Category: Editorial

Identitarian: A person or ideology that espouses that group identity is the most important thing about a person, and that justice and power must be viewed primarily on the basis of group identity rather than individual merit. (Source: Urban Dictionary) “The Affirmations of Humanism”: We attempt to transcend divisive parochial loyalties based on race, religion, …

What is Dubai and why should we care? Is it the murmurings of a nascent Arab Enlightenment where reason and science are valued, giving hope to its future? Or is it a gleaming, modern facade under which beats the heart of an Islamic theocracy run by a PR-savvy ruler? That was the question Richard Dawkins …

In 1989, most people had probably never heard of the Santeria Church. I certainly hadn’t. But there I was that year, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Florida, helping to represent this Afro-Cuban religion against a Cuban exile community arrayed against it. Eventually the Santeria case landed in the U.S. Supreme …

On December 25, 2017, my husband and I were visiting Quito, Ecuador, after having spent the prior week exploring the Galapagos Islands. There wasn’t much to do that day. It was Christmas and everything was closed. Though atheists (of course!), we popped into a few churches in the historic downtown, hoping to see some pageantry …

I write in mid-July, deep into yet another summer of our discontent. Wildfires that make their own weather, relentless heat waves, and murderous floods driven by “thousand-year” rain events abound. Under such conditions, it’s easy to wonder whether human civilization can survive our naive cleverness. Our relentless fecundity. When you get down to it, our …

At this point, we all know claims of religious freedom can work like magic words. Say “religious freedom,” and you can demand tax money for your school or social service program even if you proselytize and discriminate, and you can ignore inconvenient employment laws. Just say that your religion demands it, and even public health …

In the February/March 2021 issue, I wrote a brief item noting the end of The Humanist, the longtime bimonthly journal of the American Humanist Association (AHA), as “a magazine of critical inquiry and social concern.” (Free Inquiry founder Paul Kurtz first came to prominence in the humanist movement as editor of The Humanist in the …

I’ve watched every episode of the three seasons of Leah Remini: Scientology and the Aftermath (A&E). This deep dive into Scientology’s history, precepts, abuses, and the personal travails of its adherents is worth your time. It’s an object lesson in gullibility, groupthink, and “you’ve got to be kidding me” supplication. On the surface, Scientology is …

As I write this, President-Elect Joe Biden has not received his first White House security briefing. When you read these words, Biden will be the president—which will leave many atheists, agnostics, secular humanists, and freethinkers little short of ecstatic. But not so fast. For all that a Biden administration will mark a huge step toward …

For religion, it started going south in 2007. That was the year when the United States began joining the rest of the world’s high-income countries in rejecting the whole god-worshipping enterprise. (And it was about damn time!) “From 1981 to 2007, the United States ranked as one of the world’s more religious countries, with religiosity …

Cover Image Courtesy of NASA   On September 12, 1960—almost exactly sixty years before this issue’s publication—John Fitzgerald Kennedy delivered the speech that opened his path to the White House. At that time, no Roman Catholic had been elected president. Four-time New York Governor Al Smith had won the Democratic nomination in 1928; though he …

“My motto for the rest of the year is leave no vacancy behind,” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell told conservative radio talk show host Hugh Hewitt in late March. The Kentucky Republican was talking about filling vacant federal judgeships, of course. McConnell reconvened the U.S. Senate in May—while Washington, D.C., was still under shelter-at-home orders …

There’s change, and then there’s change. As Free Inquiry’s previous issue (April/May 2020) went to press, most Americans were focused on the juddering conclusion of President Donald J. Trump’s impeachment, followed by the rapid winnowing of candidates for the Democratic presidential nomination. Readers of this magazine might have been discussing the toxic Christian nationalism in …

President Trump’s personal appearance at the so-called March for Life, the first by a sitting president, solidified what has been apparent since his inauguration: Trump sees eliminating all daylight between himself and the religious Right as his best path to retaining power. “Unborn children have never had a stronger defender in the White House,” Trump …

For I dipt into the future, far as human eye could see Saw a Vision of the world, and all the wonder that would be … Till the war-drum throbb’d no longer and the battle-flags were furled In the Parliament of man, the Federation of the world. —Alfred, Lord Tennyson, “Locksley Hall” (1842) The secular …

