By James Haught Ancient Greece, birthplace of Western civilization, was contradictory. It produced the first known thinkers who tried to understand the world through logic and observation, instead of through supernatural explanations. Yet Greeks also sacrificed thousands of animals to imaginary gods on Mount Olympus, and gave gold to mystical “oracles” who babbled in trances.… Read more »
By Scott Douglas Jacobsen Joyce Arthur is the Founder and Executive Director of the Abortion Rights Coalition of Canada. She has been an abortion rights and pro-choice activist since 1998. Arthur worked for 10 years running the Pro-Choice Action Network. In addition to these accomplishments, she founded FIRST or the first national feminist group advocating for… Read more »
By James Haught In an 1820 letter to Portuguese scholar Correa de Serra, Thomas Jefferson wrote: “Priests of the different religious sects… dread the advance of science as witches do the approach of daylight.” Jefferson saw the clash between religion and science clearly. Ever since his day, science has achieved astounding benefits for humanity, while… Read more »
By Scott Douglas Jacobsen Jonathan Engel, J.D. is the former President of the Secular Humanist Society of New York and a still a board member. Here we talk about the positive impacts of assertive government interventions and social consciousness improving conditions for all, for a sense of normalcy – even blues music(!). *Interview conducted October 11, 2021.* Scott… Read more »
By James Haught For years, I was personal friends with Carl Sagan’s sister, Cari Greene, who lived in my town of Charleston, West Virginia. The astronomer dedicated one of his final books to her. I almost felt like part of the great researcher-television host’s extended family. Sagan, the world’s best-known scientist in the late 20th… Read more »
By James Haught The ghastly Indian Ocean tsunami on the day after Christmas 2004 — one of the worst natural disasters in the history of humanity — should have an unexpected side-effect: Intelligent people increasingly may be forced to abandon the notion that an all-loving, all-powerful, fatherly, kindly, creator god controls the universe. If a deity caused the Indian… Read more »