January / February 2018

The Monster Hijacking Human Minds

DEEP IN THE SWELTERING jungles of the Amazon, embedded within bird droppings, are eggs belonging to a nematode worm known as Myrmeconema neotropicum. Soon, ants from the species Cephalotes atratus will come along and take the droppings to their nest. The ants feed the excrement to their larvae, causing them...

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Features

Up Front

On Policies and Purple

On May 27, 2017, The Humanist Institute hosted an all-day symposium at the First Unitarian Society of Minneapolis titled “Social Justice: Addressing the Narrative of Fear,” which included individual remarks and panel discussions with humanist, feminist,...

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Columns

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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