No. 5 | Free Inquiry (original) (raw)
Humanism and Suicide: A Positive View
By My Own Hand: Suicide Can Be a Wise and Gentle Choice Lowrey R. Brown
It’s time to look beneath the stigma and see a socially-accepted role for suicide in a nation where our lives are our own. I will die. You will die. Death is not a question of if; it is only a question of when and how. Modern medicine has doubled American life expectancy over the past two centuries. At forty, …
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Humanism and Suicide: A Positive View
Why So Much of the Bible is Poorly Written Valerie Tarico
Have you ever tried to read the Bible cover to cover? Even among Christians, a minority make it all the way through. According to the Barna Group, an evangelical Christian polling organization, the average American household contains 4.4 Bibles, but 57 percent of people say they read from it less than five times a year. …
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Humanism and Suicide: A Positive View
The Incompatibility of Judeo-Christian Religion with Contemporary Human Rights Chima Williams Iheme
It is oftentimes claimed by Christians that the Bible is the main source of morality, and Christian organizations involved in humanitarian activities usually give copies of the Bible alongside their aid to give the impression that they are motivated by the Bible. This article challenges that notion and argues that the Bible is devoid of …
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Humanism and Suicide: A Positive View
Why Are Secular Humanists So Afraid of Other People’s Identity Politics? Debbie Goddard
In the past few years, I’ve seen a lot of handwringing and lamentation from thinkers ostensibly “on my side”—individuals who identify as sitting primarily on the left half of the political line, especially nonreligious liberal public intellectuals—around the problem of “identity politics.” Many words have been spilled, online debates had, panels hosted, and books written …
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Humanism and Suicide: A Positive View
The Social Forces Behind Trump’s War on Science Jeffrey S. Victor
As you know well, the Trump Administration is ignoring or even censoring scientific evidence that enforces past federal regulations that protect the American people. It is eliminating federal regulations restricting toxic pollution of the air and water. It seeks to do away with restrictions on the purity of our food. It seeks to eliminate restrictions …
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Humanism and Suicide: A Positive View
Principles of Scularism and Freedom of Religion Do Not Limit Teaching of Truth in Public Schools—The Real Limit is Political Dale McGowan, Jeff T. Haley
In a review of our book Sharing Reality in Free Inquiry (April/May 2018), Ronald A. Lindsay disagreed with our views on the topic of what may be taught in public schools. Lindsay argued: “There’s no need for schools to address the God question. And if there’s no need for schools to address this issue from one side, there’s no …
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Humanism and Suicide: A Positive View
Respect Freedom of Conscience: Teach Science, Not Metaphysics Ronald A. Lindsay
What Haley and McGowan advocate seems less like the future of secularism than like a betrayal of it. Jeff Haley and Dale McGowan vigorously contend that public school educators should affirmatively teach there are “no gods, souls, or afterlife.” Of course, they recognize that their view of the appropriate curriculum for public schools has no …
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Space, Time, and God Laurence W. Britt
When the prehistoric human race emerged from the Neolithic period and slowly began to form social structures, a new era began in the development of our species. The constant struggle for food and survival abated somewhat, allowing the human intellect to move to a higher level. For the first time in Earth’s history, a living …
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Editorial
Things Are Going to Start Happening to Us Now 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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Op-Ed
Does Opportunity Knock? Tom Flynn
A few issues back, I proposed a possible longer-term goal for the secular humanist/atheist/freethought movement (“A Modest Proposal: Get Religion Out of the Charity Business,” FI, December 2017/January 2018). I admitted that seeking to end religion’s role in providing social services was a long shot, perhaps “unattainable.” In this op-ed, I’d like to propose a more …
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Op-Ed
Voting and the Trolley Problem Greta Christina
Elections are like the trolley problem—and voting is like pulling the lever. If you’re not familiar with the trolley problem, it’s a philosophical thought experiment about ethical dilemmas. A trolley car has lost its brakes and is hurtling down a track where five people are stuck. You can pull a lever and divert the trolley …
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Op-Ed
Oil is Godly Gregory Paul
These days, many who are secular and/or on the center-left just don’t get why so many on the evangelical Right seem so darn dead-set on denying the threat of global climate change, to the point that they thrill in chanting “Drill, baby, drill!” Many may imagine that if duly educated about the science of CO2-driven …
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Op-Ed
Gun Nuts on the Run S. T. Joshi
To those of us who wondered when, if ever, a significant majority of Americans would develop a shuddering loathing of the appalling gun violence that occurs daily in this country—rather than passing it off with callous indifference as some sort of inevitable, unavoidable by-product of the “price of freedom”—I can now say: The time is now. …
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Op-Ed
The Failure of Ideological Purity Tests Faisal Saeed Al Mutar
I arrived in the United States in March 2013 as a refugee from Iraq. I resettled in Houston, Texas, where two of my brothers lived at the time. A few days after I arrived in this country—of which I am now a permanent resident—I started searching for humanist and freethinking clubs in the local area. …
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Appreciation
Jens Christian Skou Nicole Scott
Jens Christian Skou, born in 1918, may have spent his life in Denmark, but his legacy spread across the world and time. Skou discovered a vital mechanism in the body’s cells, which earned him the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1997. Skou graduated from the University of Copenhagen in 1944 with a degree in medicine …
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Looking Back
35 Years Ago in Free Inquiry
