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Humanists who read magazines such as this one might be puzzled by the existence of something called “posthumanism,” sometimes called “critical posthumanism,” and by its hostility toward what posthumanists call “humanism.” So, why do posthumanists have a beef with whatever they understand humanism to be? Posthumanism is grounded in traditions of continental philosophy that have …

Why did supernatural religion decline rapidly in western democracies, especially in America, in the past quarter-century? Many sociologists attribute the transformation to prosperity, good health, and the governmental safety net. Affluent, secure, comfortable people have less urge to seek divine help, they contend. In contrast, religion remains strong in poor, unhealthy, less-developed places where life …

35 Years Ago in Free Inquiry “What should a nontheist do when asked to swear in a courtroom? In the case of jury duty, there is an implied religious test. The option (to affirm, and without a Bible) is there by law; but it is not mentioned, and to ask for it makes one a …

General The question “Do you believe in God?” is absurd, because it presupposes an existence. The correct question is “Do you believe there is a god?” In addition, ask these “pro-life” women with children how many admissions they paid, when pregnant, every time they went to a movie, concert, sporting event, or museum. Only one? …

Since its “rediscovery” in recent decades, Yeaster has become one of the most popular and fastest-growing holidays in the world. It is recognized by national holiday commissions in eighty-seven countries on eleven continents, and under consideration in many others. Why all the fuss over Yeaster? Because it is a celebration of yeast, perhaps the most …

Humankind: A Hopeful History, by Rutger Bregman. (New York: Little Brown, 2020, ISBN: 978-0-316-41853-9). 461 pp. Hardcover, $30.00. Rutger Bregman’s Humankind: A Hopeful History was just released in June, and already it’s being compared to Yuval Harari’s Sapiens.[1] Like Sapiens, it will enrich your understanding of the human animal. Like Sapiens, it’s a work of …

There’s this thing deeply religious people do that always leaves me at a loss. Their basic approach to any mystery that confronts them—and mystery here can mean anything from well-known facts that they as individuals somehow failed to pick up to the complex unknowns of the larger universe—is “If I can’t explain it, if you …

The term Homo sapiens was coined by the Swedish naturalist and physician Carl Linnaeus around 1758. The word Homo of course means human. The word sapiens is usually translated as intelligent or wise. If one is comparing humans to chimpanzees or lemurs, maybe the term sapiens is appropriate, relatively speaking. However, the term was coined …

In various religious traditions, adherents have sought heightened states through experiences termed ecstasies. In the ancient Greek Dionysian mysteries, for instance, initiates employed intoxicants and intense dancing to achieve an ecstatic state. Today’s charismatic Christians practice “being slain in the spirit” whereby they may speak in tongues or engage in other unusual behaviors. In Roman …

The Animals Question Sam Bellotto Jr. Many decades ago when I was a child in grade school, my parents colluded with the local Catholic diocese to make sure I attended religious indoctrination classes regularly. They referred to them as religious instruction classes. It was a struggle. Every Tuesday afternoon, we Catholic kids got excused from …

I Put My Life on the Line Margaret Neate In the 1930s in my country town in Australia, most families professed allegiance to one of the several Protestant churches or the Catholic one. I attended the state primary school, where each class heard Bible stories once a week. We were not taught about non-Christian religions …

From Mennonite to Atheist Gordon Martin I was born in 1943 to a Mennonite farm family in Waterloo County, Ontario, home to Canada’s biggest concentration of Mennonites, who moved from Pennsylvania in the mid-1800s. I was third in line after a brother who died at five months old. I remember from very early on being …

The Reality of Pain Jerry D. Mackey In a small Baptist church in a small East Texas town, my three brothers, one sister, and our spouses sat with my mother in a pew near the front. My father had died of a massive heart attack a little over a year before, and the family had …

A Theological Radical Paul Heffron I describe my pivot point in my piece in Free Inquiry, “My Theological Quest Ended in Secular Humanism” (FI February/March 2018), an installment in the “Faith I Left Behind” column. Studying radical theological trends led to a pivotal moment in which I said over and over, “God ain’t doing a …

Atheism and Freethought in the Twentieth Century The Impact of Western Ideas The impact of modern, scientific ideas of the West in Iran in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was immediate and changed the outlook of the intellectuals dramatically, and often resulted in a rejection of Islam: in anti-clericalism, agnosticism, Westernism, anti-imperialism, glorification …

Evolution and Progress Are Not Synonyms As a result of our instinctive exceptionalist inclinations, we have long misinterpreted Charles Darwin. One of the most telling illustrations of this is our tendency to conflate evolution and progress. From religious literalism and creationist thinking to the more secular minds of scientists and atheists, most of us think …

Perhaps the earliest Greek mathematician who was fascinated by numbers was Pythagoras of Samos (circa 525 BCE). He was a highly eccentric man who started his own school in Croton in southern Italy and went on to become essentially a cult leader. He insisted that his students devote themselves not only to mathematics but also …

As I write this, President-Elect Joe Biden has not received his first White House security briefing. When you read these words, Biden will be the president—which will leave many atheists, agnostics, secular humanists, and freethinkers little short of ecstatic. But not so fast. For all that a Biden administration will mark a huge step toward …

For all the damage Donald Trump has done, he achieved something no one else has. He exposed for all time what many strongly suspected but had limited evidence of—the deep, cynical depravity of theism, especially of the right-wing flavor. For millennia, theists have claimed (without verification) that worshipping a righteous deity is necessary to give …

Our elation at the humiliating defeat of Donald Trump is tempered by our disgust at the contemptible and hypocritical appointment of the extreme Catholic Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court by the Republican-controlled Senate, only weeks before the election. During the theater of the absurd that passed for confirmation hearings, Democrats missed the opportunity …

