Secular Democracy

Secular Ethics of Love

How Religion and Politics Pull Our Strings

How to Win the Culture Wars

December 2024/January 2025

Secular Democracy

Volume 45, No. 1

Latest Articles



The Christmas Star and Other Fables
December 12, 2024

It’s that time of year again. Time for misguided efforts to offer “scientific” explanations of  the Christmas star—the star that, according to the gospel of Matthew, guided the three “wise man from the East” to the pinpoint location in Bethlehem where the recently born Jesus could be found (Matthew 2: 1–11). Among the explanations offered …


Comedian, Cartoonist, or Philosopher: A Review of Dan Barker’s Latest Book
December 11, 2024

The most prominent blurb on the cover of Dan Barker’s new book, Contraduction, sums it up nicely: “An ingenious word for an invaluable concept—Steven Pinker.” Barker is by his own account not “a professional philosopher or scientist,” and he does not claim to be a comedian or a cartoonist. But he has, especially with this …


How a Third (Fourth or Fifth) Party Can Be Fostered in the United States
December 11, 2024

While the U.S. Constitution makes no mention of political parties, the Framers wrote it with parties in mind. In Federalist X—Madison’s classic defense of the Constitution—he wrote: “Among the numerous advantages promised by a well constructed Union, none deserves to be more accurately developed than its tendency to break and control the violence of factions.” …


Is Secular Humanism Today a Conservatism?
December 11, 2024

Conservatism, in my earlier years, was the stale-coffee political appropriation of trigger phrases such as “family values” and “what would Jesus do?” In Shakespearean peripeteia, I found my university experience to have set me up closer with it. It is no longer odd to me that secular humanists can find themselves flirting with mainstream conservatism. …

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For the questions that remain unanswered after we’ve cleared our minds of gods and souls and spirits, many atheists, agnostics, skeptics, and freethinkers turn to secular humanism.

Looking Back



Introduction
Volume 36, No. 1
December 2015 / January 2016

Humans created “God,” not the other way around. Better that we take that lesson before we finish wrecking the planet.


Godless Morals: The Challenge of Ivan Karamazov
Volume 36, No. 1
December 2015 / January 2016

Humans created “God,” not the other way around. Better that we take that lesson before we finish wrecking the planet.


What Pope Francis Got Right: Undergoing Ecological Conversion
Volume 36, No. 1
December 2015 / January 2016

“Francis is not only aiming to develop an
environmentally friendly narrative but a brand-new theology.”


Introduction
Volume 36, No. 1
December 2015 / January 2016

Humans created “God,” not the other way around. Better that we take that lesson before we finish wrecking the planet.


Godless Morals: The Challenge of Ivan Karamazov
Volume 36, No. 1
December 2015 / January 2016

Humans created “God,” not the other way around. Better that we take that lesson before we finish wrecking the planet.