Latest Articles
Picketh Up Thy Marbles and Go Home: The Origin and Absurdity of the Religious Right’s Culture Wars and Why They Should Call Them Off
Volume 44, No. 4June/July 2024
Throughout history, young humans have endured careful moral instruction on the difference between right and wrong. Yet humanity owns a spectacular history of violent conflict between holders of relatively minor differences of opinion in the interpretation of moral tenets. Catholicism versus Protestantism and Shi’ite versus Sunni Islam are just two of the culture wars that …
Let Me Get This Straight
Volume 44, No. 4June/July 2024
Do You Believe in God? You are in conversation with a neighbor, friend, associate at work, or family member, and they pointedly ask you the question, “Do you believe in God?” I most certainly did, quite some time ago, and throughout my twenty-five years as a Christian minister I spent a great deal of my …
Eighty Is Enough
Volume 44, No. 4June/July 2024
One of the truly wonderful things about being human is that we have a relatively brief lifespan. Fewer than eighty years. And, let’s face it, eighty years ought to be enough for anybody. Eighty years is enough to read all the great books you should be reading but aren’t. I personally am about to turn …
The Myth of Immortality: A Reflection on the Journey of Aging
Volume 44, No. 4June/July 2024
Part of my daily routine is to begin my morning with a cup of coffee. In the past week, that morning routine has been literally shattered to pieces, and, in those broken pieces, a transformation has begun. Some twenty-seven years ago, in my early forties, I was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease. Over those years, the …
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 Return of Ibn Warraq
Volume 40, No. 4June / July 2020
Longtime readers will recognize the name of independent scholar Ibn Warraq, author of the breakthrough work Why I Am Not a Muslim (1995) and nearly a dozen more technical scholarly books focused principally on the history and doctrines of Islam. He was also a Free Inquiry columnist from 2005 until 2011. He recently published a …
Introduction: About those Other Apocalypses …
Volume 40, No. 4June / July 2020
Full disclosure: One of these articles was accepted and the other commissioned before the coronavirus crisis. Nonetheless, the question these essays raise is vital: As we survey the existential challenges humanity confronts—however immediately pressing the pandemic may be, grave medium- and long-term threats still face us—are we focusing our ameliatory energy in the most effective …
Why Climate Change Is an Irrelevance, Economic Growth Is a Myth, and Sustainability Is Forty Years Too Late
Volume 40, No. 4June / July 2020
As someone who has been exploring the world’s most isolated wilderness regions for nearly half a century, I have some insight into the state of the planet and the human race’s current environmental befuddlement. I’ve watched the condition of the earth plummet before my eyes within my own lifespan, to the extent that I no …
The Return of Ibn Warraq
Volume 40, No. 4June / July 2020
Longtime readers will recognize the name of independent scholar Ibn Warraq, author of the breakthrough work Why I Am Not a Muslim (1995) and nearly a dozen more technical scholarly books focused principally on the history and doctrines of Islam. He was also a Free Inquiry columnist from 2005 until 2011. He recently published a …
Introduction: About those Other Apocalypses …
Volume 40, No. 4June / July 2020
Full disclosure: One of these articles was accepted and the other commissioned before the coronavirus crisis. Nonetheless, the question these essays raise is vital: As we survey the existential challenges humanity confronts—however immediately pressing the pandemic may be, grave medium- and long-term threats still face us—are we focusing our ameliatory energy in the most effective …