Paul Fidalgo

If prayer has any effect on the real world, surely the most likely to benefit from its power would be the men who lead congregations of believers in prayer every Sunday. In a new study, the results of which were published in the Journal of Religion and Health, researchers in Poland assessed the efficacy of …

Some people believe they can read your thoughts, communicate with the dead, or even move objects with their minds. A precious few are so certain of their extraordinary abilities that they are willing to have them tested by independent investigators. The possibility of pocketing a quarter-million dollars probably helps. The Center for Inquiry’s Investigations Group offers …

While science thrives on asking questions and challenging dogmas, this is kryptonite to religion; and the more fundamentalist and oppressive the religion, the more it is threatened by free inquiry. The Center for Inquiry’s Secular Rescue program exists to help those secular writers and activists who find themselves in peril because of their dissent. Matthew Cravatta, director …

Science gives us hope, but the danger of science-denial has been made startlingly clear during the coronavirus era of this larger post-truth epoch. So we turn once again to Richard Dawkins to mount a spirited defense of science as the best means we have of arriving at the truth. “What is profoundly troubling … is …

Planet Earth is not flat, despite what you may have heard on the internet. But maps of Earth are flat, and it turns out it’s very difficult to accurately represent all the features on the surface of a sphere on a two-dimensional plane. Many novel approaches have been taken to make sure, for example, Greenland …

The most recent Skeptical Inquirer Presents live online event was the series’ best-attended so far, perhaps because it directly addressed a question that is probably on a lot of people’s minds: What the heck is going on with this QAnon thing? The conspiracy theory movement known as QAnon has quickly gone from inhabiting the darkest …

For a planet without any known lifeforms, there sure is a lot of activity on Mars these days. Tomorrow (Thursday), just days after China and the United Arab Emirates have put their own spacecraft into Martian orbit, the United States will add its own rover, Perseverance, to the party, trying to land an object hurtling …

It is no surprise that a Supreme Court dominated by religious conservatives has produced yet another ruling that privileges religion over all else, as is the case with their recent decision striking down California’s pandemic restrictions on in-person worship services. But as CFI Legal Director Nick Little points out, the privileging of religion is only …

Homeopathic fake medicine continues to be sold and marketed by retailers despite the fact that it has no effect whatsoever on any condition or ailment, save for relieving oneself of excess cash. As the Center for Inquiry presses ahead with major lawsuits against retailers Walmart and CVS, we are also tackling the issue of the …

In 2015, a celebrated secularist writer and ally of CFI, Avijit Roy, was attacked at a book fair in Dhaka, Bangladesh, by a gang of Islamic extremists who hacked him to death with machetes and badly injured his wife, Bonya Ahmed. That horrific event began a slew of similar killings over the next few years and …

The Biden administration has re-established the White House Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships, which, on its face, is not exactly thrilling news to the nonreligious community. But at the very least, it is being headed once again by its director under President Obama, Melissa Rogers, who worked very well with secular organizations such as …

Behind the magazine, there is the man. On Tuesday night, the skeptic community had a chance to look behind the cover of the foundational publication of the skeptic movement with a one-on-one chat with Kendrick Frazier, editor of Skeptical Inquirer magazine since 1976. His conversation with CFI Insider host Melissa Myers is now available to watch online …