Category: Looking Back

35 Years Ago “Lack of religious worship, prayer, and ceremony has affected my life very favorably—by giving me much more time than I otherwise would have had to be committed to other, quite worldly pursuits. Including personal pleasure! “I consider life meaningful even though I reject the idea of a theistic being, because I make …

35 Years Ago “The view that religious belief and practice were indispensable for the preservation of social order, not only between classes, but within classes, seems to have been held by leading statesmen like Napoleon and Metternich, who were not themselves noteworthy for their religious piety. Some members of elite groups in Western society who …

35 Years Ago “The obvious implication—uncomfortable, no doubt, for rationalists and freethinkers—is that atheism does not at all ensure a free society. Indeed, as I’ve tried to suggest, it seems more comfortable with fundamentalism than with liberation. “Atheism is not the same as naturalism either. It is instead a narrowly drawn mirror-image of its opponent. …

35 Years Ago “… I think it a fundamental misuse of language to equate religion with secularism when the latter refers to different aspects of experience. This is linguistic definition by capricious legislation, a form of definition-mongering. Anyone has the right to misuse language if he so wishes, but there is something basically unethical about …

35 Years Ago in Free Inquiry “Modernization is brought about by taking seriously (1) the cognitive claims of scientific knowledge and the scientific method, and (2) the moral claims of secular life and its quality. It is because traditional religions are often inimical to these claims that they need to be combated and their authority …

35 Years Ago in Free Inquiry “High in the back area of the Coliseum, using an electronic scanner receiver, Bob Steiner and Alec Jason had quickly located the frequency used by the Popoffs—39.17 Megahertz. A tape recorder was attached to the receiver, and every word was heard. When Popoff made his entrance, we heard Mrs. …

35 Years Ago in Free Inquiry “We are faced with a serious problem: Although some forms of faith-healing may relieve psychosomatic symptoms, there is no clear evidence that faith-healing can cure organic illness; and yet faith-healing has become fashionable. Countless numbers of people are now being deceived in healing sessions and by television reports of …

35 Years Ago in Free Inquiry “What should a nontheist do when asked to swear in a courtroom? In the case of jury duty, there is an implied religious test. The option (to affirm, and without a Bible) is there by law; but it is not mentioned, and to ask for it makes one a …

35 Years Ago in Free Inquiry “When I visited Europe this past summer I found our Western European friends and allies—humanist and nonhumanist alike—aghast at the growth of fundamentalist religion in the United States. … “[S]ecularist and humanist influences in many ways are far more advanced in the countries of Western Europe, and the influence …

35 Years Ago in Free Inquiry “Did Jesus offer a pattern of statecraft for future readers? On the basis of the evidence in the Gospels the answer must be negative. In spite of all the efforts by Christian interpreters to provide a clue to the meaning of the ‘Render to Caesar’ utterance, it remains an …

35 Years Ago in Free Inquiry “Since April 24, 1978, I have been sober—free from alcohol and all other mind-altering chemicals. … My only chance for continued survival is the maintenance of my personal sobriety. A well-accepted approach to curing addicts is to utilize the substitute addiction of reliance upon a mystical power ‘greater’ than …

35 Years Ago in Free Inquiry “The campaign against the public schools has intensified in recent years … vigilante groups seek to censor what is being taught in the schools and rid them of the influence of secular humanism. The new law [the Education for Economic Security Act of 1984] and the rule [regulations proposed …

“The political changes since [the overthrow of Poland’s Communist regime in] 1989 have not raised living standards for the majority of people, nor led to improvements in the state of education … . The increasingly strong position of the Catholic church—despite the change of political parties in government—may lead to the formation of a religious …

“[S]cientific materialism is currently posing a new challenge to religious belief because up to this time no one has thought through the full implications for religion of the Darwinian evolution of the mind. Consider, for example … ‘the epigenetic rules.’ These are the features by which the mind is assembled. In some instances they are …

