JUST ABOUT EVERYONE working on antiracism today is frustrated. The country as a whole—black, white, liberal, and conservative—has descended a staircase of despair, apathetic or exhausted from trying to motivate positive change. Professional antiracism has... Read More

“To learn who rules over you, simply find out who you are not allowed to criticize.” —Voltaire FEAR, THE MOST powerful emotion, is an acid that dissolves trust, eats at human relations, and compromises even... Read More

“The good life is one guided by reason and motivated by love.” —Bertrand Russell We all know that discourse in the United States today is ugly, as civility has been replaced by bitter reactive battles.... Read More

Evolution can be brutal. Our ancestors who survived for millions of years on the African veldt endowed us with tools for survival and reproduction. Some of these ancient drives serve us well today in our... Read More

A college student recently asked me, “How do you humanists know what’s true?” It’s an honest question, not given to simple answers. While individual humanists hold many theories of what’s true, the humanist tradition has... Read More

I’ve been surprised at how many people I’ve met in the secular movement who dismiss fiction, saying they’re only interested in reading nonfiction and, more specifically, important scientific books. For their part, some of the... Read More

At one time I naïvely thought fundamentalists were just a bunch of backwoods yokels and that humanism was steadily advancing and would ultimately prevail. Then there was the 1966 Time magazine cover asking, “Is God... Read More