Author: Tom Flynn

What’s better than stirring up a bitter controversy with one of these editorials? Stirring up two bitter controversies, of course. White House Errs with ‘Interfaith Service Challenge’ In March, the White House Office of Faith-based and Neighborhood Partnerships announced the President’s Interfaith and Community Service Campus Challenge. This initiative encourages colleges and universities to design …

The Unbelievers: The Evolution of Modern Atheism, by S.T. Joshi (Amherst, N.Y.: Prometheus Books, 2011, ISBN 978-1-61614-236-0) 300 pp. Paper, $19. Since the Four (or, depending how you count, Five) Horsemen burst onto the best-seller lists, starting with Sam Harris’s The End of Faith (2004), it has seemed that everyone is talking about atheism. How …

In its October/November 2007 issue, Free Inquiry published a special section titled “Dealing with Dying.” Nineteen articles, most of them personal accounts by FI subscribers, explored various aspects of death and dying from the viewpoints of loved ones, sufferers, and a few who had cheated death. Response to the feature was overwhelming; in a departure …

On the day the 112th Congress was seated, the Pew Research Center’s Forum on Religion and Public Life reported on its religious composition. Pew’s press release reported that “the 112th Congress, like the U.S. public, is majority Protestant and about a quarter Catholic. Baptists and Methodists are the largest Protestant denominations in the new Congress, …

Investigating Christian Privilege and Religious Oppression in the United States, edited by Warren J. Blumenfeld, Khyati Y. Joshi, and Ellen E. Fairchild (Rotterdam/Taipei: Sense Publishers, 2009, I SBN 978-90-8790-677-1 [cloth], 978-90-8790-676-4 [paper]). 184 pp. Cloth $99; paper $39. Remember consciousness-raising? Dismissing it as a trapping of the 1960s is too glib. It is the tool …

In the October/November 2010 issue, I offered a one-word definition of secular humanism-I suggested that it was emancipatory-and I challenged readers to offer their own one-word completion of the sentence “Secular humanism is…” backed by a brief essay setting forth the rationale. Not everyone embraced the challenge. An e-mail correspondent we know only as Transient …

It is the worst of times, it is the best of times-sometimes Dickensian clichés seem inescapable, even if Dickens gets slightly mangled along the way. The closing months of 2010 brought us one of the more heartbreaking church-state losses in recent memory, one whose full ghastliness secularists may need a long-term historical perspective in order …

It’s probably old news by now, but as I write this, the one-man assault on Discovery Channel’s Maryland headquarters that ended in the killing by police of hostage-taker James Lee is literally yesterday’s news. It is a story rich in inconvenient truths, starting with the uncomfortable fact that Lee was apparently a Friend, or local …

Christmas—Philosophy for Everyone: Better Than a Lump of Coal, edited by Scott C. Lowe (Chichester, UK: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010, ISBN 1-4443-3090-8) 352 pp. Paper $19.95. Philosophy for Everyone is an Anglo-American book series “meant to promote philosophical reflection on everyday activities.” Series editor Fritz Allhoff has assembled nontechnical but incisive volumes on topics including beer, wine, …

Secular humanism has a long, proud history as a champion of the human rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) persons. As Ronald A. Lindsay notes in his introductory article, in the West the focus of that activism has shifted over decades from protecting the mere legality of homosexual behavior to fighting for—and often …

Center for Inquiry CEO Ronald A. Lindsay and I will be taking turns in the magazine’s lead editorial slot. (His editorial “Expressing One’s Views on Religion” appeared in the August/September 2010 issue.) In this issue, I’d like to open a dialogue about the varying meanings secular humanism can hold. What does the lifestance we share …

Andrew Dickson White (1832–1918) did more than any other American to impress upon late – nineteenth – and twentieth-century thought the idea that science and religion are enemies locked in combat on an almost military scale. Ironically, this was precisely the opposite of his intent. Born on November 7, 1832, in Homer, New York, into …

  A lot of people say atheists don’t donate to charity, and that’s of course a load of bollocks. We just don’t do it in the name of atheism or in the hope of adding another sheeple to the herd. -A post on the U.K.-Skeptics blog Pardon the length of this essay: I’ll be tackling …

