Category: Point / Counterpoint

In a spirited polemic against “spirit”-talk (“Excrement Eventuates,” FI, February/March 2012), Tom Flynn invites us to join him on what he calls the “welcoming shores” of a “wholly dis-‘spirited’ naturalism”—a place where the natives reject all “spiritual security blankets” and sternly contemplate the fact that everything in life is all just “shit happening.” Sorry, Tom. …

In his article “The ‘True Unbeliever’” in the December 2009/January 2010 Free Inquiry, Paul Kurtz offers a misleadin g and unfair analysis of the so-called New Atheists. Kurtz uses such labels as “fundamentalist” and “true believer” to refer to persons who hold strong beliefs and are determined not to change them. He then generalizes the …

The most important church-state development of recent months, foreign or domestic, has been French President Jacques Chirac’s announcement of ambitious plans to limit the display of religious symbols throughout France’s public sector. In public schools, students would be barred from displaying conspicuous religious symbols, including headscarves, skullcaps, and large crosses. Neither public buildings nor civil …

As I told CNN’s Paula Zahn, French President Jacques Chirac’s initiative to ban conspicuous religious sym­bols in public schools and buildings is laudable if it can be applied equally to Muslims, Jews, and Christians.* We might avert disruptive religious conflicts in American life by following Chirac’s example, not that I expect it to occur. Secularism …