Author: Tom Flynn

What is the optimum population of the U.S.? The world? Overpopulation long mattered to me. A high schooler when the Club of Rome issued The Limits to Growth, I had already embraced its agenda.1 If too many people burdened the planet, I would add no more. I resolved not to father children, and remain child-free to …

¸Newdow Loses on Technicality. The U.S. Supreme Court voted 8–0 to reject California atheist Michael Newdow’s challenge to “under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance, on grounds that Newdow lacked custodial rights over his school-age child and hence standing to sue. No decision was made on the legality of “under God,” and it is interesting …

Terror and Civilization: Christianity, Politics, and the Western Psyche, by Shadia B. Drury (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004, ISBN 1-4039-6404-1) 211 pp. incl. notes, references, index. Cloth $55.00. Imagine a religious zealot who triggers the collapse of a monumental public structure, snuffing out roughly three thousand innocent lives. Were you thinking of Mohammed Atta and …

The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Second Edition, Emmett Fields, ed. (Louisville, Kentucky: Bank of Wisdom, 2004, ISBN 1-929–4708-13-0) CD-ROM $24.95 + $3.00 S/H. Available at www.bank-of-wisdom.com. In its wholly revamped second edition, Emmett Fields’s CD-ROM The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll fulfills its potential as a powerful research tool and a digital compendium of …

If you need proof that the secular humanist and (for lack of a better term) religious humanist communi­ties have taken separate paths, consider Paul Geisert and Mynga Futrell’s pro­posal that humane nonreligious people call themselves “Brights.” In their guest editorial (see p. 20) they report that their idea is enjoying broad acceptance. There’s no reason …

As I told CNN’s Paula Zahn, French President Jacques Chirac’s initiative to ban conspicuous religious sym­bols in public schools and buildings is laudable if it can be applied equally to Muslims, Jews, and Christians.* We might avert disruptive religious conflicts in American life by following Chirac’s example, not that I expect it to occur. Secularism …

Bearing Right: How Conservatives Won the Abortion War, by William Saletan (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003, ISBN 0-520-08688-0) 327 pp. Cloth $29.95. The late 1980s saw a strategy change in the abortion rights movement. Talk of women’s rights, even the word abortion itself, largely gave way to a rhetoric of choice. NARAL—increasingly emphasizing its …

The Ghost in the Universe: God in Light of Modern Science, by Taner Edis (Amherst: N.Y.: Prometheus Books, 2002, ISBN 1-57392–977-8) 330 pp. incl. Index. Cloth $29.00. This engaging, well-written book explores one of the Big Questions: does a scientific understanding of the cosmos require (or leave any room for) belief in a god or …

When Richard Dawkins urged unbelievers to come out of the closet (“A Challenge to Atheists,” FI, Summer 2002), he knowingly echoed the gay movement’s historic rallying cry. As secular humanists, atheists, and other unbelievers work to improve our standing in American life, we face challenges remarkably like those that faced gay and lesbian activists fifty …

Inherit More Wind: Darwin Discord Deepens After Charles Darwin published On the Origin of Species in 1859, religious conservatives never altogether relaxed their opposition. From the conclusion of the 1925 Scopes trial until the late 1970s, the drums of reaction were muffled. But with the Religious Right’s rise to prominence, attacks on evolutionary theory quickly …

Church-State Update tracks continuing developments in important federal, state, and local church-state issues. Each item is preceded by an up arrow (-) or a down arrow (¸), based on the story’s implications for separation of church and state and the rights of the nonreligious. Washington Wire . . .¸Education Department Plumps for School Prayer. New U.S. …

Suicide and the ‘New Prohibitionists’ This issue’s special section on physician-assisted suicide puts me in mind of a larger issue: suicide, period. While suicide has never been exactly popular, a new assault on our right to suicide is brewing. It’s something secular humanists ought to resist. Not long ago, the right to suicide and the …

Unmarried to Each Other: The Essential Guide to Living Together as an Unmarried Couple, by Dorian Solot and Marshall Miller (New York: Marlowe and Company, 2002, ISBN 1-56924–566-5) 320 pp. Paper $15.95. The trouble started when Dorian Solot and Marshall Miller moved in together. First Solot couldn’t get Miller on her workplace’s health insurance because …

Church-State Update tracks continuing developments in important federal, state, and local church-state issues. Each item is preceded by an up arrow () or a down arrow (¸), based on the story’s implications for separation of church and state and the rights of the nonreligious. Washington Wire . . .Bush Orders Faith­Based Initia­tive. After two years …