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
The Silver Bullet Question (Part 2)
Volume 34, No. 3April / May 2014
In “The Silver Bullet Question that Kills the Immortal Soul,” FI, April/May 2004, I argued that souls cannot be infused into humans in today’s world, because there is no point in human or prehuman history where a putative “first ensoulment” can be ethically justified.1 In that essay, The Silver Bullet Question was: “Who first had …
Introduction
Volume 34, No. 3April / May 2014
Spoiler alert: We’ll probably never really know what happened on Easter.
Betting on Jesus: The Vanishing of the Christ
Volume 34, No. 3April / May 2014
Even granting the possibility of miracles, once we grasp what the resurrection saga means and how it would have had to unfold, we can be certain that it never took place.
The Silver Bullet Question (Part 2)
Volume 34, No. 3April / May 2014
In “The Silver Bullet Question that Kills the Immortal Soul,” FI, April/May 2004, I argued that souls cannot be infused into humans in today’s world, because there is no point in human or prehuman history where a putative “first ensoulment” can be ethically justified.1 In that essay, The Silver Bullet Question was: “Who first had …
Introduction
Volume 34, No. 3April / May 2014
Spoiler alert: We’ll probably never really know what happened on Easter.