Author: R. Georges Delamontagne
“R. Georges Delamontagne” is the nom de plume of a retired university president and professor of sociology whose interests include religion and society, secular humanism, social inequality, political economy, and hate groups. How “High Religiosity and Societal Dysfunction in the United States During the First Decade of the Twenty-First Century” was published in Evolutionary Psychology (2010). Other recent publications have appeared in the Journal of Religion and Society (2010) and Free Inquiry (Winter 2008/2009).
The Unholy Trinity: Existential Insecurity, Extreme Religiosity, and Manifest Hate
Despite overwhelming historical and contemporary evidence providing testimony to the incendiary role of hatred in igniting fires of violence, murder, war, ethnic cleansing, genocide, and terrorism–to say nothing of demagoguery and political gridlock–relatively little sociological research has been conducted to date on the subject of hate as such. Sociologists, myself included, have studied hate as …
Overgeneralization: The Achilles Heel of Apocalyptic Atheism?
Theory without data is myth: data without theory is madness. —Phil Zuckerman Since my emancipatory introduction to secular humanism through Free Inquiry about eight years ago, I have immersed myself in the literature, having read authors from A (Bob Avakian’s Away with All Gods!) through Z (Phil Zuckerman’s Atheism and Secularity and Society Without …
The Ten Commandments of Evangelical Capitalism
A Challenge to the Fairness Principle of Secular Humanism In “The Principles of Fairness: Progressive Taxation” (Free Inquiry, October/November 2006) Paul Kurtz presented the most convincing ethical argument I have ever read in opposition to current U.S. government income and wealth tax-policies, both of which are becoming increasingly regressive. As a professional sociologist (now retired), …