Category: About Those Other Apocalypses …

Longtime readers will recognize the name of independent scholar Ibn Warraq, author of the breakthrough work Why I Am Not a Muslim (1995) and nearly a dozen more technical scholarly books focused principally on the history and doctrines of Islam. He was also a Free Inquiry columnist from 2005 until 2011. He recently published a …

Full disclosure: One of these articles was accepted and the other commissioned before the coronavirus crisis. Nonetheless, the question these essays raise is vital: As we survey the existential challenges humanity confronts—however immediately pressing the pandemic may be, grave medium- and long-term threats still face us—are we focusing our ameliatory energy in the most effective …

As someone who has been exploring the world’s most isolated wilderness regions for nearly half a century, I have some insight into the state of the planet and the human race’s current environmental befuddlement. I’ve watched the condition of the earth plummet before my eyes within my own lifespan, to the extent that I no …

The coronavirus is the salient fact of life today, and I will address it in a minute. First, I want to talk about the internet and our inability as humans to simultaneously navigate it and display reason. For the mindset that permitted the establishment of such a fragile society as ours is the same mindset …

Robert Green Ingersoll (1833–1899) has stumped historians. Biographer David Anderson states that Ingersoll was a “conservative and patriot … [not] versed in the social and economic controversies of the day.” He acknowledges that Ingersoll “taught men to question … the rationale behind the rise of nineteenth-century capitalism.” And he briefly mentions Ingersoll’s comparison of industrialists …

The iconoclastic Christopher Hitchens can be seen anytime on YouTube wryly advocating the teaching of religion in public schools: “I know of no other way to ensure a constant supply of atheists!” I laughed too, but he seemed unaware of how easily he could overshoot the mark on this one. Years ago, as a journalism …

After a lifetime spent reading great works of literature, I could not help finally facing the question of why religious topics were so frequently made the butt of jokes. Whether it was the works of Aristophanes or Homer, Ovid or Lucian, Boccaccio or Chaucer, Voltaire or Mark Twain, again and again I encountered great writers’ …

I defend atheism in my new book, Is A Good God Logically Possible? (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019). But I have not always been an atheist. In fact, I was in a religious order for twelve years, leaving only just before I would have had to take final vows at age twenty-six. And I only …

The conclusion of “He Is Risen” contained an assertion that I’ve often read and heard. However, it still never fails to offend me. The author facetiously mocks the Christian faith by asking, “Who in their right mind would worship a man who was put to death in such a humiliating way, and then who would …

According to an enduring legend, in 1686 while conquering Turks were praying in the Budapest mosque they had converted from a Catholic church, suddenly—in a great explosion—a figure of the Holy Virgin Mary appeared! The credulous soldiers were fear-stricken and fled, and the Christians began to reclaim their church and city, beginning a joyous procession …

Unbelief in Indian Civilization Ever since Alexander the Great and his men came into contact with her, India has figured in the Western imagination as a land of spirituality, gurus, mystics, and a thousand gods that adorn an even greater number of temples and shrines. Modern Indian thinkers have perpetuated the myth of Indian spirituality; …

In this feature, we continue the Freethought Trail’s celebration of the centenary of the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which established women’s right to vote. We present more of the new, site-specific pages devoted to annual suffrage conventions held in west-central New York State, the Trail’s territory. Nearly forty such pages …