Free Inquiry back issues from September 2001:
America the Beautiful, Open to All.
Sep 22, 2001; ... The United States is not "a Christian nation" nor even "Judeo-Christian"--contrary to what conservatives and fundamentalists proclaim. The first Americans, who migrated from Asia to this continent over the Bering Strait some 15 to 20 thousand years ago, were pagans! Millions of Native ...
Centers for Inquiry in Los Angeles and Metro New York Are on the Move!
Sep 22, 2001 ... We are pleased to announce that the Center for Inquiry--West, our regional office in Los Angeles, has moved to its own permanent headquarters. The Center has purchased and partially renovated a handsome two-story, 9,000-square-foot structure on 4773 Hollywood Boulevard in Los Angeles. The ...
Sadly, an Honest Creationist.
Sep 22, 2001; ... Creation "scientists" have more need than most of us to parade their degrees and qualifications, but it pays to look closely at the institutions that awarded them and the subjects in which they were taken. Those vaunted Ph.D.s tend to be in subjects such as marine engineering or gas ...
Marriage, Religion, and the Law.(Brief Article)
Sep 22, 2001; ... Bible Belt Couples 'Put Asunder' More," the New York Times proclaimed on May 21 of this year: "The divorce rate in many parts of the Bible Belt is roughly 50% above the national average." So much for the notion that secularism is to blame for the decline of traditional families, among ...
Catholicism and the KGB.
Sep 22, 2001; ... It was fascinating and amusing, on many levels, to learn that Robert P. Hanssen, allegedly the most ruthless KGB agent ever to have flourished in the ranks of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), tried to atone at the very beginning of his career by handing the first $20,000 tranche ...
First Things First? How Far Should a Leader Go?
Sep 22, 2001; ... When President Bush visited Europe in June, it became evident that, for many Europeans, the American attitude to the Kyoto accord on global warming is just as much an ethical black mark as is America's frequent use of the death penalty For this Bush has only himself to blame. When he ...
When Research Rouses Passions.(release of controversial findings of social sciences research)
Sep 22, 2001; ... How should scientists present controversial research? Data interpretation can be sensitive, especially in the social and behavioral sciences. Studies must be conducted and replicated by different investigators before findings can be applied with confidence. Two recent cases show ...
A Pro-Life Atheist Civil Libertarian.(atheist explains his pro-life stance)(Brief Article)
Sep 22, 2001; ... When I first declared myself a pro-lifer in the Village Voice some seventeen years ago, the then-head of the reproductive rights section of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) said to a mutual friend, "Oh, Nat has become a born-again Christian!" But I was still a Jewish ...
Self Before Others.(Brief Article)
Sep 22, 2001; ... Now, I am the last guy on Earth to take my clues about life from government regulators. Yet, there are exceptions even to this rule: I ran across one candidate on a recent flight from Orange County to San Jose, California. If you've ever flown, you probably remember the flight ...
Faith-Based Murders?(murder case of Andrea Yates who allegedly killed her 5 children)(Brief Article)
Sep 22, 2001; ... The day after news wires reported that Texas mom Andrea Yates drowned her five children, a self identified God-fearing Christian mother of eight called the Rush Limbaugh show and sobbed that she understood exactly where Andrea Yates was coming from. She said she had almost "crossed the ...
Would the Apostles Die for a Lie?(martyrdom and the truth of the Resurrection)(Brief Article)
Sep 22, 2001; ... I frequently debate conservative believers on topics such as the historical existence of Jesus, the reliability of the Gospels, and the reality of the Resurrection. Certain issues come up like clockwork in debate after debate. You, too, may have wondered about these questions, or they may ...
Eco - Rehab.(Brief Article)
Sep 22, 2001; ... It is becoming increasingly obvious that man is severely affecting the natural world. We are disrupting the natural cycles of the biosphere and seriously destabilizing global climate patterns. We are fouling the air, fouling the water, and steadily destroying habitats and species diversity ...
