About Those Other Apocalypses ... Taking Stock of the Longer-Term Threats That Haven't Gone Away

Longtime readers will recognize the name of independent scholar Ibn Warraq, author of the breakthrough work Why I Am Not a Muslim (1995) and nearly a dozen more technical scholarly books focused principally on the history and doctrines of Islam. He was also a Free Inquiry columnist from 2005 until 2011. He recently published a …

Full disclosure: One of these articles was accepted and the other commissioned before the coronavirus crisis. Nonetheless, the question these essays raise is vital: As we survey the existential challenges humanity confronts—however immediately pressing the pandemic may be, grave medium- and long-term threats still face us—are we focusing our ameliatory energy in the most effective …

As someone who has been exploring the world’s most isolated wilderness regions for nearly half a century, I have some insight into the state of the planet and the human race’s current environmental befuddlement. I’ve watched the condition of the earth plummet before my eyes within my own lifespan, to the extent that I no …

The coronavirus is the salient fact of life today, and I will address it in a minute. First, I want to talk about the internet and our inability as humans to simultaneously navigate it and display reason. For the mindset that permitted the establishment of such a fragile society as ours is the same mindset …

Robert Green Ingersoll (1833–1899) has stumped historians. Biographer David Anderson states that Ingersoll was a “conservative and patriot … [not] versed in the social and economic controversies of the day.” He acknowledges that Ingersoll “taught men to question … the rationale behind the rise of nineteenth-century capitalism.” And he briefly mentions Ingersoll’s comparison of industrialists …

The iconoclastic Christopher Hitchens can be seen anytime on YouTube wryly advocating the teaching of religion in public schools: “I know of no other way to ensure a constant supply of atheists!” I laughed too, but he seemed unaware of how easily he could overshoot the mark on this one. Years ago, as a journalism …

After a lifetime spent reading great works of literature, I could not help finally facing the question of why religious topics were so frequently made the butt of jokes. Whether it was the works of Aristophanes or Homer, Ovid or Lucian, Boccaccio or Chaucer, Voltaire or Mark Twain, again and again I encountered great writers’ …

I defend atheism in my new book, Is A Good God Logically Possible? (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019). But I have not always been an atheist. In fact, I was in a religious order for twelve years, leaving only just before I would have had to take final vows at age twenty-six. And I only …

The conclusion of “He Is Risen” contained an assertion that I’ve often read and heard. However, it still never fails to offend me. The author facetiously mocks the Christian faith by asking, “Who in their right mind would worship a man who was put to death in such a humiliating way, and then who would …

According to an enduring legend, in 1686 while conquering Turks were praying in the Budapest mosque they had converted from a Catholic church, suddenly—in a great explosion—a figure of the Holy Virgin Mary appeared! The credulous soldiers were fear-stricken and fled, and the Christians began to reclaim their church and city, beginning a joyous procession …

Unbelief in Indian Civilization Ever since Alexander the Great and his men came into contact with her, India has figured in the Western imagination as a land of spirituality, gurus, mystics, and a thousand gods that adorn an even greater number of temples and shrines. Modern Indian thinkers have perpetuated the myth of Indian spirituality; …

In this feature, we continue the Freethought Trail’s celebration of the centenary of the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which established women’s right to vote. We present more of the new, site-specific pages devoted to annual suffrage conventions held in west-central New York State, the Trail’s territory. Nearly forty such pages …

There’s change, and then there’s change. As Free Inquiry’s previous issue (April/May 2020) went to press, most Americans were focused on the juddering conclusion of President Donald J. Trump’s impeachment, followed by the rapid winnowing of candidates for the Democratic presidential nomination. Readers of this magazine might have been discussing the toxic Christian nationalism in …

I am writing this piece at the end of March 2020 for publication in the June/July 2020 issue of Free Inquiry, which means a two-month pipeline between completion/filing and publication. Normally, that is a short time, even if it spans events that are highly consequential in one domain of life, such as the outcome of …

Sir Thomas Browne wrote in “Urn Burial”: “The long habit of living indisposeth us for dying.” It’s an aphorism I love, because it’s applicable to so much more than life and death. The long habit of (so many things) indisposeth us for (being unable to keep doing them). We love our habitual ways of doing …

We are at a pessimistic moment as the world faces the challenges and uncertainties posed by climate change and the coronavirus. The current crisis seems to provide a field day for purveyors of all types of irrationality, quackery, and superstition. With most places of religious worship in lockdown worldwide, the location for such ideas to …

Hi. My name is Virus. You can call me Crony. Lovely to meet you, but please do not expect any dialogue. Forgive me, but any communication between us will be a one-way street—from me to you. Talk to me if you must, but do not expect me to listen. You need to understand at the …

