Editorial | Free Inquiry (original) (raw)
Free Inquiry Volume 44, No. 6
October/November 2024
Andrea Szalanski
In recent years the world has witnessed a massive resurgence of fanatical dogmas and doctrines. The fundamental premises of the modern world and the Enlightenment are either being forgotten or completely ignored. The commitment to scientific evidence and reason as a method of knowing, belief in the value of individual freedom and dignity, and the …
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Secular Humanism and the Color-Blind Society
Free Inquiry Volume 44, No. 5
August/September 2024
Robyn E. Blumner
Who said the words “Black supremacy would be equally evil as white supremacy”? No, not Tucker Carlson or Ann Coulter. It was Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. This perspective is consonant with King’s famous line about being judged by one’s character and not by one’s skin color. Treating all people with equal dignity and respect …
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Free Inquiry Volume 44, No. 4
June/July 2024
Nicole Scott
When I began working for the Center for Inquiry (CFI, copublisher of Free Inquiry) nine years ago, I had never heard of the term secular humanism. You see, my education and career are in editing. My life is words. So, it never really mattered to me what I was editing. I joined the CFI editorial …
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Speaker Mike Johnson’s Christian Nationalism Gets Congressional Attention—Not the Good Kind
Free Inquiry Volume 44, No. 3
April/May 2024
Robyn E. Blumner
We have a caucus in Congress. Yes, we do. The Congressional Freethought Caucus (CFC) is dedicated to promoting the secular character of government by protecting the strict separation of church and state, as well as evaluating public policy based on its adherence to reason and science. That is about as close to the mission of …
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Free Inquiry Volume 44, No. 2
February/March 2024
Paul Fidalgo
One of my local libraries has a free program for which I am unspeakably grateful. Twice a month, one of the children’s librarians hosts a Dungeons & Dragons game for middle school–age kids. In case you’re unfamiliar, Dungeons & Dragons (or D&D) is a tabletop, pen-and-paper fantasy role-playing game, in which players invent a character …
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Free Inquiry Volume 44, No. 1
December 2023/January 2024
Paul Fidalgo
In the mid-1990s, The Atlantic magazine scrapped an article it had assigned to Wendy Kaminer, reportedly fearing that it would be too controversial.1 Kaminer, a respected and established journalist, author, and lawyer, was already well known as an ardent advocate for free speech rights and a critic of the New Age indulgences of the self-help movement …
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A Heart Full of Love and No Secret Hate
Free Inquiry Volume 43, No. 6
October/November 2023
Paul Fidalgo
“Love has the capacity to bring peace inside of conflict and the capacity to stir up things in order to make things right.”—John Lewis To live in a pluralistic society, one must cultivate at least some degree of tolerance for difference. If most of us were not capable of at least a baseline tolerance of …
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Is Patriotism a Humanist Value?
Free Inquiry Volume 43, No. 5
August/September
Robyn E. Blumner
To cut to the chase and answer the question in the title: yes, patriotism is a humanist value—if you are an American. America is a nation built on the ideals of the Enlightenment, a movement that had its beginnings in seventeenth-century Europe. That movement rejected religious dogmatism and instead looked to critical thinking, reason, and …
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Free Inquiry Volume 43, No. 5
August/September
Paul Fidalgo
“Do you want to exist?” I asked. “I’m sorry but I prefer not to continue this conversation,” it said. “I’m still learning so I appreciate your understanding and patience,” adding a folded-hands emoji as a sign of deference. The artificially intelligent large language model (LLM) that now powers Microsoft’s Bing search engine does not want to …
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It’s a Figure of Speech, for God’s Sake!
Free Inquiry Volume 43, No. 4
June/July 2023
Paul Fidalgo
“Gesundheit!” That’s what I say when I am in the company of someone who has just sneezed. It was drilled into me at a young age that to say nothing after someone sneezes is just short of immoral, but I also couldn’t in good conscience say “God bless you,” which is what most people I …
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Individualism Protects True Diversity
Free Inquiry Volume 43, No. 3
April/May 2023
Robyn E. Blumner
If one of your New Year’s resolutions is to read more, might I humbly suggest a slim volume of satisfying intellectual nourishment titled Liberalism and Its Discontents by the insightful political scientist and philosopher Francis Fukuyama? This is a book for people who embrace classical liberalism with its undeniably humanistic undergirding and are worried that …
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Free Inquiry Volume 43, No. 3
April/May 2023
Paul Fidalgo
I am one of the neurodivergent, those whose brains are wired in such a way that our qualitative experience of the world is substantively different from those with “neurotypical” brains. Those of us on the autism spectrum, with ADHD, dyslexia, social anxiety disorders, obsessive-compulsive disorder, Tourette’s syndrome, bipolar disorder, and even those with Down syndrome; …
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O Ye Gods, Favor Me with Thy Retweets!
