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Unbelief in Indian Civilization Ever since Alexander the Great and his men came into contact with her, India has figured in the Western imagination as a land of spirituality, gurus, mystics, and a thousand gods that adorn an even greater number of temples and shrines. Modern Indian thinkers have perpetuated the myth of Indian spirituality; …

In this feature, we continue the Freethought Trail’s celebration of the centenary of the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which established women’s right to vote. We present more of the new, site-specific pages devoted to annual suffrage conventions held in west-central New York State, the Trail’s territory. Nearly forty such pages …

There’s change, and then there’s change. As Free Inquiry’s previous issue (April/May 2020) went to press, most Americans were focused on the juddering conclusion of President Donald J. Trump’s impeachment, followed by the rapid winnowing of candidates for the Democratic presidential nomination. Readers of this magazine might have been discussing the toxic Christian nationalism in …

I am writing this piece at the end of March 2020 for publication in the June/July 2020 issue of Free Inquiry, which means a two-month pipeline between completion/filing and publication. Normally, that is a short time, even if it spans events that are highly consequential in one domain of life, such as the outcome of …

Sir Thomas Browne wrote in “Urn Burial”: “The long habit of living indisposeth us for dying.” It’s an aphorism I love, because it’s applicable to so much more than life and death. The long habit of (so many things) indisposeth us for (being unable to keep doing them). We love our habitual ways of doing …

We are at a pessimistic moment as the world faces the challenges and uncertainties posed by climate change and the coronavirus. The current crisis seems to provide a field day for purveyors of all types of irrationality, quackery, and superstition. With most places of religious worship in lockdown worldwide, the location for such ideas to …

Hi. My name is Virus. You can call me Crony. Lovely to meet you, but please do not expect any dialogue. Forgive me, but any communication between us will be a one-way street—from me to you. Talk to me if you must, but do not expect me to listen. You need to understand at the …

Author’s note: As I write, some of us turn to humor as a coping mechanism amid the horror that is the coronavirus pandemic. If by press time this piece lands poorly, I apologize in advance. If the coronavirus has claimed someone dear to you, you might want to skip this piece and read something better, …

The United States is not a democracy but rather an oligarchy in the classic sense of the term: rule of the rich in the interests of the rich. American ideals of equal liberty and equal opportunity have become a relic of the past. As economist Thomas Piketty has argued, inequality in the United States surpasses …

It’s not actually about saving little preborn babies. Back when this Republic was formed, the founders held absolutely no discussion about women’s reproductive rights. The all-male, largely Protestant and deist team that wrote up the Constitution would not have imagined addressing what they considered to be mere women’s affairs. The female sex quietly did what …

Secular celebrants are now permitted to officiate and solemnize marriages in Michigan, after state’s attorney general Dana Nessel reversed the government’s opposition to a lawsuit brought by the Center for Inquiry (CFI). Promising that the state considers CFI-trained and certified Secular Celebrants covered by existing statutes regarding marriage solemnization, the presiding federal court brought the …

Barbara Smoker (1923–2020), one of Britain’s most colorful and prolific voices for atheism and humanism, died in early April. She was the second-longest-serving president of the National Secular Society, an atheist organization; chair of an influential euthanasia society; a vice chair of Humanists UK, the country’s national humanist organization; and the author of a popular …

Mario Bunge passed away in the loving company of his wife, Marta, and children, Eric and Silvia, on February 24, 2020, in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. Bunge was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, on September 21, 1919. He studied physics and mathematics as an undergraduate at the Universidad Nacional de La Plata and founded a Workers …

35 Years Ago in Free Inquiry “The campaign against the public schools has intensified in recent years … vigilante groups seek to censor what is being taught in the schools and rid them of the influence of secular humanism. The new law [the Education for Economic Security Act of 1984] and the rule [regulations proposed …

Overall I’ve read every issue of Free Inquiry from Vol. 1, No. 1 right through to the present. I write today because I find the February/March 2020 issue (Vol. 40, No. 2) to be a particularly strong one, perhaps the strongest ever. Thank you for that. James A. Haught’s “Nobody Dares Say It” op-ed was …

In the midst of the coronavirus pandemic, we are being inundated by analyses and speculation about its effects on the world economy, political campaigning, democratic norms, civil liberties, social solidarity, the viability of regimes of fragile states, ongoing armed conflicts, camps of refugees and displaced persons, business practices, income inequality, provision of safety nets, the …

Among the myriad creatures that inhabit the earth, human beings are, according to prevailing religious opinion, unique for one special reason: they have been endowed by their creator with a soul, an immanent part of human reality that cannot be seen—or, indeed, verified—in any way apart from those same doctrinal precepts that have ordained and …

In his 2012 memoir Joseph Anton, Salman Rushdie, borrowing the words of Saul Bellow, posited that the writer’s task is to “open the universe a little more.” This has always struck me as beautiful and true as well as simple. It would also do as a nice description of the scientist’s job. Herein lies that …

In the Wall Street Journal’s July 8, 2019, announcement of his new Commission on Unalienable Rights, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo stated, “America’s Founders defined unalienable rights as including ‘life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.’ They designed the Constitution to protect individual dignity and freedom. A moral foreign policy should be grounded in …

Religion and Development in the Global South, by Rumy Hasan (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017, ISBN 978-3-319-57062-4). 225 pp. Hardcover, $109.99.   I agreed to review this book believing that Rumy Hasan had found and compiled compelling evidence that religion slows socio-economic development (that is how the book is described in promotional materials). The idea that …

