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Why I Became an Atheist: A Former Preacher Rejects Christianity, by John W. Loftus (Amherst, N.Y.: Prometheus Books, 2008, ISBN 978-1-59102-592-4) 428 pp. Paper $19.95. John W. Loftus was a Church of Christ minister among whose mentors was William Lane Craig, America’s best-known Christian apologist debater. For years, Loftus specialized in marshaling rational argumentation to …

W.E.B. Du Bois: Toward Agnosticism 1868–1934, by Brian L. Johnson (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2008, ISBN 13: 978-0-7425-6449-7) 141 pp. Cloth $65.00. W. E.B. Du Bois was one of the most important intellectuals and activists of the twentieth century. He helped establish the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and served as …

The Death of Conservatism, by Sam Tanenhaus (New York: Random House, 2009, ISBN 978-1-4000-6884-5) 123 pp. Cloth $17.00. In The Death of Conservatism, Sam Tanenhaus, editor of The New York Times Book Review and the Times’ “Week in Review” section, has given us a useful analysis of the evolution of the conservative movement in the …

In our previous issue, we announced the second in our series of thirtieth-anniversary-year contests, “Why I Am Not A . . . ” We asked readers, “If you came to secular humanism from another tradition . . . what did you formerly believe? How was it taught to you? What made you change?” The editors …

I. Le Jongleur Order and balance provide the paths to chaos, Repeatedly tying pretzel knots in the air. Manual motions produce the cascade, rising And falling in the Ouroboros flights of spheres. The Juggler founds these oscillations, prime mover Of a universe spun separate from our own. Its bodies move by order of his will …

The sea of faith Was once, too, at the full, and round Earth’s shore Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled But now I only hear Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar, Retreating. . . . — Matthew Arnold, “Dover Beach” A historic transition is occurring, barely noticed. Slowly, quietly, imperceptibly, religion is shriveling …

To believers in God, our universe must look like it is a product of intelligence. Sometimes this leads to varieties of creationism, as in the current intelligent-design movement. But advocates of divine design need not object to evolution. They can argue that intelligence manifests itself at a deeper level. Some say that we live in …

In the third and final part of this series, Lisa Bauer explains how the combination of her devotion to Islam and certain characteristics of her personality almost destroyed her. —Eds. Countless commentators have offered general reasons for objecting to Islam—it’s misogynistic, medieval, theocratic, and so on. I agree, and one can read innumerable critiques along …

Shortly before Valentine’s Day 2009, a devout Hindu group known as Lord Ram’s Army invaded a bar in Mangalore in India’s Karnataka State and proceeded to drag women out by their hair and beat them up for the sin of flirtatiousness. “We are the citizens of this nation,” said the group’s founder, “and I feel …

Does humanist eupraxsophy* offer any hope for humankind? For many people this is the ultimate test of the secular outlook. For theists, the single most important hope is theism’s promise of eternal salvation. The term religion in its original etymological sense meant religäre or “to bind.” This referred to a state of life bound by …

True Believers In “The ‘True Believer’” Paul Kurtz (FI, December 2009/January 2010) points to the fact that many atheists can be as fanatical as their religious counterparts. Labeling myself an atheist, I have during conversations with other nonbelievers been accused of not being respectful of the religious beliefs of others. I have to admit that …

Chris Mooney is the best-selling author of The Republican War on Science and a number of other books, including Unscientific America: How Scientific Illiteracy Threatens Our Future. He is a Knight Science Journalism Fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Arguing that the New Atheists polarize the discourse about the proper role of science in …

In 1989, I attended a Free Inquiry conference at American University in Washington, D.C. It was the first time I had attended a major gathering of humanists. I was surprised to find that I was the only African American there, although I spotted a couple of East Indians. I thought this was odd, because humanism, …

