Category: Op-Ed

In 1996, a particularly devastating nail was driven into the coffin of “homosexuality is a choice” rhetoric. A team of researchers found that the more older brothers a boy has, the greater the likelihood that he will grow up to be gay. Since the research was first published in the American Journal of Psychiatry, many …

Free Inquiry congratulates American Atheists as it nears its fiftieth anniversary year. The organization was founded by the activist Madalyn Murray O’Hair in 1963, soon after O’Hair’s victory in one of two consolidated U.S. Supreme Court cases that ended mandatory prayer in public schools. During most of its early years, American Atheists was the movement’s …

Some American cities are suffering a new problem: abandoned churches. The Philadelphia Inquirer recently reported that officials in the City of Brotherly Love can’t cope with once-stately temples that “decay into neighborhood eyesores.” “There are now so many shuttered houses of worship – at least 300 estimated across the Philadelphia region – that anxiety over …

As I write, the latest issue of New Humanist (July/August 2012), the magazine of the United Kingdom’s Rationalist Association, has come out with an article by Richard Smyth titled “Down With Secularism.” Smyth thoroughly rejects ideas of a separation of church and state, or as we might rephrase it, of keeping religion out of government …

In the skeptical and atheist communities, we often wring our hands over how much infighting goes on. Every time another firestorm of controversy consumes the Internet, many of us become alarmed at the rifts dividing our community: weakening us, burning us out, making it harder for us to work together on issues that we have …

Should your elected officials have the authority to tell you what you can eat or drink? New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg is, to his credit, one of very few politicians in the United States willing to engage in any way with threats to public health. He has been very concerned about the toll obesity has …

It is ironic that America has embarked on the monumental project of teaching the world about democracy at a time when its own democracy is in a state of decay and degeneration. It seems to me that the most important lesson that America can teach the world in the twenty-first century regards the conditions that …

President Barack Obama’s cherished pilotless drones—with their corollary civilian corpses—have hardly been mentioned in the 2012 elections. Even the widely available news that Obama regularly focused on a drone “kill list” to decide whom to assassinate overseas (including three Americans so far) faded away in the news mists without any rousing congressional speeches or Sunday …

  For sweetest things turn sourest by their deeds; Lilies that fester smell far worse than weeds. —William Shakespeare “I am a scientist, and I am also a Christian,” said the man. “And I am offended! Personally and deeply offended that you would characterize my beliefs as delusional.” Thus began the question and answer part …

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. . . .” That Dickensian chestnut sums up the state of traditional marriage today. Surveys confirm that Americans have less use for the institution than ever. More of us are now single than married. Few progressives get excited about weddings unless they are …

For doctors, the old saw “Gag me with a spoon” no longer applies. Today it is “Gag me with a (a) toxic chemical, (b) gun, or (c) transvaginal ultrasound probe.” This appears to be the new ethics of medicine for doctors in America. Why are we letting state legislators, religious zealots, and big business tell …

The gods are all dead. Science killed them. When beliefs are tissues of fantasy papering over ignorance, all it takes is honest inquiry to destroy them . . . and what we’re seeing now in the centuries after the Enlightenment is an erosion of god-belief. As a scientist, it’s hard to avoid bursting out in …

Here in Australia, as in many other parts of the world, there is an ongoing public debate about proposals to extend marriage to same-sex couples. As marriage falls within the federal jurisdiction under the Australian Constitution, this has led to public consultation processes involving the federal houses of Parliament (the House of Representatives and the …

Sometimes evolution seems to bestow a sort of karmic recompense upon certain hard-working members of a species. Sometimes the individual who demonstrates the greatest Protestant work ethic will, in fact, reap the greatest reward. A male Australian redback spider who courts a female for fewer than one hundred minutes may get a chance to enjoy …

In all the continuing debates, pledges, and dead ends involved in education reform, the many ever-present school dropouts are seldom urgently dealt with. What happens to those youngsters? When I cover the imprisonment of youthful offenders, I find one answer. The majority are dropouts. The others? Who knows or cares, except maybe their families? In …

Attending the Center for Inquiry (CFI)’s “Women in Secularism” conference in Arlington, Virginia, May 18–20, 2012, was an inspiring experience. Having worked for CFI for six years, I have become used to the male-dominated culture that is prevalent in secularism. It was therefore refreshing to hear so many women speaking one after the other on …

In the United States, atheists and humanists are among its most vilified and distrusted citizens. One of the most effective ways of countering this prejudice is to offer a vivid reminder that some of the world’s leading moral, cultural, and scientific figures are indeed humanists. A good place to start is with the past and …

On March 24, 2012, approximately twenty thousand godless folk gathered on the Mall in Washington, D.C., for the Reason Rally. I was one of the speakers late in the afternoon of a rainy but inspiring day. This is roughly what I said: It’s the late afternoon of a long day; it’s raining, I have to …

“Sure, atheism may have better arguments and evidence. But religion is always to going to win on the death question. A secular philosophy of death will never comfort people the way a religious one does.” I’ve heard this idea more times than I can count. And here’s the weird thing—I hear it not just from …

This past January and February were a very busy time for theocratic enemies of free speech, thought, and inquiry. On January 11, U.S. District Judge Ronald Lagueux ruled a school prayer mural on the wall of a Cranston, Rhode Island, public high school unconstitutional. The suit was brought by the American Civil Liberties Union on …