In the highly politicized vaccination wars raging in the United States right now, Ethan Lindenberger is a hero. In March, as a high school senior, the Ohio teen testified before Congress about how he defied his mother’s rabid anti-vaxxer views and started getting himself vaccinated. Lindenberger came to understand that his mother’s views were simply …

More Templeton Mischief. Free Inquiry has frequently reported on the vastly wealthy John Templeton Foundation, which since its founding in 1987 has made grants totaling many tens of millions of dollars to promote the notion that science and religion are compatible. Some of them backfired. In “Have Christians Accepted the Scientific Conclusion That God Does …

Blasphemy is the act of profaning the sacred. It is a crime as ancient as civilization itself. The gods apparently have always needed the protection of law to remain free from offense. I guess that makes them the beneficiaries of the first “safe spaces.” These days, the Center for Inquiry (CFI) fights blasphemy laws primarily …

Here is one of organized humanism’s most persistent puzzles: In an America where the number who live without religion has snowballed, why hasn’t the membership of national “movement” groups—atheist, agnostic, freethought, and secular humanist—kept pace? I’ve been covering the “Rise of the Nones” since 1990, when Barry Kosmin (now a Center for Inquiry [CFI] board …

That pithy subtitle comes from the website of the Matilda Joslyn Gage Foundation (matildajoslyngage.org). It’s too good not to share. If Robert Green Ingersoll is the most remarkable American most people never heard of, Matilda Joslyn Gage is his female equivalent. Had you asked me just two years ago for a recitation of the most …

The cover article of Free Inquiry’s previous issue (“By My Own Hand: Suicide Can Be a Wise and Gentle Choice,” by Lowrey R. Brown) was expected to generate more controversy than it did. Consider the timing: Though the decision to publish Brown’s essay in the August/September 2018 issue was made months in advance, “By My …

There is a Congressional Fragrance Caucus. And a Congressional Fertilizer Caucus. (Do you think one was in response to the other?) There is a Congressional Dietary Supplement Caucus. (Get taken much?) There is even a Congressional Civility Caucus, which is not to be confused with either the Congressional Civility and Respect Caucus or the Congressional …

Radical-reform history is obscure largely because religious conservatives want it that way.

Trump is not feminism’s real enemy: that would be the misogyny at Christianity’s core.

“The paradox of identity liberalism is that it paralyzes the capacity to think and act in a way that would actually accomplish the things it professes to want.”

Happy International Blasphemy Rights Day (IBRD)! Secular humanists and other free-speech stalwarts celebrate IBRD each September 30. For more on the observance, see my Introduction to this issue’s cover feature, “Art, Blasphemy, and Humanism”.

Karl Marx never wrote the phrase “Religion is the opiate of the masses.” He wrote, “[Religion] is the opium of the people.” Close enough. Marx saw religion as a fantasy that allowed people to balm their degraded lives.

“Yuval Noah Harari … has presented an extreme and factually untethered critique of humanism.”

“If organized, we could have a major influence on public policy (and not just among Democrats). Now, we are ignored.”

“Trump has been the ‘box of chocolates’ president-elect: you never know what you’re going to get.”

Obama went back on
a campaign promise to reform how billions of dollars in federal grants to faith-based organizations would
e administered.

The memory of Robert Green Ingersoll is being preserved on many fronts.

“Bizarrely, a subset of progressives has bought into the idea that any criticism of the tenets of Islam is an attack on Muslim people.”

Why what the pope says in airplanes may not matter—and why our efforts to stem climate disaster may not either.

Gays and lesbians changed their social position by coming out; we unbelievers can accomplish the same by coming forward.

Even China was unprepared to do what will be necessary to not just stop population growth but to reduce human numbers to a sustainable level.

Though religions claim a monopoly on hope, the brightest hope for humanity’s future lies in humanism.

The arguments favoring the right to blaspheme have changed little in nine years. But they’re still right.

We can make the world a better place, but whether we do so depends on us—that’s both the promise and the challenge of humanism.

Today’s myriad ecological crises can never be solved without a major commitment not just to control but to reduce human numbers.