The Afterlife and More

The survival instinct is strong within our species. Preservation of one’s existence is of supreme importance, and as social organisms, this concern for survival extends to others as well. In fact, it is reasonable to suspect that the impetus for the evolution of the concept of an afterlife was an attempt to reconcile the need …

In 2016, Congress passed the Frank R. Wolf International Religious Freedom Act, a.k.a. Public Law 114-281. Section 2 of the Act—an amendment to the International Religious Freedom Act (IRFA) of 1998—conveyed Congress’s “revised” view that “freedom of thought, conscience and religion is understood to protect theistic and non-theistic beliefs, and the right not to profess …

We may have been brought up as Christians in Christian households—our parents and grandparents may have been Christians—yet now we are not Christians at all. There is no contradiction in that assertion, which is, furthermore, true. I am an example of someone nurtured in that way yet one who is not a Christian—who is, indeed, …

Death is the mother of religion. Would faith ever have been born if not for life’s only inevitability for all: The Reaper? As the first Homo sapiens discovered, we are all renters in life until we buy the farm. So, even before the wheel, mortals invented the first life insurance policy: religion. Each major creed …

Author’s Note: This is dedicated to Sue Gibbons, because she loved Tom Flynn more than anyone did (and he her), and he helped greatly with this article, as with so many other things. Not long ago, in the context of discussing an article in The Guardian about a documentary on the exploitation of “Jane Roe” …

The Decline and Fall of C. S. Lewis In assessing C. S. Lewis’s achievement as a Christian apologist, the key is chronology. He is, of course, best known for his writings of the 1940s, and it is as the author of such celebrated books as The Screwtape Letters, Mere Christianity, Surprised by Joy, The Problem of Pain, and Miracles that he …

What is Dubai and why should we care? Is it the murmurings of a nascent Arab Enlightenment where reason and science are valued, giving hope to its future? Or is it a gleaming, modern facade under which beats the heart of an Islamic theocracy run by a PR-savvy ruler? That was the question Richard Dawkins …

The trouble with humans is that we never know when to stop. We know how to invent things, but we seem to be completely unable to figure out how to uninvent them—or even just stop using them once we’ve invented them. We can commission like crazy but we can’t decommission. Like, for instance, cruise ships …

These days, folks go on about how back in olden times American conservatives, who tend to be Christians, were much more reasonable than they are now. Many claim the religious Right and its Republican Party has gone radically, toxically authoritarian in its adoration for Norman Vincent Peale–adherent hyper-narcissistic Donald Trump. McCain, the Bushes, Reagan, and …

Criticizing the idea of human dignity is about as popular as attacking motherhood, apple pie, and cute puppies. In its current form, the idea is well-intentioned, and the phrase itself—“human dignity”—has a satisfying emotional ring. But I have serious misgivings about invoking human dignity as a consideration in political and legal contexts. Let me explain. …

World-renowned paleoanthropologist and conservationist Richard Leakey died in his home in Nairobi, Kenya, on January 2, 2022. He was an advocate for the advancement and acceptance of human evolution, especially as it related directly to Africa. Richard Erskine Frere Leakey was born on December 19, 1944, in Nairobi to Louis and Mary Leakey. He spent …

“Ant Man,” “Father of Sociobiology,” “Father of Biodiversity”: these epithets were how E. O. Wilson became affectionately known due to his lifelong work with insects and in environmental advocacy. He was also known for his secular humanist ideas pertaining to religion and ethics. Wilson died on December 26, 2021, in Burlington, Massachusetts, at the age …

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 …

Abortion Arguments Shadia Drury (“A Pagan Approach to the Abortion Debacle,” FI, December 2021/January 2022) seems to think that the U.S. Supreme Court decided Roe v. Wade based on some abstract “right to choose” and that Ruth Bader Ginsburg objected to Roe v. Wade “because no one can claim a right to choose what so …

Never mind how many decades ago I took college astronomy. Suffice it to say that I needed a refresher. Rather than waste time on lightweights such as Brian Cox, Phil Plait, and Neil deGrasse Tyson, I turned to the Science Book of science books—that is, the Bible. All I can say is that the National …

In our earliest personal understandings of atheism, most of us tend to focus on religion as the sole target of unbelief, concentrating on whatever local god, holy book, or other anointed authority our home culture presents us with. But as we become more comfortable with basic atheism, we begin to understand that religion isn’t the …

Historians have been reluctant to acknowledge that India’s most famous prime minister—Jawaharlal Nehru (1889–1964)—was not only an atheist but an extraordinarily learned atheist. His atheism did not develop as a reaction to a religious upbringing or the suffering of the Indian people (though he thought only a secular society could alleviate that suffering). Nor did …

Atheists and theists sometimes notice—or think they notice—the same irony in the legacy of atheist thought. “Isn’t it funny,” they ask, “that many great thinkers atheists look up to are deists?” Many of the writers atheists admire are deists. Voltaire, Thomas Paine, and Mark Twain were all deists. All three also had insightful and funny …

Examining the claims and doctrines of the world’s major religions reveals clearly that there are profound controversies. There is one claim, however, for which there is virtually no disagreement: Religions provide comfort and satisfaction to their adherents. I think this is an understatement. Religious faith provides spectacular rewards to its followers. These include intense feelings …

As a typical American Jew who was born in the 1950s, most of my knowledge of Christian theology comes from having memorized every song in Jesus Christ Superstar when I was in high school. As I understand it, Christians believe that Jesus, the son of God, was born in Bethlehem in the Roman province of …

In the February/March 2021 issue of Free Inquiry, S. T. Joshi wrote, “It is surprising—and dismaying—how little attention antiabortionists pay to the actual person carrying the fetus they are so determined to preserve.” There is another actual person even more forgotten. In the years of bitter argument over abortion, from ancient times to the present, …

From time to time, people try to save my soul. I’m flattered by their interest in me (or is it interest in their own status with the Almighty?). Besides, they do tend to be awfully persistent, panting to meet me one-on-one if telephone evangelism has not worked. I want to let them down gently. I …

Atheism: The Basics, by Graham Oppy (London, United Kingdom: Routledge, 2019, ISBN 9781138506961). 190 pp. Paperback, $24.95. A few years back, an anomaly shook up the publishing world—atheist books became best sellers. Books by Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins, and others attracted a broad readership and garnered much attention. These so-called New Atheists offered …

The Reality of Religious Violence, by Hector Avalos (Sheffield, England: Sheffield Phoenix Press, 2019, ISBN 9781910928585). xiv + 499 pp. Hardcover, $97.50. In his 2005 book Fighting Words: The Origin of Religious Violence (Prometheus Books), the late secular humanist religious studies scholar Hector Avalos advanced a bold thesis. He argued that religious language and concepts …

O my love, where are they, where are they going The flash of a hand, streak of movement, rustle of pebbles. I ask not out of sorrow, but in wonder. –Czeslaw Milosz Carrying water to the late lilies from Easter, their flowers no more than fingers of pearls, whitely thin and on display, Ribih and …

We grew up, you and I, washed in the blood, two hearts strangely warmed, tuned to the tenets of four-part harmony, and timed to the cadence of an American karma. I walked the aisle, born again and again, reincarnation with a black leather Bible. Hurdy-gurdy hymns and clammy thighs on pews, the unmystic soundtrack for …

Sudden thunder breaks the cat runs— A tiny Steady rain Is still wet— On the broad leaves The sunflower leans into Rain as subtle As a gray cat Among sunflowers— At dusk The sunflowers bend toward dawn