Author’s note: As I write, some of us turn to humor as a coping mechanism amid the horror that is the coronavirus pandemic. If by press time this piece lands poorly, I apologize in advance. If the coronavirus has claimed someone dear to you, you might want to skip this piece and read something better, …

The United States is not a democracy but rather an oligarchy in the classic sense of the term: rule of the rich in the interests of the rich. American ideals of equal liberty and equal opportunity have become a relic of the past. As economist Thomas Piketty has argued, inequality in the United States surpasses …

It’s not actually about saving little preborn babies. Back when this Republic was formed, the founders held absolutely no discussion about women’s reproductive rights. The all-male, largely Protestant and deist team that wrote up the Constitution would not have imagined addressing what they considered to be mere women’s affairs. The female sex quietly did what …

Secular celebrants are now permitted to officiate and solemnize marriages in Michigan, after state’s attorney general Dana Nessel reversed the government’s opposition to a lawsuit brought by the Center for Inquiry (CFI). Promising that the state considers CFI-trained and certified Secular Celebrants covered by existing statutes regarding marriage solemnization, the presiding federal court brought the …

Barbara Smoker (1923–2020), one of Britain’s most colorful and prolific voices for atheism and humanism, died in early April. She was the second-longest-serving president of the National Secular Society, an atheist organization; chair of an influential euthanasia society; a vice chair of Humanists UK, the country’s national humanist organization; and the author of a popular …

Mario Bunge passed away in the loving company of his wife, Marta, and children, Eric and Silvia, on February 24, 2020, in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. Bunge was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, on September 21, 1919. He studied physics and mathematics as an undergraduate at the Universidad Nacional de La Plata and founded a Workers …

35 Years Ago in Free Inquiry “The campaign against the public schools has intensified in recent years … vigilante groups seek to censor what is being taught in the schools and rid them of the influence of secular humanism. The new law [the Education for Economic Security Act of 1984] and the rule [regulations proposed …

Overall I’ve read every issue of Free Inquiry from Vol. 1, No. 1 right through to the present. I write today because I find the February/March 2020 issue (Vol. 40, No. 2) to be a particularly strong one, perhaps the strongest ever. Thank you for that. James A. Haught’s “Nobody Dares Say It” op-ed was …

In the midst of the coronavirus pandemic, we are being inundated by analyses and speculation about its effects on the world economy, political campaigning, democratic norms, civil liberties, social solidarity, the viability of regimes of fragile states, ongoing armed conflicts, camps of refugees and displaced persons, business practices, income inequality, provision of safety nets, the …

Among the myriad creatures that inhabit the earth, human beings are, according to prevailing religious opinion, unique for one special reason: they have been endowed by their creator with a soul, an immanent part of human reality that cannot be seen—or, indeed, verified—in any way apart from those same doctrinal precepts that have ordained and …

In his 2012 memoir Joseph Anton, Salman Rushdie, borrowing the words of Saul Bellow, posited that the writer’s task is to “open the universe a little more.” This has always struck me as beautiful and true as well as simple. It would also do as a nice description of the scientist’s job. Herein lies that …

In the Wall Street Journal’s July 8, 2019, announcement of his new Commission on Unalienable Rights, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo stated, “America’s Founders defined unalienable rights as including ‘life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.’ They designed the Constitution to protect individual dignity and freedom. A moral foreign policy should be grounded in …

Religion and Development in the Global South, by Rumy Hasan (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017, ISBN 978-3-319-57062-4). 225 pp. Hardcover, $109.99.   I agreed to review this book believing that Rumy Hasan had found and compiled compelling evidence that religion slows socio-economic development (that is how the book is described in promotional materials). The idea that …

Secularity and Science: What Scientists around the World Really Think about Religion, by Elaine Howard Ecklund, David R. Johnson, Brandon Vaidyanathan, Kirstin R. W. Matthews, Steven W. Lewis, Robert A. Thomson Jr., and Di Di (New York, Oxford University Press, 2019, ISBN 9780190926755). 352 pp. Hardcover, $29.95.   Elaine Howard Ecklund is a sociology professor …

What is the secret of such inwardness? She’s disappeared into herself again skating across the ice of consciousness her movements indistinguishable from pain. Is this my mother or the Virgin Mary? I do not recognize this pious poise seated at the bed’s edge, solitary, indifferent to the tenor of my voice. She mumbles in an …

The swifts flock, swooping clouds, And string together on telephone wires. White breasts, black wings: they fly At the time of leaving when leaves turn, And they turn southwards and cry. The egrets assemble on the mill pond, On overhanging branches in twilight. White necks, black knees: they soar When the time comes, above trees, …