In the last decade we have allowed the primary interest of dignity and the human element in humanism to be slowly superseded by a popular anti-theism that declares religious people stupid, and us intellectually superior.... Read More

In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries the elites of Europe and the United States were thrilled by what they perceived as a rather sophisticated class of automatons, mechanical marvels that could do everything from play... Read More

When my dad, Neil Swanson, goes to rallies against the tar sands pipeline, people rush up to him and thank him for everything he’s doing. They don’t actually have any idea what a great guy... Read More

There is no arm of youthful rebellion more culturally visible than music. The popular narrative of the last half-century was of kids fighting the oppression of their elders by picking up instruments and exploring new... Read More

Let me start by saying what this book is not. The Great Agnostic by Susan Jacoby is not a biography of Robert Ingersoll. It is, rather, an argument for restoring Ingersoll to a respected place... Read More

If ever there were a day deserving to be called—secularly—a “day of reckoning,” this would be the day for Owen Ross, the forty-seven-year-old protagonist of Jon Mills’ provocative first novel, When God Wept. For it... Read More

I perforce begin with a confession: I couldn’t finish Salman Rushdie’s two most notable novels, Midnight’s Children and The Satanic Verses. I don’t love magical realism generally—I hated García Márquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude—and... Read More