“The courage to doubt, on which American pluralism, federalism, and religious liberty are founded, is a special brand of courage, a more selfless brand of courage, than the courage of orthodoxy. A brand that has been far rarer and more precious in the history of the West than the courage of the crusaders or the …
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Looking Back
25 Years Ago in Free Inquiry
“Western society has been deeply influenced by Christian doctrine, operating, as it has been, relatively unchallenged for most of the past two millennia. … [M]any of the destructive teachings of Christianity have shaped social attitudes in a variety of spheres and in ways that still adversely affect people, even those who never darken a church …
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In Response After reading Whaley’s interview with God (FI , December 2017/January 2018), I bit my tongue while deciding not to comment, but after reading Imre Toth’s letter (FI April/May 2018), I felt an obligation to comment. I always had difficulty with people, especially Christians and supposed intellectuals as well as educators, not giving credit to the …
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Doerr's Way
Betsy DeVos Ramps Up Her War on Public Schools Edd Doerr
On May 16, Betsy DeVos, Trump’s utterly unqualified and virulently toxic education secretary, was the featured speaker at the Alfred E. Smith Foundation in New York City, with Cardinal Timothy Dolan in attendance. Her speech was a vicious attack on our public schools and on the provisions in three-fourths of our state constitutions that bar …
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Cuno's Corner
Drawing Lines for Fun and Prophet: How Religion Makes Us Behave Better Steve Cuno
I am told religion makes people behave better. I do not dispute it. When religion draws a line and slaps a thou shalt not sticker on it, believers mind the old Ps and Qs. This came dramatically to my attention over lunch with Brad, whom I hadn’t seen in years and whose name isn’t really Brad, as …
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Great Minds
Voices from the Past: Recalling ‘the Good, the Beautiful, and the True’
I have always been struck by the way people go through life oblivious to past struggles to understand life, ignorant of the intellectual tools and creative efforts by which distant or past cultures have benefited. As Bertrand Russell wrote in his 1937 essay “On Being Modern-Minded”: We imagine ourselves at the apex of intelligence, and …
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High Heresy
Secular Mythology Marc Schaus
What do you think of when you hear the word mythology? Many of us tend to picture a culture’s “mythology” as a collection of stories and personal narratives particular to that social group and their way of life—usually with the most popular and enduring myths of each culture intending to explain key features of social life, …
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Humanist Soapbox
Religious Scientists R. C. Gibson
Pilots have a saying: there are bold pilots and old pilots, but there are no old, bold pilots. I am a good geologist (now retired), and geologists have a comparable, mutually exclusive saying: there are good geologists, and there are religious geologists, but there are no good, religious geologists. Geologists, as a group, are probably …
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Humanist Soapbox
The Suffocation of American Compassion Nicholas S. Molinari
The rise of the GOP and the decline of compassion go hand-in-glove. This dreadful phenomenon affects not only the old, sick, and struggling of our own nation but also rejects all hope for desperate people in many war-afflicted nations as they struggle to survive, eat, drink, and escape catastrophic carnage. To have witnessed this increasingly …
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Humanism at Large
Bible Theme Parks of the Future Shawn Dawson
I’ve never been to one, but I imagine that Bible theme parks are amazing creations. Built for the glory of God and the edification of human beings, they are devoted to showing the wonders of God’s creation and teaching visitors truths from the Bible. One of the most famous of these parks—or infamous, perhaps, to …
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Reviews
Women v. Religion: The Case Against Faith—and for Freedom Teresa Roberts
Women v. Religion: The Case Against Faith—and for Freedom, edited by Karen L. Garst (Durham, NC: Pitchstone Publishing, 2018, ISBN 978-1634311700) 224 pp. Softcover, $16.95. With a bold title such as Women v. Religion: The Case Against Faith—and for Freedom, Karen L. Garst has once again provided an opportunity for women who have suffered at …
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Reviews
An Atheist Stranger in a Strange Religious Land: Selected Writings from the Bible Belt Ed Buckner
An Atheist Stranger in a Strange Religious Land: Selected Writings from the Bible Belt, by Herb Silverman (Durham, NC: Pitchstone Publishing, 2017, ISBN 978-1634311052) 264 pp. Softcover, $15.95. Can anyone write an objective, reasonable review of an essentially autobiographical book about someone he knows well and admires? Perhaps not, but An Atheist Stranger in a …
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Reviews
Think Before You Like: Social Media’s Effect on the Brain and the Tools You Need to Navigate Your Newsfeed Mark Cagnetta
Think Before You Like: Social Media’s Effect on the Brain and the Tools You Need to Navigate Your Newsfeed, by Guy P. Harrison (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2017, ISBN 978-1633883512) 380 pp. Softcover, $18.00. Since I initially read Guy P. Harrison’s book Think Before You Like: Social Media’s Effect on the Brain and the Tools …
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Things, they are no fools. They tableau. The trees pose, too, as the yogini know. And my trousseau of objects rearrange themselves each night. They want to be still- lives, to be of record. The time they change changes because letting me watch would sacrifice their modesty. The slender jug switches shelves with the Bakelite …
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Poem
Encounter with a Neighbor Joyce Wilson
I met him on the empty cattle walk. We knew that he had planned to go away. I was surprised when he began to talk To me with sorrow that he could not stay, That he was going to Jerusalem Where he would live and work on a kibbutz and learn from people who would …
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Poem
Iambic Translation Joyce Wilson
This evening we examine The Koran Where the Prayer of the Cataclysm explains How in the aftermath of the great deluge “Each soul shall know what it has done and what It has failed to do.” The few familiar words Weigh heavy in my throat till it constricts. They show, like stones across an endless …
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