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The term Enlightenment refers to a unique set of ideas and ideals that came to fru­ition in Europe in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. It began with Bacon, Descartes, Locke, and other philosophers who sought a universal method for establishing knowl­edge. They looked to science as the model for knowl­edge and debated whether reason or …

Free­ Market Humanism My friend Paul Kurtz states that “the free market is not a panacea for every social ill” (“The Free Market with a Human Face,” FI, February/March 2004). I dis­agree, respectfully. If it is grasped that “free market” means “an economic organization in which indi­vidual property rights are fully protected and never sacrificed,” …

When the Supreme Court, 5 to 4, declared the McCain­Feingold campaign finance reform legislation constitutional on December 10, there were hosannas from Common Cause, New York University’s Brennan Center for Justice, and other good­government enclaves. The Washington Post called it “one of [the Supreme Court’s] most important decisions in a generation.” The New York Times’ …

Eventually, the exclusion of gay people from the institution of civil marriage will seem as irrational and unjust as laws against interracial marriage; given the relative indifference of the young toward other people’s sexual orientations, time is on the side of gay rights. But, in the meantime, opposition to same­sex civil marriage seems a good …

This is the right historical moment to launch a national offensive against the degeneration of the United States into a theocracy. Pres­sures to subordinate democratic plural­ism to fundamentalist domination have converged into the presidency of George W. Bush. Bush identifies himself as a born­again Christian and continues to violate the Constitution by ladling out govern­ment …

Remember the Equal Rights Amendment to the U.S. Constitu­tion (presented to the states in 1972, declared dead in 1982)? If you’re like most Americans, you don’t remember it very well. In a survey by the Opinion Research Corporation, 72 percent of respondents said they believed the Constitution already gives men and women equal rights. It …

In the October/November 2003 Free Inquiry, Richard Dawkins and Daniel C. Dennett introduced our readers to the Brights movement. Reactions were published in the Letters and Op-ed sections of subsequent issues. Below, Brights’ founders Mynga Futrell and Paul Geisert, Free Inquiry Editor Tom Flynn, and Council for Secular Humanism Executive Director David Koepsell comment on …

If you need proof that the secular humanist and (for lack of a better term) religious humanist communi­ties have taken separate paths, consider Paul Geisert and Mynga Futrell’s pro­posal that humane nonreligious people call themselves “Brights.” In their guest editorial (see p. 20) they report that their idea is enjoying broad acceptance. There’s no reason …

SIDE/LINES Religion No Guarantee Against Reneging—Oklahoma’s KXOK Televison is taking a well-known area preacher to court for nonpayment on his program contract. Dr. Gene Scott and his University Network of California had agreed to purchase time for broadcasting programs for two years. Station owner Rex Faulkner says payments stopped after six months without notice. Faulkner …

The future of Islam has been a much-debated topic since September 11, 2001, which revealed what the most militant and fundamentalist followers of that religion are capable of. Many have argued that the faith should not be blamed for the actions of a few extremists. Others say that the hijackers merely carried out Islam’s teachings …

And We All Must Work To Make It Happen How should secular humanists deal with Islam? The answer is simple: we should oppose it, rebut it, critique it, and reject it. We should do this privately and publicly; we should do this for a fee, on a pro bono basis, and even if we must pay …

But It Will Also Be Transformed To ask whether Islam can come into the twenty-­first century is to ask whether Islam can be divorced from Islamic fundamentalism. Yet the root cause of Islamic fundamentalism is Islam itself. Poverty is not the root cause of Islamic fundamentalism.1 Modern Islamists are mostly middle­class young men who are …

Islam Is Blocking Progress What motivates so­called Islamic terrorism? Commonly cited factors include resurgent fun­damentalism, a sense of injustice due to the Palestinian situation, and discontent arising from the rela­tive social and economic deprivation experienced by Muslim countries, especially in the Arab world. The stark nature of these problems has been depicted recently in the …

Western Ways Will Lead To A Better Life Since shortly after September 11, 2001, President George W. Bush has been consistent in claiming that it is not Islam per se that hates Americans and targets us for destruction, but rather some renegade versions of that faith. In time it became an automatic refrain on the …

