Author: Tom Flynn

  Sam Harris dropped a bomb at a recent atheist convention by suggesting that those who embrace the label “atheist” “are consenting to be viewed as a cranky subculture.” In the last FREE INQUIRY, no lesser an authority than Paul Kurtz agreed (p. 8), warning secular humanists against “accepting the label of ‘atheist.’” But do …

Guiliani to Push School Vouchers Presidential aspirant Rudy Giliani has named an Educational Advisory Board whose membership is stacked in favor of diverting public funds to faith-based private schools under voucher plans. The panel is to be headed by voucher promoter Terry Moe and former Bush education secretary Rod Paige, and includes voucher advocates Clint …

The Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a lower court’s order that an eight-foot cross be removed from the Mojave National Preserve. The ruling dismissed as a sham the National Park Service’s transfer to a private organization of the land beneath the cross.—TF O, Canada On October 10, Ontario’s conservative Tory Party, led by …

I’m not an economist, and I’ve never played a political scientist on TV.* But I peruse their literatures, and I’m puzzled by how seldom their discussions seem to focus on a problem that I consider desperately important. If I’m wrong—either because the problem is being tackled or because it’s less important than I think—I hope …

Secularism and Secularity: Contemporary International Perspectives, edited by Barry A. Kosmin and Ariela Keysar (Hartford, Conn.: Institute for the Study of Secularism in Society and Culture, 2007, ISBN 0-979816-0-0) 168 pp. Paper $10. Secularism is conspicuous in today’s news, sometimes by its presence and sometimes by its absence. Sociologist Barry Kosmin and demographer Ariela Keysar …

Religion and the Human Prospect, by Alexander Saxton (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2006, ISBN 1-58367- 133-1) 240 pp. Paper $19.95. This astonishing book offers a profound and novel vision of religion’s place in human life. Alexander Saxton brings his historian’s perspective to such disparate fields as sociology, theology, and evolutionary psychology, weaving a credible, …

You’d think dying would be harder for the nonreligious. For us, death is the end, as final as turning off the television—and throwing it in the lake. However false-ly, believers can look forward to eternal bliss or, if not bliss, at least justice; resolution, all the same. Picturing a deity’s hand upon the cosmic helm, …

My mother died in 1995. She was Catholic; though she had suicided, there still followed the whole conventional round of open-casket viewing, a memorial service at the funeral home, the funeral Mass, and a graveside service. At Mass, the priest endlessly conjured images of my mother in heaven. The mourners, mostly Catholic, seemed to draw …

No illusion is authentically comforting. —Verle Muhrer “Funerals and memorials aren’t for the dead, they’re for the living.” That’s a maxim often heard from believers and humanists alike, including several writers in this section. Curmudgeon that I am, I’m unconvinced. I look at this whole business of secular memorial services and ask, “Why bother?” First …

Washington What do you know, it is possible to get in trouble by blending church and state. The U. S. Department of Defense’s Inspector General has charged that six Army and Air Force officers (including four generals) crossed the line when they appeared in uniform and at recognizable locations at the Pentagon in an evangelical …