Humanism: One Activist's View.(Brief Article)
Sep 22, 2001; ... People come to humanism from many starting points; mine is only one perspective. Humanism has no single arbiter or creed. Humanist thought has evolved throughout history in step with humankind's evolving knowledge about reality. I believe this evolution has reflected four general ...
The Fall of Man?(Brief Article)
Sep 22, 2001; ... Sometimes we become prisoners of misleading phrases. Consider Christianity's war-horse slogan, "The Fall of Man." Man--more properly, humanity--never fell. We rose, and we are rising yet. "The Fall of Man" is a lie, an insult to us all calculated to make us feel sinful when we are not. ...
Can Agnosticism Improve American Public Life?(Brief Article)
Sep 22, 2001; ... There is a deeper cause for the corruption and scandals in American public life today than just human weakness and greed. The religious straitjacket in which we ensnare our politicians creates a preponderant percentage of leaders predisposed to failure. We require of our leaders ...
When Explaining Is Explaining Away.(Brief Article)
Sep 22, 2001; ... Critics accuse secular humanists of reductionism, of assuming too hastily that mundane physical explanations explain away the need for mystery Yet a sufficiently powerful explanation will explain some mysteries away. For example, once one truly understands the idea of living on a rotating ...
Douglas Adams (1952-2001).(Obituary)
Sep 22, 2001 ... Author Douglas Adams died suddenly on May 11, 2001, in Santa Barbara, California. He was forty-nine. An outspoken atheist, Adams was beloved as one of the twentieth century's foremost satirists. His numerous works included The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, The Restaurant at the End of ...
For God's Sake, Don't Tell Anybody: Religious Confidentiality Makes News.(Brief Article)
Sep 22, 2001 ... The law often recognizes the confidentiality between priest and penitent in much the same way it does that between doctor and patient, lawyer and client, or reporter and anonymous source. Two recent news stories demonstrate that the boundaries of clergy confidentiality are anything but, ...
MIND SIEGE METASTASIZES.(Brief Article)
Sep 22, 2001; ... Our last issue featured two critical reviews of Mind Siege, the strident attack on secular humanism co-authored by best-selling Christian novelist Thin LaHaye and evangelist educator David Noebel. (See Jende Huang's "Two Weeks as a Christian" in this issue for more on Noebel.) Clearly ...
Fundamentalists Fleece Their Own.
Sep 22, 2001 ... Leaders of the Greater Ministries International have begun serving sentences for conning $448 million from Mennonite, Amish, and Christian fundamentalists in a Ponzi scheme. So far five church leaders have been tried and convicted, The latest case is that of church accountant ...
The Scouting Saga Continues.(Brief Article)
Sep 22, 2001 ... Eight years ago, the Girl Scouts showed the promise of a more enlightened mind-set when the national council decided that belief in God was not required to be a good Girl Scout. Now a new book has revealed that the Girl Scouts still have some work to do in the area of discrimination on the ...
Atheists Still Remain the Black Sheep of Families.(Brief Article)
Sep 22, 2001 ... According to a national survey by the Washington Post, the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation, and Harvard University, seven in ten Americans would be troubled if a member of their immediate family married an atheist. Four in ten--39 percent--said that they ...
Help from an Unlikely Quarter.(Brief Article)
Sep 22, 2001 ... Its not the Catholics we have to watch out for. It seems that while we weren't looking, President George Bush was turning to prominent Mormons for advice in fashioning his stem cell policy. According to an online report by Slate, senators Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) and Gordon Smith ...
PRESBYTERIANS: WOW, GENESIS NOT LITERAL!(Brief Article)
Sep 22, 2001 ... The Presbyterian Church in America voted that the six days of Creation referred to in Genesis can be interpreted as "figurative" days--maybe millions of years long--rather than ...