I’m intrigued by Zen meditation as a supposed path to enlightenment. I’ve tried repeatedly—lying silent in bed, blanking out my mind, hearing nothing but the rhythm of my breathing, seeing nothing but dark blurs behind my eyelids. But all it does is put me to sleep. In the end, I never get a smidgen of …

For those unfamiliar with The Babylon Bee, the website bills itself as “the trusted news source for Christian satire.” During my twelve-year tenure with The Wittenburg Door, a now-defunct national religious satire magazine, I learned from my editor, Robert Darden, that the role of a religious satirist is to hold a mirror to the institutional …

35 Years Ago in Free Inquiry   “Secular humanism is distinct from religious humanism. Is there not a right to freedom of conscience and freedom from religion for those who insist upon it, without being accused of being covertly religious? Surely one who is indifferent to or neutral about religion, or nonreligious or even anti-religious, …

Created Equal As should be well known to avid readers of FI, I am a secular humanist who holds the opinion that the philosophy of secular humanism is not equivalent to that of modern political Leftism. I take umbrage at supporters of modern political Leftism who hijack the enlightening philosophy of secular humanism and automatically …

Trigger warning: I am about to admit to a misdeed. I hope it doesn’t come as too much of a shock. After all, I humbly acknowledge how easily and reasonably one could mistake me for perfection personified. It happens all the time. The fact is, I once committed an act so hideously immoral that, even …

In July, I spoke at a debate hosted by the Black Ed movement, a group that seeks racial justice at the University of Edinburgh (Scotland). The debate concerned a petition created by my fellow student Elizabeth Lund asking to rename a university building called David Hume Tower.1 David Hume was found by Lund to be …

Witcraft: The Investigation of Philosophy in English, by Jonathan Rée (United Kingdom: Penguin, 2019, ISBN: 978-0300247367). 726+ xii pp. Hardcover, $37.50.   Jonathan Rée’s book Witcraft: The Investigation of Philosophy in English has as its scope “philosophy in English.” But this is not to say that Rée confines himself to distinctly English traditions. When discussing …

Blip: Humanity’s 300 Year Self-Terminating Experiment with Industrialism, by Christopher O. Clugston. (Booklocker.com, 2019, ISBN 978-1644380680). 392 pp. Softcover, $19.95.   Free Inquiry prefers to review books from major publishers. Now and again, we make an exception. Readers who recall my review of The Uninhabitable Earth: Life after Warming by David Wallace-Wells (October/November 2019) know …

                          Defendit numerus   Though we cannot be sure how Archimedes died, it’s rarely debated:a Roman soldier cast a shadow on the old man’s sand diagram andwhen he asked the soldier to move, the latter ran him through with a sword. Or the …

1. nothing … nothing ever … swear to god … nothing … nothing ever 2. & nothing … & nothing ever … & pray to gods … & nothing … & nothing ever 3. nothing … ever … & … nothing

Justice Neil Gorsuch made the right decision in Bostock v. Clayton County in which he applied the civil rights act to prohibit discrimination against LGBTQ citizens. He just did so for the wrong reasons. Liberals, Democrats, and I rejoiced at the Supreme Court decision in Bostock v. Clayton County,written by Justice Neil Gorsuch, declaring that …

We continue presenting readers’ “Pivot Point” essays—brief recountings of the exact moment when the scales fell from each reader’s eyes and he or she realized that his or her childhood religion was bankrupt. More Pivot Points commentaries will appear in the February/March 2021 and April/May 2021 issues. Reader submissions fell into ten broad categories that …

On the Run Edmund Smith The first important event that started me off on the right path was when my mother, in her bedroom at home, passed away from a long bout with cancer. I was nine and did not know she was dying. My little brother, sister, and I were only allowed to visit …

The Truth in Embryo Mel Gabel The first thing you need to know is that I’m a PK (preacher’s kid). My father was the minister of United Brethren churches in small towns in eastern Colorado. My father firmly believed in the inerrancy of the Bible, and he was most certainly a fundamentalist. In 1945 (I …

In July 2015, a group of Black Unitarian Universalists met at the Movement for Black Lives Convening1 in Cleveland, Ohio, and formed a new organization: The Black Lives of Unitarian Universalism Organizing Collective (Black Lives UU, or BLUU).2 While this group, which included Leslie Mac and Lena Gardner, both activists in the Movement for Black …

We want to be here. We want to be here long term, and we want it to be beautiful. Beginning with an honest appraisal of precisely who and what we are, we can make that happen. For millennia, our cultural origin stories have served as the familiar foundations for our overall self-conception. From Abraham to …

Two ancient books, coming down the ages from over two millennia ago, are generally credited as the most well-read books of all time. The first book, the Bible (composed of the older Jewish testament and the newer Christian testament)—claimed by its adherents to be the “word of the one true God”—was written by a multitude …

In this feature, we conclude the Freethought Trail’s celebration of the seventeen sites in west-central New York State where nineteenth-century orator Robert Green Ingersoll delivered a lecture. Reactivation of the online Ingersoll Chronology (https://chronology.secularhumanism.org/) made it possible to identify every venue in the region at which Ingersoll was known to have spoken. Hornellsville/Shattuck Opera House …

The separation of church and state requires a government to be neutral in matters of religion. Such a government does not enact laws that are either overtly or historically traceable to concepts grounded only in religious beliefs, without any independent empirical verification. For those of us who are devoted to attaining this legal ideal, Justice …

For religion, it started going south in 2007. That was the year when the United States began joining the rest of the world’s high-income countries in rejecting the whole god-worshipping enterprise. (And it was about damn time!) “From 1981 to 2007, the United States ranked as one of the world’s more religious countries, with religiosity …