Pedophilia among Catholic priests—and the stonewalling of same among church prelates—is back in the headlines. Now the allegations come not just from North America or Ireland but from across the first world. And now the pope himself is under scrutiny for his possible role (back in his salad days as Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger) in derailing …

Why I Became an Atheist: A Former Preacher Rejects Christianity, by John W. Loftus (Amherst, N.Y.: Prometheus Books, 2008, ISBN 978-1-59102-592-4) 428 pp. Paper $19.95. John W. Loftus was a Church of Christ minister among whose mentors was William Lane Craig, America’s best-known Christian apologist debater. For years, Loftus specialized in marshaling rational argumentation to …

As I write, the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Washington, D.C., is threatening to suspend adoption, homeless-shelter, and health-care related services to some sixty-eight thousand beneficiaries, including about a third of the metro area’s homeless population. Why all the drama? A proposed local same-sex marriage law, partway through the process of enactment, would compel Catholic Charities …

Good without God: What a Billion Nonreligious People Do Believe, by Greg M. Epstein (New York: HarperCollins, 2009, ISBN 978-0-06-167011-4) 250 pp. Cloth $25.99. Nonreligious Americans divide into multiple tribes that sometimes overlap yet are undeniably distinct. By their spokespeople we may know them: atheists have seldom wanted for charismatic authors. Madalyn Murray O’Hair was …

With this issue (Volume 30, No. 1), Free Inquiry unveils a new design as the Council for Secular Humanism enters into its thirtieth anniversary year. Each issue in this volume will include one or two small features celebrating the anniversary, the observance of which will culminate in the thirtieth anniversary conference, “Setting the Agenda: Secular …

Thirty years in, the question we still hear most often at the Council for Secular Humanism is “What is secular humanism?” A cynical observer might find that pathetic: “What, your Council has been at this for thirty years, and most people still don’t know what it stands for?” For my part, I actually find it …

W.K. Clifford and “The Ethics of Belief,” by Timothy J. Madigan (Newcastle, U.K.: Cambridge, 2009, ISBN 1-84718-503-7) 202 pp. Cloth $29.99. “It is wrong, always and everywhere, and for anyone, to believe anything for insufficient evidence.” Many secular humanists will recognize on sight the breathtakingly skeptical credo of William Kingdon Clifford (1845–1879), short-lived wunderkind of …

In some magazines, the editor’s message restricts itself to “puffing” all the great articles in the current issue. Free Inquiry is not one of those magazines. But when was the last time you saw an editor’s message devoted to “puffing” an article from the previous issue? In our August/September 2009 issue, psychologist Luke Galen reported …

The setback at California’s Supreme Court is only a bump in the road. When same-sex marriage becomes legal in Iowa, you know the train has left the station. So irresistible has the momentum become that I predict that within a year, two at most, same-sex marriage will be legal nationwide. That’s a change that seemed …

Worst Instincts: Cowardice, Conformity, and the ACLU, by Wendy Kaminer (Boston, Mass.: Beacon Press, 2009, ISBN 978-080704430-8) 160 pp. Cloth $24.95. Beginning in 2003, Wendy Kaminer accuses, the venerable American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) lost its way. Awash in financial support since 9/11 and led by charismatic executive director Anthony Romero, the ACLU voluntarily agreed …

Helix, by Eric Brown (Nottingham, U.K.: Solaris Books, 2007, ISBN 978-1-84416-472-1) 526 pp. Paper $7.99. Helix, by Eric Brown, is a sprawling science-fiction novel combining a solid adventure story, world-building on an epic scale, and sharp-elbowed satire of religion. Five hundred years into its journey away from a nearly uninhabitable near-future Earth, its passengers in …

In Wendy Kaminer’s op-ed and in this issue’s cover feature, we focus on public funding for faith-based charities. As several writers note, the practice of funneling government money to religious charities began during the Great Society years. Of course, those recipients (organizations such as Catholic Charities) were notably secularized. Incorporated independently of their sponsoring churches, …

  Yet we’ve had too much fecundity; it’s now no virtue; it’s eating us out of house and home. —Edward Hoagland The decision to develop this feature was taken before the economic meltdown, when prices for gasoline, agricultural products, and metals were at or near all-time highs. Food riots rocked the developing world, not because …