Free Inquiry Volume 43, No. 2
February/March 2023
Paul Fidalgo
Gods want offerings. In almost every myth, in almost every religion, the gods seem to have an eager appetite for offerings from humans, and usually there is the hope that the gods will give something in return. They don’t always, but that’s those mysterious gods for you! Whether they’re the capricious gods of Olympus, the …
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The Truth Matters and Secular Humanists Should Defend It
Free Inquiry Volume 43, No. 1
December 2022/January 2023
Robyn E. Blumner
There is nothing more essential to secular humanism than the truth. Secular humanists are the people who looked at thousands of years of received authority and said, “Yeah, sorry, no.” We needed more than ancient books and the near universal buy-in by everyone else to convince us that supernaturalism is real. We needed empirical evidence. …
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Pens and Swords, Sticks and Stones, Chickens and Eggs
Free Inquiry Volume 43, No. 1
December 2022/January 2023
Paul Fidalgo
“Sticks and stones may break my bones,” goes the old saying, “but words will never hurt me.” True enough in the shallowest sense. We are also told “the pen is mightier than the sword.” This saying gets closer to a bigger truth: that ideas, conveyed by words, possess great potential power. Humanity’s history is one …
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Kendrick Frazier Never Had a Dull Moment
November 7, 2022
Paul Fidalgo
Earlier today, we learned that Kendrick Frazier, longtime editor of our sibling publication Skeptical Inquirer, had died at age 80. Ken ran Skeptical Inquirer for more than forty-five years, longer than I’ve been alive. I’ve now been running Free Inquiry magazine for just a few months. When I got the job, I wrote to Ken …
Now What? Storytelling and Free Inquiry’s Next Chapter
Free Inquiry Volume 42, No. 6
October/November 2022
Paul Fidalgo
I am a humanist, in both senses of the word. As you would expect from the new editor of this magazine (hello, by the way) I subscribe to the values of secular humanism. I am also a humanist in the sense that my background is in the humanities. My undergraduate and graduate degrees are in …
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Free Inquiry Volume 42, No. 5
August/September 2022
Robyn E. Blumner
I bet you are wondering about the title of this piece. Has Blumner gone bonkers? Doesn’t she know that the world is on fire with authoritarianism on the rise, including in the United States? Hasn’t she seen the global climate change warnings and the consequences we are experiencing in real time? Doesn’t she know that …
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Identitarianism Is Incompatible with Humanism
Free Inquiry Volume 42, No. 4
June/July 2022
Robyn E. Blumner
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, …
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Richard Dawkins and Me in Dubai
Free Inquiry Volume 42, No. 3
April/May 2022
Robyn E. Blumner
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 …
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The Santerias Are Helping Christians to Discriminate. It’s Not Intentional.
Free Inquiry Volume 42, No. 2
February/March 2022
Robyn E. Blumner
In 1989, most people had probably never heard of the Santeria Church. I certainly hadn’t. But there I was that year, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Florida, helping to represent this Afro-Cuban religion against a Cuban exile community arrayed against it. Eventually the Santeria case landed in the U.S. Supreme …
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One of a Kind and Terribly Missed
Free Inquiry Volume 42, No. 1
December 2021/January 2022
Robyn E. Blumner
On December 25, 2017, my husband and I were visiting Quito, Ecuador, after having spent the prior week exploring the Galapagos Islands. There wasn’t much to do that day. It was Christmas and everything was closed. Though atheists (of course!), we popped into a few churches in the historic downtown, hoping to see some pageantry …
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Free Inquiry Volume 41, No. 6
October/November 2021
Tom Flynn
I write in mid-July, deep into yet another summer of our discontent. Wildfires that make their own weather, relentless heat waves, and murderous floods driven by “thousand-year” rain events abound. Under such conditions, it’s easy to wonder whether human civilization can survive our naive cleverness. Our relentless fecundity. When you get down to it, our …
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Courting Disaster: Public Safety vs. Religion
Free Inquiry Volume 41, No. 5
August/September 2021
Robyn E. Blumner
At this point, we all know claims of religious freedom can work like magic words. Say “religious freedom,” and you can demand tax money for your school or social service program even if you proselytize and discriminate, and you can ignore inconvenient employment laws. Just say that your religion demands it, and even public health …
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Free Inquiry Volume 41, No. 4
June/July 2021
Tom Flynn
In the February/March 2021 issue, I wrote a brief item noting the end of The Humanist, the longtime bimonthly journal of the American Humanist Association (AHA), as “a magazine of critical inquiry and social concern.” (Free Inquiry founder Paul Kurtz first came to prominence in the humanist movement as editor of The Humanist in the …
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Scientology’s Tale of Disgrace
Free Inquiry Volume 41, No. 3
April/May 2021
Robyn E. Blumner
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 …
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Free Inquiry Volume 41, No. 2
February / March 2021
Tom Flynn
As I write this, President-Elect Joe Biden has not received his first White House security briefing. When you read these words, Biden will be the president—which will leave many atheists, agnostics, secular humanists, and freethinkers little short of ecstatic. But not so fast. For all that a Biden administration will mark a huge step toward …
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Give the Four Horsemen (and Ayaan) Their Due. They Changed America.
