Supreme Error

Justice Neil Gorsuch made the right decision in Bostock v. Clayton County in which he applied the civil rights act to prohibit discrimination against LGBTQ citizens. He just did so for the wrong reasons. Liberals, Democrats, and I rejoiced at the Supreme Court decision in Bostock v. Clayton County,written by Justice Neil Gorsuch, declaring that …

We continue presenting readers’ “Pivot Point” essays—brief recountings of the exact moment when the scales fell from each reader’s eyes and he or she realized that his or her childhood religion was bankrupt. More Pivot Points commentaries will appear in the February/March 2021 and April/May 2021 issues. Reader submissions fell into ten broad categories that …

On the Run Edmund Smith The first important event that started me off on the right path was when my mother, in her bedroom at home, passed away from a long bout with cancer. I was nine and did not know she was dying. My little brother, sister, and I were only allowed to visit …

The Truth in Embryo Mel Gabel The first thing you need to know is that I’m a PK (preacher’s kid). My father was the minister of United Brethren churches in small towns in eastern Colorado. My father firmly believed in the inerrancy of the Bible, and he was most certainly a fundamentalist. In 1945 (I …

In July 2015, a group of Black Unitarian Universalists met at the Movement for Black Lives Convening1 in Cleveland, Ohio, and formed a new organization: The Black Lives of Unitarian Universalism Organizing Collective (Black Lives UU, or BLUU).2 While this group, which included Leslie Mac and Lena Gardner, both activists in the Movement for Black …

We want to be here. We want to be here long term, and we want it to be beautiful. Beginning with an honest appraisal of precisely who and what we are, we can make that happen. For millennia, our cultural origin stories have served as the familiar foundations for our overall self-conception. From Abraham to …

Two ancient books, coming down the ages from over two millennia ago, are generally credited as the most well-read books of all time. The first book, the Bible (composed of the older Jewish testament and the newer Christian testament)—claimed by its adherents to be the “word of the one true God”—was written by a multitude …

In this feature, we conclude the Freethought Trail’s celebration of the seventeen sites in west-central New York State where nineteenth-century orator Robert Green Ingersoll delivered a lecture. Reactivation of the online Ingersoll Chronology (https://chronology.secularhumanism.org/) made it possible to identify every venue in the region at which Ingersoll was known to have spoken. Hornellsville/Shattuck Opera House …

The separation of church and state requires a government to be neutral in matters of religion. Such a government does not enact laws that are either overtly or historically traceable to concepts grounded only in religious beliefs, without any independent empirical verification. For those of us who are devoted to attaining this legal ideal, Justice …

For religion, it started going south in 2007. That was the year when the United States began joining the rest of the world’s high-income countries in rejecting the whole god-worshipping enterprise. (And it was about damn time!) “From 1981 to 2007, the United States ranked as one of the world’s more religious countries, with religiosity …

Writing for a bimonthly magazine can be frustrating. As I wrote my first draft, the U.S. presidential campaign was still raging; conservative judge Amy Coney Barrett was nominated to the Supreme Court; and COVID-19 infection rates fluctuated while schools, colleges, and universities opened to varying degrees and as northerners began spending more time indoors. By …

While American secularists’ attention has been fixed on recent U.S. Supreme Court decisions undermining church-state separation, there have been major developments on the international scene that warrant our concern and attention. In Turkey, the demagogic Islamist President Tayyip Erdoğan has continued his campaign to undermine the secular state established by Kemal Atatürk. On the regional …

The Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius wrote in his notebook (titled Meditations by Victorian translators, but he never called it that): Nothing happens to any man which he is not formed by nature to bear … Things themselves touch not the soul, not in the least degree; nor have they admission to the soul, nor can …

Political realism beseeches us to accept the world as it is. It acknowledges the difficulties that human beings encounter in a world without established laws, a global policeman, or a preordained history. Nevertheless, realism eschews the project of defeating all evil, overthrowing all dictators, and transforming the world. Such conservative instincts are at odds with …

More often than not, cultural products such as novels, movies, paintings, photographs, and songs are open to multiple interpretations. At the same time, it’s not a case of anything goes. Intelligent, well-informed interpretation takes place against an understanding of artistic traditions and cultural contexts. Skilled interpreters of contemporary literature, for example, might disagree among themselves …

Passover is horrible. How could anyone celebrate because the Jewish tribal god massacred Egyptian children in a huge infanticide while sparing Hebrew tots? That’s sickening. But there’s little need to fret about it, because the Old Testament account of Exodus is mere fiction. Archeologists find no evidence that Jews ever suffered slavery in Egypt or …

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 …

The Christian Right and the Courts Re: “The Christian Right’s Destructive Courthouse Moment Has Arrived,” by Robyn E. Blumner (FI, August/September 2020). As Robyn Blumner wrote, Republicans’ packing of federal courts is undoubtedly bad news for secularists. But instead of clenching our teeth and “keeping the faith,” secularists must remember that a progressive Congress and …

As this issue goes to press, Christians throughout the world will be gearing up to retell one another the story of the first Christmas. I see no reason for Free Inquiry to be any different, so here goes. No, not that first Christmas. I’m well aware that, centuries before the Common Era, Saturnalia laid the …

Beryl Markham, the first woman to fly east to west across the Atlantic, was undoubtedly an atheist. Raised in colonial Kenya by her British expatriate father, Markham was a “wild child” who spent much of her youth hunting—half naked—with local African tribesmen. There is no evidence she ever received religious instruction or attended church. In …

I was flossing my teeth the other night when I had this thought: “I have four canines!” That’s how it fell out of my brain, exclamation mark and all (just not in quotes). And I thought, “Four canines … an animal … a dog … a monkey … that’s what I am.” Of course, I …

Doing Philosophy: From Common Curiosity to Logical Reasoning, by Timothy Williamson (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018, ISBN 978-0198822516). 176 pp. Hardcover, $18.95. Philosophy and philosophers have always had their detractors. In his Devil’s Dictionary, Ambrose Bierce defined philosophy as “a route of many roads leading from nowhere to nothing.” When Bertrand Russell decided to study …

At first she was alone with wings for hoppingAnd friendsEach had a branch in the tree Then she was starving, she and the othersCrowding the treeAnd grew wings for flying Swarming up with wings bigger than bodyFriend is enemyAll are hungry From above imagining silk in seeds of milletIf soil is dirtThe meal is sweet …

Sometimes I leave conversations, saymy mother is calling—although I have no mother—muscle memory of a lie that I have never quite been able to leave behind. It’sthe tap of a doctor’s hammer on my knee. Excuse meone moment, my mother’s calling. The phone not even ringing, just held limp in my hand.The way her hand …

an empty cicada shell12 feet aboveclinging to the tree bark like a velcro hook despite the windy rainfallthere is no movementa carefully chosen timeshare for the month in the spring, a girl climbscurious fingersfind another exoskeleton to keep among coins and beadsher forgotten collectionin a box.