Whenever I hear the word spiritual, I reach for my revolver. Well, not really. But I’ve learned the hard way that on hearing spiritual, it’s good practice to reach for the question, “What precisely do you mean by that?” Philosopher/author Ophelia Benson offered a definition of spiritual as perceptive as any I’ve read: “a way …

Godless: How an Evangelical Preacher Became One of America’s Leading Atheists, by Dan Barker (Berkeley, California: Ulysses Press, 2008, ISBN 978-1-5675-667-5) 392 pp. Paper $14.95. If anyone in cont emporary nonbelief has a more spectacular life story than Dan Barker, I’d like to meet that person. A teen evangelist, minister, and Christian songwriter whose youth …

I must have a weak spot for quixotic undertakings. That, or a taste for ramming my head against the wall. Why else would I champion strict church-state separation in a country whose new Democratic president wants to modify, not abolish, his predecessor’s initiative to channel public funds to faith-based charities? Why else spend the last …

What is the future of religion? Is it even meaningful to speak of “religion” as an entity with a single future, or can we speak only of individual religions that wax and wane? For generations, humanists, atheists, and freethinkers (along with most sociologists) expected religion-as-a-whole to decline in the wake of expanding education and prosperity. …

At long last, a protracted and often fierce election campaign is over. America has selected its new president. We congratulate Barack Obama, and we pledge our support for his efforts! President-elect Obama will face awesome problems left over from the Bush administration. But let us focus on the positive. Obama is the first person of …

In his editorial (“The Two Imperatives of Planetary Ethics,” page 6) Paul Kurtz emphatically calls for secular humanists—and humans generally—to take action against oceanic dead zones and global poverty. Coastal-water eutrophication leads a grim lineup of ecological threats: global warming; freshwater depletion; and contamination by antibiotic residues, synthetic chemicals, and heavy metals, to name only …

Want to start an argument among seculars? Launch a discussion, any discussion, about Islam. Is it a religion of peace or inherently violent? Should we respect the folkways of Muslim peoples or apply Western notions of universal human rights that would mandate treatment of females quite unlike that prescribed under sharia law? Must secular liberals …

“Big Bang of Words Follows Vatican’s OK to Believe in E.T.,” screamed the Chicago Tribune headline (May 18, 2008). “Just like there is an abundance of creatures on earth, there could also be other beings, even intelligent ones, that were created by God,” said Jesuit priest and astronomer Jose Gabriel Funes, director of the Vatican …

If Christians widen their world picture to include intelligent aliens, the next questions are unavoidable: Do the ETs have souls? Do they need salvation? Science-fiction writer James Blish (1921–1975) pondered those questions in A Case of Conscience, which won the Hugo Award for best science-fiction novel of 1959. In it, a Jesuit missionary to a …

The Secular Conscience: Why Belief Belongs in Public Life, by Austin Dacey (Amherst, N.Y. Prometheus Books, 2008, ISBN 978-1-59102-604-4) 240 pp. Cloth $24.95. Books by past and present Center for Inquiry staff members threaten to form a literary subgenre. Chris Mooney’s 2005 The Republican War on Science and Susan Jacoby’s recent bestseller The Age of …

My last two op-eds generated unusually strong response, which I’ll acknowledge and answer here. Consider this my feedback to the feedback of others. The Why of Ponzi My December 2007/January 2008 essay, “Beyond Ponzi Economics,” focused on the population crisis (yes, there is one). I asked whether economic models exist that neither demand nor presume …

Center for Inquiry Hits Textbook Errors A high-school government textbook, American Government: Institutions and Policies, Tenth Edition (Houghton Mifflin, 2006), has been criticized in a twenty-five -page report issued by the Center for Inquiry/Transnational (CFI) on March 28. The textbook was written by two conservative authors—James Q. Wilson and former Bush administration Faith-Based Initiatives and …

As things so often do, it began with Genesis. God commanded the first man and woman to “be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth” (Gen. …

A U.S. district judge upheld a Texas moment-of-silence law, even though it had been amended to call specifically for “prayer.” The U. S. Supreme Court declined to hear a case regarding a neon-lighted Bible display outside a Texas courthouse. A lower court decision that the Bible display must go stands. —TF Global Warming, Population, Clericalism …