Paul Fidalgo

Did you know that right now, in the year 2021, seven states still have laws on their books barring atheists from holding public office? We can take some comfort in the fact that the U.S. Constitution renders these outdated and truly offensive laws unenforceable. But what does it say about atheists’ place in American society …

From the Richard Dawkins Foundation Newsletter. Subscribe here. Misinformation overload has become a tragic reality of our current age, and in recent years its growth has been accelerated by several major factors, not least of which include four years under a presidency that was overtly hostile to facts and a global pandemic that fostered confusion, fear, …

The latest Skeptical Inquirer Presents featured journalist Nina Burleigh discussing the topic of her new book, Virus: Vaccinations, the CDC, and the Hijacking of America’s Response to the Pandemic. In a conversation with host Leighann Lord, Burleigh explains how the previous administration ignored the pandemic response framework it had been handed by its predecessors, preferring instead …

The six nominees for the Full of Bull award are just the tip of a very big iceberg when it comes to celebrities promoting pseudoscience and misinformation. At Skeptical Inquirer, Stuart Vyse explores how the anti-vaccine movement has ebbed and flowed in celebrity culture since the time of Jenny McCarthy’s false claims about vaccines and autism. …

The COVID-19 pandemic shows some signs of receding (depending on where on Earth you live, of course), but the infodemic of lies, pseudoscience, and misinformation continues unabated. There is no single person to blame, nor can the crisis be traced to one particular lie, but there are a small number of individuals who have done …

How can we, a science-advocacy organization named for the world’s most famous and eloquent evolutionary biologist, fail to include in its newsletter an article that begins like this?  “To peer into the soul of a sea cucumber, don’t look to its face; it doesn’t have one. Gently turn that blobby body around, and gaze deep …

For the past few weeks, the secular community has been bracing itself for the Supreme Court’s upcoming decision in the case of Fulton v. City of Philadelphia, in which a Catholic foster agency that receives public funding seeks the right to discriminate against LGBTQ parents. In analysis of the stakes of the case, Nicholas Ripley at …

Survey after survey shows a marked decline in religious belief among younger Americans. According to a recent survey by Arizona Christian University, fully 43 percent of Millenials “don’t know, care, or believe that God exists,” compared to 31 percent of Gen Xers, and 28 percent of Baby Boomers. This is progress! But then things get, …

This week saw a new milestone in the long journey out of the COVID-19 pandemic, as the FDA approved Pfizer’s vaccine for kids between the ages of twelve and fifteen. But for these young people to be protected from the virus, their parents have to actually let them get vaccinated. The Center for Inquiry believes …

Opponents of vaccines, fueled by pseudoscience and misinformation, have some funny ideas about what they’re fighting for. They claim that vaccine requirements infringe on their freedoms, forgetting that vaccines are the key to freeing us from a highly-infectious, life-threatening virus. They claim that businesses requiring proof of vaccination from their employees or customers is a …

Robert Green Ingersoll, the nineteenth-century orator known as “The Great Agnostic,” was perhaps the most significant “founding father” of American secularism and freethought, and CFI’s Council for Secular Humanism preserves and celebrates Ingersoll’s legacy with the Robert Green Ingersoll Birthplace Museum in Dresden, New York. Though, sadly, most Americans have probably never heard of him, …

From the Richard Dawkins Foundation Newsletter. Subscribe here. If you ask twenty humanists to define humanism, you’ll probably get twenty different definitions. There is no humanist Bible, no humanist catechism, not even a humanist’s rules of order (if only). But I don’t think it’s too much of a leap to say that a humanist is someone who …