destined to be defeated …

I was ten years old and on the verge of theft. We were at Toys “R” Us, and my brother and I both wanted the same action figure. I considered this wasteful, because our trips to the store were incredibly rare, and we shared all the toys we had at home. The problem was that …

In his 2015 book The Moral Arc: How Science and Reason Lead Humanity toward Truth, Justice, and Freedom, Michael Shermer makes a well-supported argument that the secular domain has done more good for the world than the domain of religion. He writes: “The scientific revolution led to the Age of Reason and to the Enlightenment …

It is the most important historical statistic that remains almost entirely unknown. Like nothing else, this terrible fact guts the moral claims of those speculators who proclaim to honorably worship a noble and righteous creator/power. It has untapped potential to accelerate the already rapid decline of the illusion that is theism. It is a figure …

The entire Free Inquiry family mourns the loss of former Art Director Christopher S. Fix, who died of pancreatic cancer March 6, 2021, in Amherst, New York. He was only fifty-one. Fix joined our production staff in 2002 and became art director in 2008. Beginning with our February/March 2009 issue and ending with our April/May …

Bruce Adams was many things to the Western New York community: artist, teacher, mentor, writer, adviser, husband, father, and friend. He was also involved in the humanist movement with the Center for Inquiry (CFI), copublisher of Free Inquiry. Born in Buffalo, New York, in 1952, Adams was the oldest of six children and attended school …

The Council for Secular Humanism and the Center for Inquiry are pleased to announce the winners of the Morris D. and Selma V. Forkosch Awards for calendar year 2020. Established in 1988, the Morris D. Forkosch Award recognizes the best humanist book of the year and carries an honorarium of $1,000. The Selma V. Forkosch …

35 Years Ago in Free Inquiry “We are faced with a serious problem: Although some forms of faith-healing may relieve psychosomatic symptoms, there is no clear evidence that faith-healing can cure organic illness; and yet faith-healing has become fashionable. Countless numbers of people are now being deceived in healing sessions and by television reports of …

General As a subscriber to Free Inquiry for some years now, I have been bothered by the lexicon and what I consider overly academic and professional English in which most articles are written. In many issues of FI, I read exhortations for secular organizations and publishers to form a stronger, more united front against religious …

I am pleased to report that there are still a few considerate souls out there who give a rat’s hindquarters about what the heck they say and whom the honk they offend. These good folks have managed to harness the power of cussing while sparing tender ears. This they accomplish through mastery of the pseudo-expletive. …

An invisible agent forced our reluctant attention. COVID-19, a destructive stealthy force, an unrestrained actor, has a universal audience, subjecting us to the threat of death. Scientists are more unified than governments in containing, if not conquering altogether, this terrifying pathogen. It is only the latest, not the last, biological terrorist determined to destroy the …

The Scientific Spirit of American Humanism, by Stephen P. Weldon (Baltimore, Johns Hopkins University Press, ISBN 9781421438580). 285 pp. Hardcover, $49.95. The discerning reader may cringe at the oxymoron scientific spirit in the title of this book—doesn’t a scientific outlook preclude belief in spirits?—but do not despair. In what may be considered a key coming-of-age …

The Case against Miracles, by John W. Loftus, ed. Foreword by Michael Shermer. (Aberdeen U.K.: Hypatia Press, 2019, ISBN 978-1-83919-008-7). 564 pp. Softcover, $20.99. I’ll begin with a reminiscence, if only because I can. Years ago, after lecturing at a small university, I opened the floor to questions. A young man who seemed far too …

A.M.W.  1/7/1900–4/14/1993 My mother loved Elvis. Coming from Manhattan to Mashpee she’d pour a slug of Bailey’s Irish Cream and close the door to her room. Sounds of gospel rock and cigarette smoke let us know she’d settled in. My mother loved to dance but she married a man who loved gin rummy and schmoozing. …

I wish my mind were a Japanese room: light-filled, profound in its simplicity. Along its four walls, shelves of white oak with meticulous stacks of everything I ever knew arranged by times and subjects, open to the air, easily accessible. But my mind is a cavernous, old barn located in some remote place, filled with …