Secularity and Science: What Scientists around the World Really Think about Religion, by Elaine Howard Ecklund, David R. Johnson, Brandon Vaidyanathan, Kirstin R. W. Matthews, Steven W. Lewis, Robert A. Thomson Jr., and Di Di (New York, Oxford University Press, 2019, ISBN 9780190926755). 352 pp. Hardcover, $29.95.   Elaine Howard Ecklund is a sociology professor …

What is the secret of such inwardness? She’s disappeared into herself again skating across the ice of consciousness her movements indistinguishable from pain. Is this my mother or the Virgin Mary? I do not recognize this pious poise seated at the bed’s edge, solitary, indifferent to the tenor of my voice. She mumbles in an …

The swifts flock, swooping clouds, And string together on telephone wires. White breasts, black wings: they fly At the time of leaving when leaves turn, And they turn southwards and cry. The egrets assemble on the mill pond, On overhanging branches in twilight. White necks, black knees: they soar When the time comes, above trees, …

In its February/March 2018 issue, Free Inquiry presented a symposium by authors defending—and opposing—the Christ-myth theory: the contention that Jesus of Nazareth never existed in history and should be regarded as mythical. In the introduction to that feature, I wrote: Was there a historical Jesus of Nazareth? Or is he best understood as, pardon the …

Reassessing the Mythical Jesus Symposium The “mini-symposium” in the February/March 2018 issue of Free Inquiry attempted to put to rest the debate between those who contend that Jesus was a man and those who insist he was a myth. This argument was precipitated by Senior Editor Bill Cooke’s articles “Why Secular Humanists Should Abandon the …

Although I have fished in many places, I have always avoided the murky waters of biblical interpretation. Nevertheless, after reading yet another rendition of John 21—the verse about Peter’s boat fishing all night without success and Jesus’s “miraculously” filling its nets with 153 fish—I feel compelled to raise some issues. First, let’s talk fishing facts, …

Irrespective of one’s experience as a law enforcement officer, it was my police department’s policy to have interested parties apply, test, and interview for specialized positions within the agency. At what turned out to be the midpoint of my career, I decided to submit my name for the tactical response team, our version of SWAT. …

Enforced religion stole a large chunk of my life. This is precious time that I will never get back because a religion was forced on me, scarring my childhood in the process. At five years old, I was forced to attend Qur’an classes where I was taught stories about messengers of God who slaughtered their …

At the end of 2018, a majority of Ireland’s population voted to remove the country’s blasphemy law from its constitution. The debate around the issue provided a very public reminder that such laws still exist in Europe. According to a 2017 report by the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF), seventy-one countries have blasphemy …

Christian Theological Background Christian theologians from Catholic and mainstream Protestant traditions have addressed the subject of ethical responsibility toward animals since the Middle Ages. Although he was not the first, Saint Francis of Assisi (1182–1226) is the best-known patron saint of animals. For those interested, an excellent review of the role of animals in Christian …

The following is adapted from Clay Farris Naff’s remarks when invited to speak on atheism at a liberal church in the city where he lives on November 3, 2019. —Eds. Thanks. I’m here in a private capacity to share my views, and the first that I want to share is my great respect for First-Plymouth …

In this feature, we continue the Freethought Trail’s celebration of the centenary of the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which established women’s right to vote. The Trail is for anyone who wants to learn more about often-obscure radical reform history. But it’s especially for history buffs who yearn to visit the …

President Trump’s personal appearance at the so-called March for Life, the first by a sitting president, solidified what has been apparent since his inauguration: Trump sees eliminating all daylight between himself and the religious Right as his best path to retaining power. “Unborn children have never had a stronger defender in the White House,” Trump …

In this op-ed, I set aside my secular humanist hat. Today I write as a journalist and a concerned user of the English language. My opinions are my own. A growing movement seeks to repurpose the third-person plural personal pronouns they and them as singular (more accurately, number-agnostic). The goal behind it is laudable: to …

Since the rise of a recognizably modern form of science early in the seventeenth century—associated above all with Galileo—science has emerged as “our most authoritative source of knowledge about the natural world” (Heather E. Douglas, whose work partly inspired this column) within which I include knowledge of a general kind about ourselves. Almost everyone agrees …

The spineless corruption of the current Republican Party has led many liberals and Democrats to romanticize the good old days when the GOP was dominated by neoconservatives. Democrats picture the neoconservatives as men of principle, conviction, and intellect—patriots who cared about their country, unlike the pathetic crop of cowards eager to curry favor with a …

In his 1985 book Amusing Ourselves to Death, Neil Postman wrote that of the two great twentieth-century dystopian warnings, it wasn’t Orwell’s Stalinist Big Brother we had to worry about so much as the seductions of Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World: What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that …

It being 2020, this is the year to celebrate the decade that began to radically alter western societies toward the modern, highly secularized nations rich in personal liberties that we—despite constant challenges from the patriarchal, paternalistic religious Right—enjoy today: the 1920s. Think about it. In 1910, the religious Right pretty much owned this nation and …

The wide array of current religions, plus the many that died in the past, are impossible to count. As a blind guess, I estimate the grand total at perhaps 50,000. Alongside major world faiths are hundreds of branches and thousands of small sects, cults, and tribal folk groups in Africa, Asia, and elsewhere. “There are …

“The political changes since [the overthrow of Poland’s Communist regime in] 1989 have not raised living standards for the majority of people, nor led to improvements in the state of education … . The increasingly strong position of the Catholic church—despite the change of political parties in government—may lead to the formation of a religious …