Woman Suffrage at 100

New York, then the nation’s most populous state, generated reform movements in the nineteenth century that swept across the country like whirlwinds, changing the face of America. Among them was the women’s rights movement. We all know the names of Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, Matilda Joslyn Gage, and Carrie Chapman Catt. The first …

I have relied on the published proceedings of the Third National Woman’s Rights Convention in Syracuse, New York, 1852, available at https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/011539064, and have chosen for consistency to use “woman’s rights” and “woman suffrage,” as the suffragists of this time did. Nineteenth-century quotes are transcribed with their original spelling and punctuation. All Bible quotes are …

In the August/September 2019 FI, Adam Neiblum discussed what he refers to as “human exceptionalism” (“Gould’s Second Stage: Progress, Evolution, and Human Exceptionalism”). Most of us have also been made well aware of so-called “American exceptionalism,” which falls one taxonomic level below Neiblum’s (as exceptionalisms go). Our “exceptionalist” biases seem to extend a level higher …

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 coverage area. Nearly forty such …

“My motto for the rest of the year is leave no vacancy behind,” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell told conservative radio talk show host Hugh Hewitt in late March. The Kentucky Republican was talking about filling vacant federal judgeships, of course. McConnell reconvened the U.S. Senate in May—while Washington, D.C., was still under shelter-at-home orders …

In a 5–4 ruling on the morning of June 30, 2020, the Supreme Court did incalculable damage to the separation of church and state in the case of Espinoza v. Montana Department of Revenue. The decision forces American taxpayers to pay for religious indoctrination, gutting the protections in both the United States Constitution and in No …

August 2020 includes an enormously important centenary, one that too few Americans will recognize. August 26 marks the hundredth anniversary of the adoption of the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, establishing the right to vote for women nationwide. Celebration of this milestone will be muted in large part because of the coronavirus pandemic. …

It is tempting to blame Donald J. Trump for being an amazingly bad president as he promotes the agenda of the religious Right and its defective policies (including elevating the rights of theoconservatives over other theists and secularists). But that hyper-materialist devotee of the amoral Christian Prosperity proponent Norman Vincent Peale literally does not know …

The one certainty that has emerged in the wake of this global pandemic is the utter moral collapse of the Republican Party. I refer to a moral collapse because, all apart from the appalling and inexcusable fecklessness of its leader in dealing with the medical issues of the outbreak, the party as a whole has …

Every city skyline is graced by stately steeples, spires, bell towers, domes, minarets, and other outlines of cathedrals, temples, mosques, synagogues, and sacred edifices of many sorts. The array seems majestic—until you realize that it represents an extravaganza of lies. The holy architecture proclaims a supernatural realm of gods, devils, heavens, hells, miracles, prophecies, angels, …

At the close of each year, those close to Barbara Smoker looked forward to receiving what Freethinker magazine Editor Barry Duke affectionately referred to as Smoker’s “‘egotistical’ year-end newsletter.” In Smoker’s 2018 missive, her correspondents learned that in May the beloved UK atheist activist had been diagnosed with advanced breast cancer. In disclosing her diagnosis, …

35 Years Ago in Free Inquiry “Since April 24, 1978, I have been sober—free from alcohol and all other mind-altering chemicals. … My only chance for continued survival is the maintenance of my personal sobriety. A well-accepted approach to curing addicts is to utilize the substitute addiction of reliance upon a mystical power ‘greater’ than …

Overall Instead of and contrary to some of the Principles of Humanism on the inside back cover of each issue of FI, hypocrisy and hate flow from the pages of the latest (April/May 2020) and the previous (February/March 2020) issues of FI like blood from a cut major artery. (As an aside: Before discarding, I …

The English muffin residing in my cupboard is no ordinary baked good. It accurately predicts the outcomes of major sporting events. I know, because I have jotted down its predictions and compared them against final scores for years. It has never missed. Its remarkable ability came to my attention one summer morning in 2004. I …

     After World War II, the French novelist Albert Camus published The Plague, a fictional account of a plague that hits a north African town. While Camus’s narrative is in part an allegory of the plague of world war and Nazism, it is fundamentally about the different psychological and ethical reactions to the suffering, …

When you think of famous past American atheists, who comes to mind? Robert Green Ingersoll? Elizabeth Cady Stanton? Mark Twain? Clarence Darrow? Carl Sagan? Madalyn Murray O’Hair? No matter who’s on your list, it’s a safe bet that most are white males. As Melanie Brewster notes in Atheists in America, “studies find almost unanimously that …

When it comes to classical music, it’s hard to swing a dead Bach progeny without running into a sacred motet, a Magnificat, a Mass, or a Requiem. Throughout the Middle Ages and into the Reformation, the greatest composers were firmly harnessed to the task of employing the massive machinery of compositional technique to extol the …

I am a scientist. Perhaps because I am a scientist, I have always felt that changing a belief I hold is a cause for celebration. New information that causes a belief to become untenable is a reason for joy. I am now eighty years old. This means that of all the scientific, engineering, and medical …

To describe my favorite off-leash dog park as “picturesque” would be to understate. Nestled against a backdrop of majestic, often snowcapped mountain peaks, its many trails wind through sagebrush and thickets. A swift creek feeds two natural ponds where, on warmer days, dogs love to romp. This particular December afternoon was not what you would …

I am a devout atheist. I used to be a theist—perhaps not a devout theist but a theist nonetheless. I became a theist at a very young age as a result of people whom I trusted telling me that God exists and convincing me that the existence of God was necessary to explain the world …

The Lost Song of Goliath, by Ronald A. Lindsay (Washington, D.C.: Nineteenth Street Publishers, 2019, ISBN 978-1-7337338-0-9). 289 pp. Softcover, $11.99.   Ronald A. Lindsay, former president and CEO of the Center for Inquiry, whose nonfiction includes Future Bioethics: Overcoming Taboos, Myths, and Dogmas (Prometheus Books, 2008) and The Necessity of Secularism (Pitchstone, 2014), here …

God Is a Question, Not an Answer: Finding Common Ground in Our Uncertainty, by William Irwin (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2018, ISBN: 978-1538115886). 160 pp. Hardcover, $24.95. William Irwin has written a very clear and articulate argument in support of the special value of doubt. Modest and yet far-ranging, the book delves into both …

Leaving the Allah Delusion Behind: Atheism and Freethought in Islam, by Ibn Warraq (Berlin, Germany: Verlag Schiler, 2020, ISBN 9783899302561). 752 pp. Hardcover, €68.00.   Who has an illusion about Allah? Most obviously, Muslims hold an illusion about Allah, a delusion about the Arab god. They deem him real, but he isn’t. In a sense …

I say hello You smile and wave You come sit with me and we chat You tell me about the new things in your room The crafts that you’ve made The new people you’ve met And the whole time you’re talking I look around at the people with similar smiles And realize, like them, you …

Leaden days, stratus clouds gauze the sky. A sphere of hot plasma thaws the sky. Belief is a phase, I said and shrugged. Sans intervention, what could cause the sky? Constellatory creatures lure the gaze. When ursa shows up, canus paws the sky. July and October fall in love, wed. When crab appears, scorpion claws …