Author: Ryan Shaffer

Everything you need to know about the religious crucible that is Bangladesh.

Bangladeshi atheists and secularists are under attack from their government and Muslim extremists. In the last year, several leading Bangladeshi secularists have been murdered.

Though he is now dead, the rationalist activist known as Periyar still influences social change in India.

Krishnasamy Veeramani is a lawyer turned social activist who fights for humanism in South India.

As Pakistan’s administration and social institutions have teetered toward collapse along its northwest border, extremists—and the Pakistani public—have encouraged the government to limit religious freedom and move away from secularism.

Sanal Edamaruku has been campaigning for critical thinking in India for more than three decades. As head of the Indian Rationalist Association, he travels throughout India showing how gurus or “godmen” perform supposedly science-defying miracles by means of simple stage magic. In a country where superstition is backed by poverty and illiteracy, rural Indians often …

I have been following faith healers for several years, fascinated by the psychology of those who attend and by the performances offered by the “healers.” Of particular interest has been Walter Vinson Grant Jr., who as W. V. Grant achieved worldwide fame in the 1980s and 1990s. During that rise to fame, skeptics looked into …