Latest Articles
The Great Accidental Illusion: Why Total Solar Eclipses Are Nowhere Close to Being Evidence for the Existence of a Creator
March 25, 2024Editor’s note: This article was originally published on our website in 2017 (https://secularhumanism.org/2017/08/cont-the-great-accidental-illusion/)when the last total solar eclipse was seen across the United States. Gregory Paul has updated his article considering the upcoming total solar eclipse on April 8, 2024. It will once again be seen across the United States. The Center for Inquiry headquarters …
The Bright Line between Good and Evil
Volume 44, No. 3April/May 2024
This article was adapted from a transcript of the November 7, 2023, episode of the author’s podcast, Making Sense. We have witnessed extreme moral confusion since Hamas attacked Israel on October 7, 2023, killing approximately 1,200 people and taking over 200 hostages. Some of it has been just frank anti-Semitism, but much is actual confusion. …
Reflections on a Death Spiral
Volume 44, No. 3April/May 2024
“Don’t let them drive the tractor. They need to know their place.” It was 1992. I was living in Israel, breathing in the desert air, loving the family that adopted me on the kibbutz, and enjoying the company of the Palestinian day-laborers who came over from Gaza each morning to work. They had to get …
Myths about Overpopulation
Volume 44, No. 3April/May 2024
Editor’s note: As a publication based in secular humanist values, we frequently cover and discuss existential risks. In particular, the ecological impact of human overpopulation has resonated deeply with many of Free Inquiry’s writers over the years and has been frequently raised as one of our most serious threats. In his article “Save the Earth; …
Popular Articles
Have Christians Accepted the Scientific Conclusion That God Does Not Answer Intercessory Prayer?
Volume 39, No. 1December 2018 / January 2019
In 1982, a young cardiologist at the San Francisco General Medical Center named Randolph Byrd had a brilliant insight that would motivate several important investigations of prayer during the following two decades. He realized that the standard research paradigm known as the double-blind randomized clinical trial could be used to test the efficacy of intercessory …
Why I Am Pro-Abortion, Not Just Pro-Choice
Volume 36, No. 5August / September 2016
Why be pro-abortion? Because of all the genuine, unquestioned goods it makes possible.
The Importance of Being Blasphemous
Volume 35, No. 6October / November 2015
Looking back on the Satanic Verses affair from the time of the Charlie Hebdo massacre, it is clear that Western culture has hemorrhaged away its courage.
Popular Articles
Have Christians Accepted the Scientific Conclusion That God Does Not Answer Intercessory Prayer?
Volume 39, No. 1December 2018 / January 2019
In 1982, a young cardiologist at the San Francisco General Medical Center named Randolph Byrd had a brilliant insight that would motivate several important investigations of prayer during the following two decades. He realized that the standard research paradigm known as the double-blind randomized clinical trial could be used to test the efficacy of intercessory …
Why I Am Pro-Abortion, Not Just Pro-Choice
Volume 36, No. 5August / September 2016
Why be pro-abortion? Because of all the genuine, unquestioned goods it makes possible.
Looking Back
Why the Christ-Myth Controversy Won’t Go Away
Volume 40, No. 3April / May 2020
In its February/March 2018 issue, Free Inquiry presented a symposium by authors defending—and opposing—the Christ-myth theory: the contention that Jesus of Nazareth never existed in history and should be regarded as mythical. In the introduction to that feature, I wrote: Was there a historical Jesus of Nazareth? Or is he best understood as, pardon the …
The Quest for the Mythical Jesus
Volume 40, No. 3April / May 2020
Reassessing the Mythical Jesus Symposium The “mini-symposium” in the February/March 2018 issue of Free Inquiry attempted to put to rest the debate between those who contend that Jesus was a man and those who insist he was a myth. This argument was precipitated by Senior Editor Bill Cooke’s articles “Why Secular Humanists Should Abandon the …
Peter: The Well Chosen ‘Fisher of Men’
Volume 40, No. 3April / May 2020
Although I have fished in many places, I have always avoided the murky waters of biblical interpretation. Nevertheless, after reading yet another rendition of John 21—the verse about Peter’s boat fishing all night without success and Jesus’s “miraculously” filling its nets with 153 fish—I feel compelled to raise some issues. First, let’s talk fishing facts, …
Why the Christ-Myth Controversy Won’t Go Away
Volume 40, No. 3April / May 2020
In its February/March 2018 issue, Free Inquiry presented a symposium by authors defending—and opposing—the Christ-myth theory: the contention that Jesus of Nazareth never existed in history and should be regarded as mythical. In the introduction to that feature, I wrote: Was there a historical Jesus of Nazareth? Or is he best understood as, pardon the …
The Quest for the Mythical Jesus
Volume 40, No. 3April / May 2020
Reassessing the Mythical Jesus Symposium The “mini-symposium” in the February/March 2018 issue of Free Inquiry attempted to put to rest the debate between those who contend that Jesus was a man and those who insist he was a myth. This argument was precipitated by Senior Editor Bill Cooke’s articles “Why Secular Humanists Should Abandon the …