Deconstructing Religion

The best path forward for humankind involves consigning as much of our religious heritage as possible to history’s proverbial dustbin.

In a quarter century, cognitive science has revolutionized our understanding of religion.

The roots of religious behavior may lie deeper than many cognitive scholars of religion think.

The greatest challenge in advancing the social science of religion may lie in better organizing the social scientists.

Prejudice against atheists is real. It’s global. And it’s worse than you think.

Humanist philosopher Andy Norman challenges superstar intellectual Yuval Noah Harari about the meaning of humanism.

Traditional religions and their deities cannot be stretched to accommodate contemporary scientific cosmology.

This year is the silver anniversary of the re-opening of the Robert Green Ingersoll Birthplace Museum by what is now known as the Council for Secular Humanism. (The birthplace of nineteenth-century agnostic orator Robert Green Ingersoll had been restored and opened as a museum twice before—in the 1920s and the 1950s—each time closing after a …

New York State has no monopoly on radical reform history.

Trump is not feminism’s real enemy: that would be the misogyny at Christianity’s core.

It’s the Ingersoll Museum’s silver anniversary. Celebration will ensue.

How much nuance is too much? The answer is not a given; it’s up to us where to draw the lines.

Disputes about free will may reflect our fears about fatalism and moral responsibility.

Many GOP ideologies are profoundly illiberal or staunchly undemocratic—or both.

Why is it so hard to agree that sexual demands in the workplace are wrong, period?

Iraq needs a future beyond the dueling sectarians.

How much lower can the GOP’s current incarnation go?

William Franklin Graham Jr., best known to the world simply as Billy Graham, died at his home in Montreat, North Carolina, on February 21, 2018. He was ninety-nine. Graham was perhaps the world’s best known Christian evangelist. He supposedly provided spiritual counseling to every president from Harry Truman to Barack Obama. Graham was a longtime …

Tom Flynn, in his Op-Ed “A Modest Proposal: Get Religion Out of the Charity Sector” in the December 2017/January 2018 issue, says he can’t see how denominational charities can maintain their identities if they steer their fundraising activities far outside of their own communities. Does that mean religious charitable organizations will refuse money from heathens? …

Few who know the field support the Trump/DeVos agenda.

Discovering that the universe is unauthored … and that life without a higher meaning is enough.

At last we can settle whether God exists—so long as God doesn’t chicken out.

Understanding Ignorance: The Surprising Impact of What We Don’t Know, by Daniel R. DeNicola (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2017, ISBN 978-0-262-03644-3) xii + 250 pp. Hardcover, $27.95.   “Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance,” observed H. L. Mencken in Notes on Democracy (1926). Gettysburg College Professor of Philosophy Daniel …

Sharing Reality: How to Bring Secularism and Science to an Evolving Religious World, by Jeff T. Haley and Dale McGowan (Durham, N.C.: Pitchstone Publishing, 2017, ISBN 978-1634311267) 151 pp. Paperback, $14.95.   Some atheists embrace missionary work. They maintain we should strive, through peaceful persuasion, to eradicate belief in gods. There are no deities, and …

That brute dull thud of its lumpy leather pelt. An exercise in oblivion’s blunt obtuseness. No wonder you turned around so I could see How you rolled your eyes, still sharp enough to know That this was dementia, and it was time to pass The medicine ball around in a mind- less circle, Wheelchair by …