November / December 2007

Humanism and Its Discontents

Joyce Carol Oates was presented with the 2007 Humanist of the Year award at the 66th Annual Conference of the American Humanist Association in Portland, Oregon, on June 8, 2007. The following article was adapted from her acceptance speech and the Q&A that followed. Humanism--like "the humanities" and indeed all...

Read More

Features

Up Front

God Is Great

I have a fantasy that I participate in a debate against Christopher Hitchens, the best-selling author of God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything. The debate topic is identical to the one Hitchens took up...

Read More

Columns

Reviews

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...

Read All

Elsewhere in the Humanist:

More Light Than Heat

The Climate Book, a massive anthology compiled by Greta Thunberg—the young Swedish environmental activist who won global fame after she launched her School Strike for Climate in 2018—offers a compendious treatment of climate change. Its five parts offer to explain how climate...

Read All

Elsewhere in the Humanist:

Is It Time to Talk About Reparations?

FROM TIME TO TIME, I’ll receive emails and calls from humanists and atheists thanking me for my work—and in those short exchanges I’m often told that I am an important new voice advancing humanism. While I appreciate these comments, I can’t help...

Read All

Elsewhere in the Humanist:

Upgrading our Humanism: Building a Lifestyle of Embodied Values

This article is adapted from a session presented at the 81st Annual Conference of the American Humanist Association in July 2022. One evening nearly a decade ago, I found myself with friends in a Chicago bar having a few drinks after a...

Read All