As the house got dark from our minds quiet as ever the walls had been we brought a body to a little town far from the south side of Chicago we laid him under trees and grass all my mother said was that if he knew he was laid to rest under the sun and …

Even in this time of COVID-19 and economic dislocation, of social unrest and climate threats, it pays to consider the farther future. Assuming that humanity survives our admittedly staggering short-term challenges, what might await us in the long run—a utopia of technological and cultural promise? A dystopia of ever-further crushed illusions? After decades of being …

Artificial Intelligence (AI) can be a misleading term. It is often misunderstood, at least by the general public. Robots or machines with advanced programs are already in use today, and in the future we will have much more advanced robots that will be able to perform many tasks. However, these are not the focus of …

Introduction Once upon a time, as a young researcher in the nascent field of artificial intelligence (AI), I was full of excitement and optimism. Sooner or later AI was going to be the secret sauce that would transform the world; discovering the recipe was my mission in life. But back then the idea of “thinking …

Not too long ago, humans believed that the stars determined their fate. Some still do. It was a belief born of naïveté, misunderstanding the nature of those diamonds in the night sky. But it was also a sign of our hubris, to presume that those lights in the firmament could have any interest in us. …

Simon Blackburn, Think Scott Cullen-Benson Before I can write about my pivot point, I must say a little about what came before. I was raised a Lutheran (in one of the more liberal synods) in a very small Midwestern town. My experiences were for the most part positive, because my mother emphasized the humanistic aspects …

The beheading of schoolteacher Samuel Paty by a Chechen-born teenager hit France particularly hard and, again, brought to the fore the long-running debate on “French values” and the place of Muslims in the French Republic. An attack several weeks later on a church in Nice, in which three people were killed, further inflamed tensions in …

On June 1, 2020, federal troops using tear gas and flash grenades cleared Washington, D.C., streets of Black Lives Matter protesters so that President Donald Trump could walk across the street to pose with a Bible. A clearer example of Christianity as the guiding ethos for White supremacy would be hard to come by. But …

L’Islam en Questions One work published before February 1989, when Khomeini’s fatwa on Rushdie was pronounced, deserves mention. In L’Islam en Questions (Grasset, 1986), twenty-four Arab writers reply to the following five questions: Does Islam retain its universal vocation? Could Islam be a system of government for a modern state? Is an Islamic system of …

I’ve watched every episode of the three seasons of Leah Remini: Scientology and the Aftermath (A&E). This deep dive into Scientology’s history, precepts, abuses, and the personal travails of its adherents is worth your time. It’s an object lesson in gullibility, groupthink, and “you’ve got to be kidding me” supplication. On the surface, Scientology is …

We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus—and nonbelievers. —Barack Obama, January 20, 2009 Like many Free Inquiry readers, I greeted President Joe Biden’s inauguration with elation and relief. At last, after a four-year reign of error that on January 6 recrudesced into a spasm of genuine terror, the nation faced the …

On January 20, on his blog Ask the Atheist, CFI Los Angeles Executive Director Jim Underdown was asked the following question: What did you think of the inauguration? Kind of godly, wasn’t it? William G., Wheaton, Illinois Here’s Underdown’s answer: (sigh) Look, overall, I thought it was great. The themes of unification, truth, resolve, equality—all …

Josh Lyman in The West Wing described Friday as “take out the trash day.” On Friday, the fictional White House would release as many of its bad news stories as possible in the knowledge that they would be reported in Saturday’s newspapers, because (so the thinking went) no one reads Saturday’s papers. For the past …

OK, we’re down. It was bumpy but we seem to be in one piece. Let’s take a deep breath and then check for damage. One big piece of good news right off the top: He didn’t launch the nukes. That was never a sure thing, and there were plenty of times when I, for one, …

Back during the Paleocene Epoch (we call it August/September 2020), in my FI column, I told you all to vote, dammit, because seculars have a long and sad history of voting at per capita rates way below those of theoconservatives. This is why the Republican minority has repeatedly won the presidency, houses of Congress, and …