Possible Futures: Utopias, Dystopias, AI, Artificial Personhood

Even in this time of COVID-19 and economic dislocation, of social unrest and climate threats, it pays to consider the farther future. Assuming that humanity survives our admittedly staggering short-term challenges, what might await us in the long run—a utopia of technological and cultural promise? A dystopia of ever-further crushed illusions? After decades of being …

Artificial Intelligence (AI) can be a misleading term. It is often misunderstood, at least by the general public. Robots or machines with advanced programs are already in use today, and in the future we will have much more advanced robots that will be able to perform many tasks. However, these are not the focus of …

Introduction Once upon a time, as a young researcher in the nascent field of artificial intelligence (AI), I was full of excitement and optimism. Sooner or later AI was going to be the secret sauce that would transform the world; discovering the recipe was my mission in life. But back then the idea of “thinking …

Not too long ago, humans believed that the stars determined their fate. Some still do. It was a belief born of naïveté, misunderstanding the nature of those diamonds in the night sky. But it was also a sign of our hubris, to presume that those lights in the firmament could have any interest in us. …

Simon Blackburn, Think Scott Cullen-Benson Before I can write about my pivot point, I must say a little about what came before. I was raised a Lutheran (in one of the more liberal synods) in a very small Midwestern town. My experiences were for the most part positive, because my mother emphasized the humanistic aspects …

The beheading of schoolteacher Samuel Paty by a Chechen-born teenager hit France particularly hard and, again, brought to the fore the long-running debate on “French values” and the place of Muslims in the French Republic. An attack several weeks later on a church in Nice, in which three people were killed, further inflamed tensions in …

On June 1, 2020, federal troops using tear gas and flash grenades cleared Washington, D.C., streets of Black Lives Matter protesters so that President Donald Trump could walk across the street to pose with a Bible. A clearer example of Christianity as the guiding ethos for White supremacy would be hard to come by. But …

L’Islam en Questions One work published before February 1989, when Khomeini’s fatwa on Rushdie was pronounced, deserves mention. In L’Islam en Questions (Grasset, 1986), twenty-four Arab writers reply to the following five questions: Does Islam retain its universal vocation? Could Islam be a system of government for a modern state? Is an Islamic system of …

I’ve watched every episode of the three seasons of Leah Remini: Scientology and the Aftermath (A&E). This deep dive into Scientology’s history, precepts, abuses, and the personal travails of its adherents is worth your time. It’s an object lesson in gullibility, groupthink, and “you’ve got to be kidding me” supplication. On the surface, Scientology is …

We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus—and nonbelievers. —Barack Obama, January 20, 2009 Like many Free Inquiry readers, I greeted President Joe Biden’s inauguration with elation and relief. At last, after a four-year reign of error that on January 6 recrudesced into a spasm of genuine terror, the nation faced the …

On January 20, on his blog Ask the Atheist, CFI Los Angeles Executive Director Jim Underdown was asked the following question: What did you think of the inauguration? Kind of godly, wasn’t it? William G., Wheaton, Illinois Here’s Underdown’s answer: (sigh) Look, overall, I thought it was great. The themes of unification, truth, resolve, equality—all …

Josh Lyman in The West Wing described Friday as “take out the trash day.” On Friday, the fictional White House would release as many of its bad news stories as possible in the knowledge that they would be reported in Saturday’s newspapers, because (so the thinking went) no one reads Saturday’s papers. For the past …

OK, we’re down. It was bumpy but we seem to be in one piece. Let’s take a deep breath and then check for damage. One big piece of good news right off the top: He didn’t launch the nukes. That was never a sure thing, and there were plenty of times when I, for one, …

Back during the Paleocene Epoch (we call it August/September 2020), in my FI column, I told you all to vote, dammit, because seculars have a long and sad history of voting at per capita rates way below those of theoconservatives. This is why the Republican minority has repeatedly won the presidency, houses of Congress, and …

Humanists who read magazines such as this one might be puzzled by the existence of something called “posthumanism,” sometimes called “critical posthumanism,” and by its hostility toward what posthumanists call “humanism.” So, why do posthumanists have a beef with whatever they understand humanism to be? Posthumanism is grounded in traditions of continental philosophy that have …

Why did supernatural religion decline rapidly in western democracies, especially in America, in the past quarter-century? Many sociologists attribute the transformation to prosperity, good health, and the governmental safety net. Affluent, secure, comfortable people have less urge to seek divine help, they contend. In contrast, religion remains strong in poor, unhealthy, less-developed places where life …

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 …

General The question “Do you believe in God?” is absurd, because it presupposes an existence. The correct question is “Do you believe there is a god?” In addition, ask these “pro-life” women with children how many admissions they paid, when pregnant, every time they went to a movie, concert, sporting event, or museum. Only one? …

Since its “rediscovery” in recent decades, Yeaster has become one of the most popular and fastest-growing holidays in the world. It is recognized by national holiday commissions in eighty-seven countries on eleven continents, and under consideration in many others. Why all the fuss over Yeaster? Because it is a celebration of yeast, perhaps the most …

Humankind: A Hopeful History, by Rutger Bregman. (New York: Little Brown, 2020, ISBN: 978-0-316-41853-9). 461 pp. Hardcover, $30.00. Rutger Bregman’s Humankind: A Hopeful History was just released in June, and already it’s being compared to Yuval Harari’s Sapiens.[1] Like Sapiens, it will enrich your understanding of the human animal. Like Sapiens, it’s a work of …