CHURCH, OTHER CHARITABLE GIVING DOWN; ALL GOD'S CHILDREN LIE ABOUT TITHING.(Brief Article)
Sep 22, 2001 ... Charitable giving by Americans has declined with the economy, and churches are taking more than their share of the pain, according to Barna Research Online. Seventy-eight percent of U.S. adults gave to church or charity in 2000, down nine points in two years. Mean per capita giving ...
IN HEAVEN, THERE IS NO PURINA.(Brief Article)
Sep 22, 2001 ... An ABCNEWS/Beliefnet` poll has found that 43 percent of all Americans believe that pets go to heaven when they die. Younger rather than older people hold this notion, and it's more prevalent in the Northeast, where pet owners are ...
LETTERS.(Brief Article)
Sep 22, 2001 ... God-Intoxicated Humanism Paul Kurtz's editorial, "Two Competing Moralities" (FI, Summer 2001) left me puzzled. Religion, defined there as "belief in God," is represented as the basis of one of these moralities, and humanism the other. But of the philosophers named as pillars of ...
Humanism Goes to School.
Sep 22, 2001; ... Inside the student freethought movement American education is run by "secular humanists," say best-selling authors Tim LaHaye and David Noebel (see "Mind Siege Metastasizes," page 28). This would come as quite a shock to students who identify with atheism, humanism, or ...
Two Weeks As Inside Summit Ministries a Christian.
Sep 22, 2001; ... At most colleges and universities, the face of Christianity is embodied in local churches, campus ministries, or para-church organizations like the Campus Crusade for Christ and the InterVarsity Christian Fellowship. While these groups broadly promote Christianity, none takes as ...
Fighting for Our Sanity in Tennessee.
Sep 22, 2001; ... Life on the front lines Let me introduce myself. I am a professor of philosophy at East Tennessee State University (ETSU) in Johnson City, Tennessee. I also hold adjunct appointments in the Department of Biological Sciences and the Department of Physics and Astronomy I teach ...
Spirituality on America's Liberal Campuses.
Sep 22, 2001; ... A call for dialogue Swarthmore College, near Philadelphia, is a small prestigious liberal arts school sometimes called "The Kremlin on the Crum" in reference to its liberal politics and location near the Crum River. I was drawn to Swarthmore because I hoped that there I might ...
Humanism: African American Liberation '(A)theology'.
Sep 22, 2001; ... Once upon a today and yesterday and nevermore there were 7 men and women all locked / up in prison cells. Now these 7 men and women were innocent of any crimes; they were in prison because their skins were black. Day after day, the prisoners paced their cells, pining for their freedom. And ...
On 'Hanging Ten' The Commandments and the Schools.(Brief Article)
Sep 22, 2001; ... Student Opinion Despite the intense legal activity and media coverage of the last few years, the debate over posting the Ten Commandments in public places is nothing new. The first major Supreme Court decision on the Decalogue occurred in 1980 (Stone v. Graham) , when the high ...
Education and Positive Atheism in India.
Sep 22, 2001; ... Humanism flourishes in a supportive society I was educated at Catholic institutions, from primary school on. As India is a country of different religions, with Hinduism, Islam, and Christianity being dominant, my atheism was often challenged. But Indian society is also ...
Campus Politics and Academic Freedom.(Campus Inc.: Corporate Power in the Ivory)(Free Speech on Campus)(Review)
Sep 22, 2001; ... A call for university reform Campus Inc.: Corporate Power in the Ivory Tower, edited by Geoffry D. White with Flannery C. Hauck (Amherst, N.Y.: Prometheus Books, 2000, ISBN 1-57392-810-0) 470 pp. Cloth $35.00. Free Speech on Campus, by Martin P. Golding (Lanham, Md.: ...
Three Arguments for Nonbelief.
Sep 22, 2001; ... NEW THOUGHTS ON AN OLD SUBJECT In this essay I will present three fresh arguments to justify nonbelief in the theistic God usually associated with Christianity and Judaism. First, the Argument from Incoherence shows that the concept of God is like the concept of a round square ...