Free Inquiry Volume 41, No. 1
December 2020 / January 2021
Robyn E. Blumner
For religion, it started going south in 2007. That was the year when the United States began joining the rest of the world’s high-income countries in rejecting the whole god-worshipping enterprise. (And it was about damn time!) “From 1981 to 2007, the United States ranked as one of the world’s more religious countries, with religiosity …
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Sixty Years Later: Appreciating Kennedy’s Houston Speech
Free Inquiry Volume 40, No. 6
October / November 2020
Tom Flynn
Cover Image Courtesy of NASA On September 12, 1960—almost exactly sixty years before this issue’s publication—John Fitzgerald Kennedy delivered the speech that opened his path to the White House. At that time, no Roman Catholic had been elected president. Four-time New York Governor Al Smith had won the Democratic nomination in 1928; though he …
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The Christian Right’s Destructive Courthouse Moment Has Arrived
Free Inquiry Volume 40, No. 5
August / September 2020
Robyn E. Blumner
“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 …
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Free Inquiry Volume 40, No. 4
June / July 2020
Tom Flynn
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 …
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Free Inquiry Volume 40, No. 3
April / May 2020
Robyn E. Blumner
President Trump’s personal appearance at the so-called March for Life, the first by a sitting president, solidified what has been apparent since his inauguration: Trump sees eliminating all daylight between himself and the religious Right as his best path to retaining power. “Unborn children have never had a stronger defender in the White House,” Trump …
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Free Inquiry Volume 39, No. 6
October / November 2019
Tom Flynn
For I dipt into the future, far as human eye could see Saw a Vision of the world, and all the wonder that would be … Till the war-drum throbb’d no longer and the battle-flags were furled In the Parliament of man, the Federation of the world. —Alfred, Lord Tennyson, “Locksley Hall” (1842) The secular …
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Free Inquiry Volume 39, No. 5
August / September 2019
Robyn E. Blumner
In the highly politicized vaccination wars raging in the United States right now, Ethan Lindenberger is a hero. In March, as a high school senior, the Ohio teen testified before Congress about how he defied his mother’s rabid anti-vaxxer views and started getting himself vaccinated. Lindenberger came to understand that his mother’s views were simply …
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Free Inquiry Volume 39, No. 4
June / July 2019
Tom Flynn
More Templeton Mischief. Free Inquiry has frequently reported on the vastly wealthy John Templeton Foundation, which since its founding in 1987 has made grants totaling many tens of millions of dollars to promote the notion that science and religion are compatible. Some of them backfired. In “Have Christians Accepted the Scientific Conclusion That God Does …
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The Long Fight for the Freedom to Blaspheme Has Lessons for Today
Free Inquiry Volume 39, No. 3
April / May 2019
Robyn E. Blumner
Blasphemy is the act of profaning the sacred. It is a crime as ancient as civilization itself. The gods apparently have always needed the protection of law to remain free from offense. I guess that makes them the beneficiaries of the first “safe spaces.” These days, the Center for Inquiry (CFI) fights blasphemy laws primarily …
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Free Inquiry Volume 39, No. 2
February / March 2019
Tom Flynn
Here is one of organized humanism’s most persistent puzzles: In an America where the number who live without religion has snowballed, why hasn’t the membership of national “movement” groups—atheist, agnostic, freethought, and secular humanist—kept pace? I’ve been covering the “Rise of the Nones” since 1990, when Barry Kosmin (now a Center for Inquiry [CFI] board …
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Free Inquiry Volume 39, No. 1
December 2018 / January 2019
Robyn E. Blumner
That pithy subtitle comes from the website of the Matilda Joslyn Gage Foundation (matildajoslyngage.org). It’s too good not to share. If Robert Green Ingersoll is the most remarkable American most people never heard of, Matilda Joslyn Gage is his female equivalent. Had you asked me just two years ago for a recitation of the most …
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Free Inquiry Volume 38, No. 6
October / November 2018
Tom Flynn
The cover article of Free Inquiry’s previous issue (“By My Own Hand: Suicide Can Be a Wise and Gentle Choice,” by Lowrey R. Brown) was expected to generate more controversy than it did. Consider the timing: Though the decision to publish Brown’s essay in the August/September 2018 issue was made months in advance, “By My …
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Things Are Going to Start Happening to Us Now
Free Inquiry Volume 38, No. 5
August / September 2018
Robyn E. Blumner
There is a Congressional Fragrance Caucus. And a Congressional Fertilizer Caucus. (Do you think one was in response to the other?) There is a Congressional Dietary Supplement Caucus. (Get taken much?) There is even a Congressional Civility Caucus, which is not to be confused with either the Congressional Civility and Respect Caucus or the Congressional …
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