It is hard to imagine a greater misfortune for the world than being saddled with a superpower whose exaggerated perception of its righteousness and innocence fuels its belligerence. The only thing worse is having an enemy that is just as arrogant, self-righteous, and belligerent. There is nothing new about such smug, myopic self-righteousness of course. …

It’s a truism that conflicts often flare up around religious fault lines. The Balkans, Israel/Palestine, and Northern Ireland are just a few of the best known in the world today, but there are many more. However, it’s often hard to say whether religion is actually responsible for inflaming or even causing the conflicts or whether …

Like philosopher Andy Norman, whose report on the recent Center for Inquiry–Transnational symposium celebrating Daniel Dennett’s 2006 book, Breaking the Spell, appears in this issue (available in the print edition), I was in attendance when psychiatrist James Thomson performed what Norman aptly calls “an unusual experiment: he had about one hundred ardent secularists link arms, …

I’m going to go out on a limb here: being an atheist demands that we work for social justice. A lot of atheists will argue with this. They’ll say that atheism means one thing and one thing only: the lack of belief in any god. And in the most literal sense, they’re right. It’s different …

One fashionable criticism of outspoken atheists is that we demonstrate the vice of scientism—whatever that is exactly. This criticism comes from many theologians, such as John Haught, but also from some secular philosophers. The critics seldom define scientism, and I doubt that they can agree on a definition. Is it skepticism about specifically religious “ways …

It could have been a good idea, the invention of gods. It could have been a way of solidifying thoughts about how humans could be better than they are. It’s an impressive and touching thing about us that we realize we’re not good enough. Gods (or God) could have been a helpful or even inspiring …

For years, public school systems and principals around the nation have rigorously exercised a “zero tolerance” policy that imposes severe, automatic punishments for students accused of dangerous or other harmful actions. An outrageous but not uncommon imposition of zero tolerance that I’ve been following concerns a then-freshman student, Andrew Mikel II, suspended from Spotsylvania High …

Television trivia websites provide a wealth of information about the industry’s envelope-pushing “firsts.” For example, television audiences witnessed the first lesbian kiss on L.A. Law in 1991, while the first interracial kiss appeared much earlier, on Star Trek in 1968. Trivia websites are less clear about which show first featured a couple sharing a bed: …

Intelligence is a bit of a slippery eel—it’s pretty tough to get it pinned down precisely. And yet, cognitive scientists do think there is something they call “general intelligence,” which describes an individual’s ability to perform well on a broad range of different kinds of intelligence tests. Put simply, someone who does well on one …

Freedom of religion is a hard-core American value that is rarely questioned. It was supposed to be the ultimate solution to the grisly wars of religion that ravaged Europe in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. But religion is rarely satisfied with liberty. It invariably seeks dominance. It is akin to a wild beast that cannot …

As I write this, celebrity chef Paula Deen is being defended in some quarters against critics, including me, who have accused her of gross hypocrisy in taking on the nicely compensated role of shill for a diabetes drug. After not disclosing the fact that she had diabetes for three years while promoting foods that give …

In early December 2011, the Center for Inquiry–Transnational held a fascinating conference on the scientific study of religion in Amherst, New York. I was fortunate enough to attend, and I would like to share what I learned with readers of Free Inquiry,. The conference was, among other things, a tribute to philosopher Daniel Dennett’s Breaking …

This is a time of celebration and sadness, of exultation and grief. We commemorate the life of Christopher Hitchens, our “Hitch.” Atheism has lost a singularly eloquent voice—a fearless, groundbreaking intellectual giant who dared to challenge the most cherished notions of God and religion that still so thoroughly pervade human life. We have lost a …

Christopher Hitchens first appeared in the pages of Free Inquiry in Fall 1996 as the subject of an interview—rather lengthy at six pages—that focused on his investigation of Mother Teresa, that icon of religious sacrifice. His book The Missionary Position: Mother Teresa in Theory and Practice (Verso) had come out the year before. His goal …

If you haven’t read it, you will almost certainly have seen it: the critique of Professor Richard Dawkins that arraigns him for being too “strident” in his confrontations with his critics. According to this line of attack, Dawkins has no business stepping outside the academy to become a “public intellectual” and even less right to …

Just before this past Thanksgiving, I spent three days inside Vatican City at a very unusual conference. The topic was stem-cell research, a subject of fierce political and moral debate because some forms of stem-cell research involve human embryos or, potentially, cloned human embryos. So what was I, a known proponent of embryonic stem-cell research, …

When he was not yet president, Barack Obama insisted: “To build a better free world, we must first behave in ways that reflect the decency and aspirations of the American people. This means ending the practice of shipping away prisoners in the dead of night to be tortured in far-off countries” (foreignaffairs.com, Summer 2007). He …

Few people notice, but a profound shift is discernible in history and current trends. Secular humanist values—rooted in improving people’s lives without supernaturalism—are gaining ground, decade after decade, century after century. They’re becoming the standard of civilization, overcoming past ugliness. Evidence confirms that wars are diminishing, democracy is spreading, dictatorships are fading, health is improving, …

One of the tragedies of humanity is that we’re all mortal—every one of us, and everyone we know and love, will someday die. Our forebears, to whom we owe our existence, are all gone or going. Another aspect of this great tragedy is the transience of our knowledge: not only will we die but memory …

According to the United Nations, the world’s population has passed seven billion. (The U.S. government says that milestone will occur early in 2012.) Just twelve years ago, the number reached six billion; twelve years before that, it passed five billion. By any reasonable criterion, such growth is unsustainable. Consider that 48 percent of the globe’s …