Humanism and Wokism

What comes to mind when you hear the term wokism? Activism countering injustices against minorities and the marginalized? Confrontation and cancellation, both public and private, of figures of the past and the present? A step forward for integration, inclusion, and acceptance? A step backward for academic and scientific research and discussion? How did a word …

The 1619 Project The publication of The 1619 Project is a good place to start for understanding the controversy over critical race theory and woke liberalism. The project started as an effort on the part of a group of African American writers for The New York Times to focus on the role that slavery has …

The surest way to work up a crusade in favor of some good cause is to promise people they will have a chance of maltreating someone. To be able to destroy with good conscience, to be able to behave badly and call your bad behavior “righteous indignation”—this is the height of psychological luxury, the most …

In this book, John McWhorter argues that woke ideology has become a “religion” whose followers, the “Elect,” are failing in their efforts to reduce racism and are actually harming Black Americans. In the excerpt that follows, he offers an alternative approach.—The Editors Chapter 5: BEYOND “DISMANTLING STRUCTURES”: SAVING BLACK AMERICA FOR REAL IF YOU HAVE …

Native American repatriations—the removal of human remains and artifacts from museums and universities and their subsequent reburial—may proceed faster in 2022 than in any preceding year. Yet repatriation hinders science because human remains and artifacts are used to reconstruct the past, which in turn helps us understand our common human experience. Factors that impact repatriation …

Look around the world and you see religious fundamentalists vying for power. When they get it, they force everyone else to obey their rules. They are hard to stop. Today it is happening in the Middle East; a few centuries ago, it was in Europe. This opera tells the horrifying story of fundamentalists gaining total …

The Freethought Trail (www.freethought-trail.org) is the Council for Secular Humanism’s online tribute to some 185 radical-reform history sites. All are located in west-central New York State (between Rochester and Rome; very roughly, within 120 miles of the Robert Green Ingersoll Birthplace Museum in Dresden, New York). The Trail focuses on the nineteenth and early twentieth …

It’s hard not to get disgusted with human beings sometimes. We seem to have such a talent for destroying everything, and then doing it all over again a few years later. It’s not enough that we’ve trashed the climate we depend on for survival, or that we’ve laid waste to countless species and their habitats …

When the Russians invaded Ukraine in February 2022, President Joe Biden offered to fly President Volodymyr Zelenskyy out of the country to a safe haven. When Zelenskyy replied, “I need ammunition, not a ride,” he instantly became the hero of the West, fighting for freedom and democracy against the despotism of Russia’s Vladimir Putin. It …

The religion factor is yet again getting insufficient attention when it comes to dark human affairs—in this case regarding the Russian assault on Ukraine. Early in the 1990s TV show Northern Exposure, set in Alaska, main character Dr. Joel Fleischman asks, “Why can’t the Russians find a way to govern themselves and let us off of …

One of the goals of the Enlightenment that inspired the American and French revolutions was the rejection of exclusionary group privilege based on religion and aristocratic ancestry. This was epitomized by the French slogan “la carriere ouverte aux talents”—careers in public service and the professions open to men of talent irrespective of birth, faith, and …

35 Years Ago “Lack of religious worship, prayer, and ceremony has affected my life very favorably—by giving me much more time than I otherwise would have had to be committed to other, quite worldly pursuits. Including personal pleasure! “I consider life meaningful even though I reject the idea of a theistic being, because I make …

Free Inquiry Pronoun Future S. T. Joshi (“Pronoun Follies,” FI, February/March 2022) is in a state about the campaign to replace the third person singular him/her with the plural they—even for singular references to appease the transgender community. He would have been in a real tizzy a few centuries earlier when the singular ye was …

It was divine intervention, I tell you. I was driving along, belting out “Nobody Loves Me” with operatic gusto, when a “Jesus loves you” billboard stopped me halfway through the part about eating worms. For proof, it cited one of two Bible texts perpetually poised on the tips of ardent Christian tongues: “Greater love hath …

In an age simultaneously still reeling from the decline of religion and one in which science has yet to fully deliver on its promises, it seems to me agnosticism is surely the only mature response. Both theism and its opposite certainly have their merits and bright ideas; Lord above knows I’ve dabbled in both, myself, …

When my daughter Sasha was about three years old, she began asking questions about religion. She wanted to know if such an entity as a god existed, along with whether other characters, such as Santa Claus, were real. Her little friends talked about a god, and later when she attended pre-school, the question of religion …

Editors’ Note: When Tom Flynn unexpectedly died in August 2021, he had many articles in the works for publication in FREE INQUIRY, including this one. We present it along with Flynn’s introductory comments. The Mail I Get … In the summer of 2020, I received a proposal from one Alan Tarica for an article on …

I believe that E=mc2. I also believe that God does not exist. I used to believe that God exists, but now I do not. Most of what I believe is based on testimonial evidence, that is, things I heard from others. Very little of what I believe is based on direct evidence, that is, things …

Hello, God, it’s me. I haven’t bothered with you for quite some time. I figured: What’s the use? But then it occurred to me that maybe you are real. In that case, I request something very simple from you. Can you … would you … please write up your job description? You know—what your duties …

Don’t fall, don’t cry, and please don’t worry the evening meal flavors the great domain rain hammers at the glass, sparks in the stove little boy can taste the delicacies of evening. School is done for the day, homework will come then sleep in the cozy down bed, close to the door almost to ensure …

Andy Norman, Mental Immunity: Infectious Ideas, Mind-Parasites, and the Search for a Better Way to Think, with a foreword by Steven Pinker. (New York, NY: HarperWave, 2021. ISBN 978-0-06-300298-2.) 397 pp. Hardcover, $29.99. Brian T. Watson, Headed into the Abyss: The Story of Our Time, and the Future We’ll Face. (Swampscott, MA: Anvilside Press, 2019. …

Rationality: What It Is, Why It Seems Scarce, Why It Matters, by Steven Pinker (New York, NY: Random House/Penguin/Viking, 2021, ISBN 9780525561996). 432 pp. Hardcover, $32.00. Steven Pinker is one of my intellectual heroes. I have read and benefitted from his previous work on language (The Language Instinct, Words and Rules), cognition (How the Mind …

Walter Kaufmann: Philosopher, Humanist, Heretic, by Stanley Corngold (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2019, ISBN 978-0-691-16501-1). 744 pp. Hardcover, $39.95. Within the world of atheists, humanists, and freethinkers, there are some who take inspiration from the world of science and mathematics and others who take it from the arts and humanities. The former group includes …

So it has been, so it will be. The ancient hag and the child crouch under the thorny acacia tree, with the show soon to begin the men from a distance safe, gather on the crest of the hill. Down below, with a thorn, and the delicate dried gut of a gnarled rat, she stitches …

How beautiful you look, my darling, In whose glass I see the Best parts of me. Ah, to drink the image with a Draught And feel whole. Now she’s practiced in the Art of dying. Less of her shall there be to be Seen, A wine of misery. I love you in your old age, …

Identitarian: A person or ideology that espouses that group identity is the most important thing about a person, and that justice and power must be viewed primarily on the basis of group identity rather than individual merit. (Source: Urban Dictionary) “The Affirmations of Humanism”: We attempt to transcend divisive parochial loyalties based on race, religion, …