Category: Editorial

Sound science and secularism are firm allies; that’s why the recent merger into CFI Inc. is not only wise but necessary.

Conceding from its opening move that humanism is a religion, the American Humanist Association damaged the movement while defending one prisoner’s rights.

Appeals to God cannot settle ethical dilemmas. God can’t tell us what to do; we need to figure that out for ourselves.

Winning future church-state lawsuits may require us to step away from the familiar arena of “religious freedom” and into the more inclusive arena of freedom of conscience.

A flawed Supreme Court decision should dispel any illusion that America is quickly becoming more accepting of the nonreligious.

“Among today’s students, what does it mean to be secular—in other words, how do they understand that term?”

The Hobby Lobby and Conestoga cases may prompt the Supreme Court to overextend the religious-liberty rights of corporate employers.

Let’s look back at The Nine Demands of Liberalism and reflect on the differences between what freethinkers wanted circa 1870 and what many in our movement want today.

Although faith cannot be rationally justified, this doesn’t prevent theologians from trying their best to make faith seem not only reasonable but a good thing.

Sidney Hook was among the earliest American intellectuals to break with Marxism. That’s saying a lot: Marxist revolutionary thought held enormous sway over American intellectuals during much of the twentieth century.

The 2013–2014 term of the U.S. Supreme Court could be its most important in years with respect to church-state issues. We already know that the court will hear a case involving the constitutionality of invocations in local government settings such as city hall or county board meetings: Town of Greece v. Galloway (No. 12-696). By …

In case you missed it, Roman Catholics have a new pope. Pope Benedict XVI resigned, which no pope has done in almost six hundred years, and the College of Cardinals met in conclave and elected Argentine Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio, who chose the name Pope Francis. But of course, you didn’t miss it. No one …

Some Free Inquiry readers may find the articles in this special section controversial. Most of these articles share the view that the best solution to tensions posed by a growing nontheistic/nonreligious contingent within a U.S. military steeped in “Christian nation” ideology is to expand the scope of military chaplaincy to encompass nontheistic/nonreligious service members. Some …

Without God, our lives have no meaning. The faithful can take comfort in eternal life, in knowing that they and their loved ones will survive death. The atheist can have no hope, no solace, because for the atheist only the grave awaits. How often have we heard these claims? Too often, but recently we’ve been …

I may be reading too much into the November 2012 elections, but they seem to have genuinely altered the drift of American political discourse. Minority groups from Hispanics to the nonreligious played central roles in the reelection of President Barack Obama and in numerous congressional, state, and even local races. (Obama arguably owes his election …

This issue of Free Inquiry highlights two very important concerns: namely, the need to ensure that people throughout the world can freely express their views about religion and the need to promote women’s rights and end sexism, both outside of and within the secular movement. Some might think these concerns are unconnected. They would be …

If there was a hell, it would be garlanded with icicles. According to recent survey data, two longtime dreams of American secularists have come true: Charitable giving by Americans to churches and religious organizations actually declined in 2011. What’s more, it fell in three of the last four years. For the first time in fifty-four …

In the United States, politics dominates the news as we gear up for the fall elections. Not only will we have to decide on a president, but there are contests for Congress and most state legislatures, as well as state referenda on numerous issues, some of which have important public policy implications. It’s at times …

It seems that it was just the issue before last when we devoted a cover feature to the demographics of unbelief—to what we know, statistically speaking, about America’s unbelievers and how we know it. Wait, that was the issue before last (“Bridging the Gulf: At Last, Social Science Measures Secularity,” FI, February/March 2012). Perhaps it …

Don’t look now, but we’re in the middle of a revolution in human attitudes and belief. In Europe and North America, large portions of the population are nonreligious; that is, they reject belief in God and transcendent spiritual entities of any sort. This is an unprecedented phenomenon in the history of humanity. Widespread religious skepticism …

  If a solar storm should burn off the peculiar damp that clings to this planet, this would be a very small change—no change at all in cosmic terms, which are apparently based on averages. The u niverse is lifeless now and will be lifeless then, so negligible is our presence in it. —Marilynne Robinson, …

God rewards the faithful, either in this life or the next. The faithful do not know when these rewards will come, but they can be confident that they will come—eventually. Moreover, God does not ask for much in exchange. God requires only that the faithful be faithful, that is, that they trust in him and …

