Experiments of Living

Throughout recorded history, ethical ideas have usually been traced to authorities. Most of the supposed authorities have been religious people, typically men who have claimed, or who have been credited with, a special mode of access to a divine revelation. Yet even the relatively rare, and significantly less popular, ventures...

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Features

Up Front

Done In by the Patriot Act

There’s a delicious irony to the story of the crash-and-burn career of four-star general and former Central Intelligence Agency Director David Petraeus. The man who was elevated to the ethereal ranks of a General Eisenhower or...

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Reviews

Elsewhere in the Humanist:

The Black Practice of Disbelief

The following excerpt is from a new book from Beacon Press, set to be published in May 2024. Introduction I have grown to like “nontheist” as a broad-spectrum term that carries less baggage than more commonly used words such as “atheist” or...

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Elsewhere in the Humanist:

“I Stand for Freedom for All”

This text is excerpted from the remarks of Commissioner Mohamed Magid of the US Commission on International Religious Freedom made at the launch event for the 2023 Freedom of Thought Report from Humanists International. The event was held on Capitol Hill in...

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Elsewhere in the Humanist:

The Dangers of Artificial Intelligence

Editor’s note: OpenAI’s now famous ChatGPT bot was used by the Humanist to generate this article as an experiment to discover what today’s AI knows 
and will tell about the dangers posed by AI technology. IN RECENT YEARS, the rapid advancements in...

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Elsewhere in the Humanist:

The Fragility of Truth in the Existential Crisis

Dr. Michael E. Mann is Presidential Distinguished Professor in the Department of Earth and Environmental Science at the University of Pennsylvania, with a secondary appointment in the Annenberg School for Communication. He is director of the Penn Center for Science, Sustainability, and...

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