Council Wins Interim Victory in Church-State Suit The Council for Secular Humanism has won an appeal in its landmark case challenging the use of Florida taxpayer dollars to fund faith-based programs. The particular programs at issue are substance-abuse transitional housing programs administered by the Florida Department of Corrections. The Council alleges that the faith-based component …

As I write, the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Washington, D.C., is threatening to suspend adoption, homeless-shelter, and health-care related services to some sixty-eight thousand beneficiaries, including about a third of the metro area’s homeless population. Why all the drama? A proposed local same-sex marriage law, partway through the process of enactment, would compel Catholic Charities …

A majority of Americans profess respect for science, according to a recent Pew Forum report: 84 percent of people surveyed agree that “science’s effect on society” is “mostly positive.” That’s a finding likely to be met with skepticism by many secularists, who blame religion for what they believe is widespread hostility to science. Considering religion’s …

The Code of Ethics of the American Nursing Association contains some stirring language when it comes to you and me. Provision 2.1 of the Code, entitled “Primacy of Patient’s Interests,” states unequivocally that the nurse’s “primary commitment is to the recipient of nursing and healthcare services.” The American Medical Association and other medical groups invoke …

Toward the end of a recent debate between myself and a believing Presbyterian fundamentalist, my opponent offered the following poem from C.S. Lewis: Lead us, Evolution, lead us Up the future’s endless stair; Chop us, change us, prod us, weed us For stagnation is despair: Groping, guessing, yet progressing, Lead us nobody knows where. The …

Years ago, while on the education beat, I was in the office of Tony Alvarado, then head of the New York City school system. The standardized test scores on reading had just come in, and they were collectively higher. But Alvarado looked glum. “When,” he asked me, “are we going to teach them how to …

The story goes like this: a woman wants a healthy, attractive baby, so she finds a man with the proper specifications and takes him home. The man, perhaps sensing his paramour’s ulterior motive, insists upon an alternative (read, oral) method of sexual congress in order to protect himself from undesired fatherhood. After the man completes …

Faith-Based Programs George W. Bush’s signature faith-based initiative providing public funds to religious and community organizations remains popular, according to a report released November 16 by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life. Based on polls by Princeton Survey Research Associates, the report (available online) is complicated but does admit to some generalizations. Sixty-nine …

Stephen Crane (1871–1900) was a literary prodigy. As a nineteen-year-old freshman at Syracuse University, he drafted the seminal novel Maggie: A Girl of the Streets. This gritty, unsentimental portrait of Bowery lowlifes initiated modern American fiction. It was the first native specimen of literary naturalism. Crane said of the novel: “I tried to make plain …

In my home state of New Mexico, most people are familiar with descansos, roadside memorials that dot the roads and highways. The word descanso comes from the Spanish word meaning “to rest” (as in a resting place, either a final one for a deceased person or a temporary one for pallbearers making their way to …

Modern science has been around for about four centuries, gradually revealing to us how insignificant our place in nature truly is. Each epochal discovery in fields from astronomy to biology has been a great shock to our cozy little worldview. However, the scientific facts also indicate that we are very special in the universe. Science …

  Endorsement [of religion] sends a message to nonadherents that they are outsiders, not full members of the political community, and an accompanying messa ge to adherents that they are insiders, favored members of the political community. —Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, Lynch v. Donnelly (1984) At the close of his second term, during a special …

In the previous issue of Free Inquiry, I began my report on a conference, “The Qur’an in Its Historical Context,” held at the University of Notre Dame in April 2009. That conference featured, among others, the controversial scholar Christoph Luxenberg (a pseudonym). I noted that the papers offered by many of the presenters were exciting …

In our previous issue, we announced a contest, “FI and Me.” We asked readers, “What is your story about how Free Inquiry touched your life . . . or that of someone you know very well?” The editors are pleased to announce the winning entries. Becca Challman of Georgetown, Delaware, won the grand prize. She …

