Found 5164 Result(s)
The Power Worshippers
The following is adapted by the author from The Power Worshippers: Inside the Dangerous Rise of Religious Nationalism (Bloomsbury Publishing). Stewart is the recipient of the Council for Secular Humanism’s Morris D. Forkosch Award for best humanist book of 2020. —Eds. Most of us are by now familiar with the public face of Christian nationalism. …
This article is available for free to all.Avoiding a ‘Ghastly Future’: Hard Truths on the State of the Planet
A group of the world’s top ecologists have issued a stark warning about the snowballing crisis caused by climate change, population growth, and unchecked development.[1] Their assessment is grim, but big-picture societal changes on a global scale can still avert a disastrous future. Within the lifetime of anyone born at the start of the Baby …
Exploring the Connection between Cambridge Analytica and Conservative Christianity
In the documentary People You May Know, Charles Kriel, special adviser to the U.K. Parliament on disinformation, and filmmaker Katharina Gellein Viken unpacked the political connections between religious fundamentalists, oligarchs, and the company Cambridge Analytica, whose infamous mishandling of the personal data of millions of Facebook users was revealed in 2008. Even though Donald J. …
Does Prayer Work?
Even though about 84 percent of the world population is religiously affiliated, the question of whether praying for someone can give that person some health benefits is still relatively understudied. This likely is because the topic is controversial: for religious people, applying quantified measures to the effects of prayer sounds blasphemous. Similarly, for secular ones, …
This article is available for free to all.Shadow Gosplan and Other Lies
Edward Tesler lived in the USSR until he moved to the United States in 1980. —Eds. “I love boxing. You are sitting in a comfortable chair, looking at the ring, and somebody else gets hit in the face.” This joke sounds apolitical, but it too reflects big politics. Everybody knows about the centralized planning of …
Ethnographic Evidence for Unbelief in Non-Western Cultures: Unbelief in China and Siam
Chinese thinking is a history of a gradual distancing of man from supernatural beings and their influence, ending in an essentially humanistic approach to life. From the Ch’un Ch’iu period (722–481 BCE) onward, there is a progressively more humanistic interpretation of laws and statutes, regarded previously as being of divine origin. Confucius (551–479 BCE Kǒng …
On the Fact-Theory Issue
Most scientists consider evolution a firmly supported theory. This article does not challenge these scientists. But do scientists generally agree that evolution is a fact? Some scientists and philosophers of science maintain that a very well-supported theory deserves to be called a fact. Others maintain that a theory never becomes a fact even if it …
Courting Disaster: Public Safety vs. Religion
At this point, we all know claims of religious freedom can work like magic words. Say “religious freedom,” and you can demand tax money for your school or social service program even if you proselytize and discriminate, and you can ignore inconvenient employment laws. Just say that your religion demands it, and even public health …
This article is available for free to all.Will World Population Drop Far Enough, Fast Enough?
Full disclosure: I admire the New York Times and its commitment to cover the world in depth when so many news outlets have abandoned that mission. Still, the Times has its blind spots, among them a relentless natalism. The paper seems glued to the notion that human numbers (to say nothing of the economy) must …
This article is available for free to all.Beyond Humanity
Beyond Humanity was the title of a book I coauthored in 1996 with Earl Cox. It was an early look at the possibility, if not probability, that in the not too distant future, quite possibly in this century, self-aware devices of extreme intelligence will be developed. If such a thing happens, the book predicted, it …