The Press Of The Past Was More Progressive Before I address the way today’s press does—or, more frequently, does not—incorporate a nonreligious perspective in its coverage of public issues, I would like to treat you to a sample of the kind of coverage that the “secularist perspective” received 125 years ago. On May 23, 1880, …

CHURCH, STATE, AND THE PLEDGECHURCH, STATE, AND THE PLEDGE And How It Has Changed The Supreme Court is now reviewing the Ninth Circuit Court’s decision to strike the phrase “under God” from the Pledge of Allegiance. If that phrase is removed, the Pledge would return to the form in which I memorized it in public …

The People Will Take Back The Pledge My dictionary defines sinecure as a job requir­ing little or no work, but in this article, I use the word to mean a position reached, often after years of effort, in which one has achieved a measure of sat­isfaction and the respect of others in a position of …

A View From The Pew A March 2003 cover story in The New York Times Magazine reminded us of the cen­trality in international affairs of our secular traditions.1 The article concerned Sayyid Quth, an Egyptian who has been called the philosopher of Al Qaeda. In assessing the basis for his deep, intense hostility toward the United …

The Style of Intellectual Celebrity No matter what one thought of the late Edward Said’s politics or the question of fibs in his autobiog­raphy, the Columbia literature profes­sor became an intellectual celebrity. He was a chaired academic who exploit­ed his minority moniker, in his case Arab American, to command larger stag­es than his classrooms, much …

Humans have believed for thou­sands of years in the immortal­ity of a personal soul. People in preliterate societies and those in societ­ies with highly articulate philosophers have cherished and defended the idea. Skeptics down the centuries have been a decided minority, with little that could serve as an effective counterargument until the sudden explosion of …

The most important church-state development of recent months, foreign or domestic, has been French President Jacques Chirac’s announcement of ambitious plans to limit the display of religious symbols throughout France’s public sector. In public schools, students would be barred from displaying conspicuous religious symbols, including headscarves, skullcaps, and large crosses. Neither public buildings nor civil …

As I told CNN’s Paula Zahn, French President Jacques Chirac’s initiative to ban conspicuous religious sym­bols in public schools and buildings is laudable if it can be applied equally to Muslims, Jews, and Christians.* We might avert disruptive religious conflicts in American life by following Chirac’s example, not that I expect it to occur. Secularism …

Has Science Found God? The Latest Results in the Search for Purpose in the Universe, by Victor J. Stenger (Amherst, N.Y.: Prometheus Books, 2003, ISBN 1-59102–018-2) 373 pp. Cloth $30. Peggy Lee once asked in song, “Is that all there is?” and expressed disappointment at the difference between observable reality in which humans often mate …

Bearing Right: How Conservatives Won the Abortion War, by William Saletan (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003, ISBN 0-520-08688-0) 327 pp. Cloth $29.95. The late 1980s saw a strategy change in the abortion rights movement. Talk of women’s rights, even the word abortion itself, largely gave way to a rhetoric of choice. NARAL—increasingly emphasizing its …

Serbia: The Democratic Revolution, by Svetozar Stojanovi´c (Amherst, N.Y.: Humanity Books, 2003, ISBN 1-59102-052-2) 264 pp. Cloth $24.50. Svetozar Stojanovi´c is more than just a distinguished professor of philosophy. Over a long career, he has been influential in Yugoslav and, more recently, Serbian politics. He was a senior member of the Praxis group, a group …

Nothing Sacred, by Tom Flynn (Amherst, N.Y.: Prometheus Books, 2004, ISBN 1-59102-127-8) 474 pp. Paper $20. When cubism, expressionism, and geometric abstraction emerged as the styles com­manding serious critical attention within the art world, lowly magazine illustra­tors and book­jacket artists unexpect­edly found themselves the guardians of representation. Once it became apparent that, thanks to the …

The Magdalene Sisters, directed by Peter Mullan (U.K.: Bórd Scannán na hE´ireann, 2002). The Magdalene Sisters follows the lives of four young Irish women: Rose (Dorothy Duffy) who, to her mother’s mortification, has just given birth to an illegitimate child; Margaret (Anne­Marie Duff), who is a rape victim; devout and slow­witted Crispina (Eileen Walsh); and …