Free Inquiry

06/08/2025

We are pleased to share the full text of Katherine Stewart's keynote address from last month's Scopes Trial Centennial conference.

Editor's note: This is the keynote speech Katherine Stewart delivered at the recent Scopes Trial Centennial conference. We publish it here with the gra ...

06/08/2025

This is a speech Richard Dawkins delivered at the recent Scopes Trial Centennial conference. We publish it here with his gracious consent.

Editor's note: This is a speech Richard Dawkins delivered at the recent Scopes Trial Centennial conference. We publish it here with his gracious consen ...

31/07/2025

"In short, the only myth relating to the separation of church and state is the myth that the Constitution does not mandate their separation."

House Speaker Mike Johnson, a self-proclaimed “constitutional attorney and history buff,” has flatly stated that the separation of church and state is a “mi ...

30/07/2025

"[A]lthough the break, for me, is total from a doctrinal/faith perspective, it would be dishonest to say that it was a clean one psychologically or culturally. Occasionally, I experience a spiritual missing limb syndrome. There is some sensation remaining, a numbing or an itch that cannot be massaged or scratched away, demanding my conscious attention from time to time."

“Well, if it’s a symbol, to hell with it.”— Flannery O’Connor I was a Catholic kid in the 1960s, one of many in the small towns running east/west along Sunr ...

30/07/2025

"The humanist tradition, rejecting arguments from authority and tradition, is, whether we’re aware of it or not, a direct challenge to this manipulation. It insists that all claims must be subject to critical scrutiny regardless of who makes them."

That moment when freedom begins to wither rarely announces itself with dramatic proclamations. Instead, authoritarianism advances through incremental conces ...

28/07/2025

D.A. Wood strolls through the Garden of Eden with an atheist perspective: "Unfortunately, wishful theological thinking has distorted one of the myth’s simple, preliminary facts: Adam and Eve’s alleged sin does not and literally cannot constitute a moral transgression. They only become capable of morality because of their decision."

Only one interdiction can be found in both creation stories of Genesis, namely, the command of Yahweh to Adam and Eve not to eat from the tree of the knowle ...

28/07/2025

From the new issue:
"There are various explanations for why we dream about being without clothes in a public place: it may express feelings of guilt, inferiority, vulnerability, insecurity, unpreparedness, or a sense of freedom, as well as a fear of exposure; it may symbolize closeness with another person or that you feel free to express yourself; Freud thought that it is “always linked to an erotic or exhibitionistic theme”; or it may mean nothing at all."

In Genesis, Adam and Eve walk around naked in the Garden of Eden and feel no shame (Genesis 2:25). Then the serpent seduces Eve to eat the fruit of the tree ...

25/07/2025

Not sure if you had plans this weekend...but cancel them! The new issue of Free Inquiry is now available to read online. Our August/September 2025 cover feature looks at "New Takes on Old Myths: Adam & Eve in the Garden." Visit https://secularhumanism.org/volume/no-5-vol-45/ to read it now!

21/07/2025

"Emboldened by the success of their fellow pseudoscientists, creationists are asserting themselves more boldly as well. After a half-century of judicial defeats, intelligent design (ID) proponents are again pushing into American science classrooms ... A century of expensive and hard-fought victories in maintaining integrity in public school science teaching is at risk."

The Trump administration seems determined to gut the scientific research establishment in the United States. Despite the fact that vaccines have likely save ...

17/07/2025

"So, here we see the wondrous blessings of the three Abrahamic religions: their collective delusions fuel an interminable cycle of violence. In the conflicts in the Mideast, as in so many other areas of human life, religion is a curse."

Hamas is a fundamentalist Islamic group whose charter calls for the establishment of an Islamic state in Palestine. During their control of Gaza, they showe ...

10/07/2025

Ronald Lindsay's latest column on the IRS decision to reinterpret the Johnson Amendment and allow churches to endorse political candidates.

"In addition to keeping churches from abusing their nonprofit status, there is another reason it is advisable to keep religious organizations out of politics. Christopher Hitchens famously said that 'religion poisons everything.' That may be a slight exaggeration, but religion definitely has a history of injecting venom into politics."

“That winter most of the pulpits of Paris rang with eloquence which skirted close to treason. Fanatical friars and demagogic priests vied with one another i ...

09/07/2025

"The plaintiffs that sued the Internal Revenue Service had previously asked a federal court in Texas to create an even broader exemption — to rule that all nonprofits, religious and secular, were free to endorse candidates to their members. That would have erased a bedrock idea of American nonprofit law: that tax-exempt groups cannot be used as tools of any campaign.

"Instead, the I.R.S. agreed to a narrower carveout — one that experts in nonprofit law said might sharply increase politicking in churches, even though it mainly seemed to formalize what already seemed to be the agency’s unspoken policy."

In a court filing, the tax agency said a decades-old ban on campaigning by tax-exempt groups should not apply to houses of worship speaking to their own members.