Bright-sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America, by Barbara Ehrenreich (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2009, ISBN 978-0-8050-8749-9) 256 pp. Cloth $23.00. Barbara Ehrenreich dedicates her latest book, Bright-sided, “To complainers everywhere,” entreating them to “Turn up the volume!” But the book that follows this emphatic call to arms is far from …

Good without God: What a Billion Nonreligious People Do Believe, by Greg M. Epstein (New York: HarperCollins, 2009, ISBN 978-0-06-167011-4) 250 pp. Cloth $25.99. Nonreligious Americans divide into multiple tribes that sometimes overlap yet are undeniably distinct. By their spokespeople we may know them: atheists have seldom wanted for charismatic authors. Madalyn Murray O’Hair was …

The Family—The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power, by Jeff Sharlet (New York: Harper Perennial Press, 2009, ISBN 978-0-06-56005-8) 387 pp. Paper $15.95. “The Fami ly” of the title of this book is not an organization familiar to most Americans, and its almost invisible presence (outside of political power circles) makes assessing its …

36 Arguments for the Existence of God: A Work of Fiction, by Rebecca Newberger Goldstein (New York: Random House, 2010, ISBN 978-0-307-3-37890-x) 400 pp. Cloth $27.95. There’s an old joke about two behaviorist psychologists in bed. After sex, one turns to the other and asks, “Was it as good for me as it was for …

The Animals, All the Animals At ground zero, of course, there is nothing to report. It’s out beyond the epicenter where the changes are describable: cats seared like suckling pigs, dogs that will never chase cats again, barbecued like chickens on their chains. The cities are all alike: nothing to report. On the farms, horses …

Imagine that you are a teacher of Roman history and the Latin language, anxious to impart your enthusiasm for the ancient world—for the elegiacs of Ovid and the odes of Horace, the si newy economy of Latin grammar as exhibited in the oratory of Cicero, the strategic niceties of the Punic Wars, the generalship of …

The Branches of Orthodox Judaism Non-Jews, and even most Jews, use the term Jew to denote ethnicity, not religion. An ethnic Jew can thus have no religious orientation or can even practice Buddhism or Wicca. Leaving aside “cultural Jews,” who practice no discernible religion, almost 90 percent of organized Jewish religion falls under the Reform …

The alarm clock awakens me with its annoying buzz. Half-consciously, I smash down the snooze button. I peep out at the time: 5:32 A.M. I really must get up and shower. Then I can do my wudu’ (ritual ablutions) and pray before the time for fajr (the dawn prayer) expires at sunrise, which according to …

  The breakdown of the world’s ecology is causing a shift in environmental sensibilities tantamount to a second Copernican revolution. . . . In the second Copernican revolution we may be forced to abandon the even more self-aggrandizing belief that we are the center of the moral universe and have a special, privileged status in …

Do fundamentalist theists have their atheist counterparts? Alistair McGrath, a Christian theologian, used the word fundamentalist to describe certain kinds of atheists. A fundamentalist is a person who is committed to a set of basic beliefs or doctrines with dogmatic and inflexible loyalty. The word originally applied to Protestant fundamentalists who interpreted the Bible literally …

With this issue (Volume 30, No. 1), Free Inquiry unveils a new design as the Council for Secular Humanism enters into its thirtieth anniversary year. Each issue in this volume will include one or two small features celebrating the anniversary, the observance of which will culminate in the thirtieth anniversary conference, “Setting the Agenda: Secular …

It’s unlikely that we will ever know how many people were wrongly and summarily imprisoned, tortured, or otherwise abused in the aftermath of 9/11, but we do know that illegalities were systemic. A report by the Justice Department’s inspector general released back in 2003 documented the wrongful, abusive, extended detention of immigrants (often on minor …

Progressive Humanism Re “Two and a Half Cheers for Progressive Humanism” by Paul Kurtz (FI, October/November 2009): Humanists ought to have plenty to say about the economic order, as it affects everyone’shealth, wealth,and happiness. I dare say that most readers of this magazine are capitalists, exploiting what we are given and able to create in …