“The [Jehovah’s] Witnesses compute the time of the end [of the world] with their own variant of [the Book of] Daniel’s periodization of history by divine arithmetic, using an amazing conflation of unrelated biblical texts. William Miller predicted that Christ’s Second Coming would occur in 1844. After that hope failed, Charles Taze Russell, using different …

“The November 1994 American elections have revealed a surprising political shift to the right, with conservative Republicans gaining control of both houses of Congress and thirty governorships. Liberals and moderates are in a state of shock. … “Have we finally exhausted the possibilities of the New Deal coalition formed by Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1933, …

“The United States is again deeply embroiled in presidential politics. … “We do not wish to pass on the merits [of any candidate]. We simply wish to point out that the nation would be better off if religious faith were not injected into the political arena by either side. … “We believe in the civic …

“Even in a rural area, word about an airplane crash gets out fast and the media was soon present. “‘Where are you from?’ “‘Tampa.’ “‘Tampa? What were you doing all the way up here?’ “‘Attending an atheist/humanist convention in Toronto.’ “‘R-e-a-l-l-y!’ “I told the whole story to three or four different reporters … . “They …

“Humanists know something must be done. We know that it is only by coming together and figuring out what kind of world we want to live in, only by giving our attention to why ‘values’ have been eschewed and why so many people seem to have given up, that we can pursue our vision, the …

“Tribalism ultimately, however, is a distortion of the values of religion, a perversion that poses serious dangers not only to world peace but to the American ideal. The danger is not so much religion as tribalism; and, when one group insists that its morals, teachings, view of life, and cultural values are the only correct …

“Most individuals would be outraged to learn that the academic study of religion is fundamentally an atheist project. … However, these heated reactions are unnecessary. The word atheist comes from the Latin atheos, and means ‘without god.’ … [T]he question of the existence or non-existence of a god, gods, or goddesses is irrelevant when studying …

“Socrates argued in Plato’s Euthyphro that justice precedes piety; merely to pray to the Gods is no guarantee that an act done in obedience to what the gods dictate is any more moral than one done in the light of reflective examination of the merits of the case and in terms of the ethical principles …

“… Puritanism is not the American tradition, it is one among many. From Anne Hutchinson down to Ben Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Paine, James Madison, Abraham Lincoln, Franklin Roosevelt, and Adlai Stevenson, our history is rife with alternatives to orthodoxies sired during the Middle Ages and the Reformation, orthodoxies that are dependent upon a literal, …

“Honest conversation with children, telling them that as parents (or teachers) we don’t have all the answers, but that we are willing to check facts and draw logical conclusions, is important. Standing firm on certain issues, such as the necessity for separation of church and state, or evolution as a fact, a disbelief in a …

35 Years Ago in Free Inquiry “The dangers to children associated with faith-healing sects are enormous. They are cared for by people with no medical knowledge, people who are trained to deny disease and its symptoms as illusions, people who demand more faith as the disease gets worse. They have no standard for judging when …

35 Years Ago in Free Inquiry “… the question of the sacrifice of innocent life in war … I find an extremely difficult problem. Temperamentally I am inclined to the simple view (to misquote one of the late Michael Flanders’s characters) that ‘killing people is wrong,’ but I have to recognize that, until mankind finds …

35 Years Ago in Free Inquiry “As humanists, surely we do not wish to develop according to the model of the classical religions. Though these religions have provided a social structure, a moral framework, and psychological comfort for their adherents, humanism is not and should not be a denomination or sect competing with others. We …

“The courage to doubt, on which American pluralism, federalism, and religious liberty are founded, is a special brand of courage, a more selfless brand of courage, than the courage of orthodoxy. A brand that has been far rarer and more precious in the history of the West than the courage of the crusaders or the …

“Western society has been deeply influenced by Christian doctrine, operating, as it has been, relatively unchallenged for most of the past two millennia. … [M]any of the destructive teachings of Christianity have shaped social attitudes in a variety of spheres and in ways that still adversely affect people, even those who never darken a church …