Sometimes the best is the enemy of the good. A new campaign sweep-ing the humanist/atheist/freethought movement exemplifies this dilemma. The campaign is well meant, but I fear it pursues a seductive short-term benefit at the expense of greater long-term goals. At the same time, it actively endangers principles that secular humanists value highly. Along the …

Secularism is a scary word for some, especially those on the religious Right. Moreover, as we are now officially into the 2012 presidential election campaign, you can expect to hear a lot more about the alleged evils of secularism. Before his recent political implosion, self-appointed intellectual Newt Gingrich was busy inveighing against secularism in articles, …

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 …

Do we want to convert the religious? Should one of the primary functions of organizations such as the Council for Secular Humanism and the Center for Inquiry be to persuade the religious to abandon their beliefs? To answer these questions properly, we should first ask: What objectives would be served by converting the religious? The …

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 …

Secular humanism is a comprehensive, nonreligious lifestance. It is comprehensive because it touches every aspect of life, including issues of value, meaning, and identity. Presumably, th e two foregoing statements provide an accurate description of secular humanism because they appear on the website of the Council for Secular Humanism. But permit me to register a …

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 …

There has been much discussion among humanists and other secularists, including in the pages of this journal (“Toward a Kinder and Gentler Humanism” by Paul Kurtz, FI, June/July 2010), about the limits on criticism of religion-and in particular whether secularists have an obligation to avoid commenting on religion in a way that might offend believers. …

May I reaffirm the convictions that have guided the editorial policies ofFree Inquiry and the Council for Secular Humanism in the first thirty years of our existence? Religious dissent is a noble tradition in democratic societies that needs to be respected and honored. Critics of religious claims have every right to be heard. In fact, …

A Neo-Humanist Statement Irecently drafted, with the help of many secular humanists and scientists, a “Neo-Humanist Statement of Secular Principles and Values.” At latest count, some one hundred distinguished public intellectuals worldwide have endorsed it. Since we do not have space to run the entire statement in this issue, I am running a brief excerpt …

The Supreme Court’s ruling in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, permitting unlimited corporate spending on election campaigns, cast a devastating blow against democracy. By a 5 – 4 vote, the high court’s conservative majority abandoned longstanding legal precedents dating back over a century, to 1907, and culminating in the McCain-Feingold Act of 2002. It …

Does humanist eupraxsophy* offer any hope for humankind? For many people this is the ultimate test of the secular outlook. For theists, the single most important hope is theism’s promise of eternal salvation. The term religion in its original etymological sense meant religäre or “to bind.” This referred to a state of life bound by …

Do fundamentalist theists have their atheist counterparts? Alistair McGrath, a Christian theologian, used the word fundamentalist to describe certain kinds of atheists. A fundamentalist is a person who is committed to a set of basic beliefs or doctrines with dogmatic and inflexible loyalty. The word originally applied to Protestant fundamentalists who interpreted the Bible literally …

Economics and Humanism Does secular humanism have anything significant to say about economic issues or about the controversy that continues to rage between economic libertarians and social democrats? Libertarians advocate unfettered capitalism; they believe fervently in governmental deregulation and lower tax rates. Social democrats, on the contrary, wish to use the government to ensure social …

Next year will be the thirtieth anniversary of the founding of the Council for Secular Humanism and the launching of Free Inquiry magazine. At that time, secular humanism was the bête-noire of the Religious Right. We were accused of dominating American life—the courts, public education, the universities, foundations, and the media. Our accusers claimed that …

The planetary community today faces a grave economic crisis. Companies are faltering; unemployment, poverty, and deprivation are rising. Foreclosures are escalating, and the ranks of the jobless keep growing. People who have lost their homes or jobs are sleeping in their cars and spending their days at libraries. Librarians have reported an increase in the …

The following article was written by an inmate in a prison in New Jersey whose name is being withheld because of possible repercussions. The author is highly educated and a committed secular humanist, but his efforts to establish a secular humanist group in prison have encountered countless roadblocks. After much negotiation with the New Jersey …

Little did I imagine two decades ago, when I first proposed plans for new Centers for Inquiry, that developing them would be such an arduous, even treacherous task. In my book Eupraxsophy: Living without Religion (Prometheus Books, 1989), I said that it is important to provide secular alternatives to religious institutions, especially for nonbelievers. These …