Touring Orlando's 'Holy Land'.(religious theme park)
Sep 22, 2001; ... MONDAY IN THE THEME PARK WITH JESUS In the year of their Lord 2001, on February 5, drought-fueled brush fires burned outside my Orlando hotel-room window: real fires, not the burning bush or even George W. Bush allusions. As everyone else prayed for rain, the prayers of Zion's ...
Faith-Based Proponents Forge Ahead.(Brief Article)
Sep 22, 2001; ... Church-State Update tracks continuing developments in important federal, state, and local church-state issues. Each item is preceded by an up arrow [up] or a down arrow [down] based on the story's implications for separation of church and state and the rights of the nonreligious. ...
Why Should People Choose Science Over Religion?
Sep 22, 2001; ... The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion which stands at the cradle of true art and true science. Whoever does not know it and can no longer wonder, no longer marvel, is as good as dead, and his eyes are dimmed. It was the experience of ...
The Bible Prophecy Argument.
Sep 22, 2001; ... A quotation from Grant R. Jeffrey a leading Christian fundamentalist apologist, exemplifies a common argument for the claim that the Bible is divinely inspired, an argument I call the "Bible Prophecy Argument" (hereafter BPA) [1]: The Bible contains thousands of detailed ...
WHAT JESUS REALLY SAID.('Jesus After 2000 Years')(Review)
Sep 22, 2001; ... A biblical scholar uses modern methods to analyze the Bible Jesus After 2000 Years, by Gerd Ludemann (Amherst, N.Y.: Prometheus Books, 2001, ISBN 1.57392-890-9) 707 pp. Cloth $39.00. In this excellent book, Gerd Ludemann employs the standard tools of modern biblical ...
THE REAGAN ADMINISTRATION'S WAR ON PORN.('The Government vs. Erotica: The Siege of Adam & Eve')(Review)
Sep 22, 2001; ... The Government vs. Erotica: The Siege of Adam & Eve, by Philip D. Harvey (Amherst, N.Y.: Prometheus Books, 2001, ISBN 1-57392.881-X) 296 pp. Cloth $24.00. Edwin Meese, who served as U.S. attorney general during much of the Reagan administration, was a determined foe of ...
RESCUING RAND.('The Contested Legacy of Ayn Rand: Truth and Toleration in Objectivism')(Review)
Sep 22, 2001; ... The Contested Legacy of Ayn Rand: Truth and Toleration in Objectivism, by David Kelley (New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction, 2001, ISBN 0-76580863-3) 130 pp. Paper $19.95. Ayn Rand died nearly twenty years ago, yet still remains one of the most talked about figures of modern times ....
WHY WE TRASH THE GLOBE.('Invisible Walls: Why We Ignore the Damage We Inflict on the Planet ... and Ourselves')(Review)
Sep 22, 2001; ... Invisible Walls: Why We Ignore the Damage We Inflict on the Planet ... and Ourselves, by Peter Seidel, with forewords by Lester Brown and Ervin Laszlo (Amherst, N.Y.: Prometheus Books, 2001, ISBN 1-57392-899-2) 334 pp. Paper $18.00. Most environmental books focus on the state of ...
POWERFUL ADVOCACY, CONCISE BIOGRAPHY.('Joseph Smith and the Origins of the Book of Mormon')(Review)
Sep 22, 2001; ... The earthly origins of the Book of Mormon Joseph Smith and the Origins of the Book of Mormon, by David Persuitte (second edition), (Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland and Company, 2000, ISBN 0-7864-0826-X) 296 pp. + notes and Index. Paper $29.95. Hands down, Joseph Smith is ...
School Prayer: A Modest Proposal.(Brief Article)
Sep 22, 2001; ... I propose a reasonable, nationwide experiment that should be acceptable to scientists, theologians, educators, and skeptics alike. This experiment would appeal to those who want to see good science in our schools, yet would also satisfy those longing for school prayer. First, ...