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Jesus and Superman: They both have incredible superpowers, were both sent to Earth by their fathers, and both try to save people. But we’re expected to follow only the example of one of them, which is also the one we’re supposed to believe is real. Angel Eduardo of course knows that neither of them actually …

CFI’s Secular Rescue program seeks to assist persecuted freethought writers and activists whose lives are threatened by violent extremists in countries such as Iraq, Bangladesh, and Saudi Arabia. Unfortunately, helping them is never as simple as picking them up and moving them to a nicer place to live, especially in the middle of a global …

The seemingly interminable wait for the Supreme Court’s decision on Fulton v. City of Philadelphia is finally over. In a case about whether Catholic Social Services could continue to take public funding while discriminating against same-sex couples in foster care services, we expected the worst. The Court did indeed rule in favor of Catholic Social …

Some fact-checks are easier than others. For example, ridiculous claims about magnets or 5G chips in vaccines are easily debunked. But not all questions about vaccine efficacy are based on conspiracy theories and pseudoscience. One argument being pushed by anti-vaxxers is the idea that COVID-19 immunity gained from actual infection is stronger than the immunity …

From the Richard Dawkins Foundation Newsletter. Subscribe here. There is an awful lot of wishful thinking going on. There always is, of course. Even in the face of contrary facts, human beings tend to view the world through a lens that puts things in a more favorable, hopeful light. A prime example: Chances are you’ve heard …

Any day now, the Pentagon is expected to release a report disclosing what it knows about the unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP) documented and reported by U.S. military personnel, and indeed, some news outlets have already reported on some of its contents. The long and the short of it is more or less what you’d expect: …

In the 1990s, the Center for Inquiry was one of the very few secular-progressive organizations to oppose the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA). A powerful analysis by Marci A. Hamilton in the latest Free Inquiry proves how prescient we were. Hamilton, who had been clerking for Justice Sandra Day O’Connor when the RFRA ball got …

The evolution of the American freethought movement, the story of humanism’s coming-of-age in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, is now the subject of a major independent scholarly history by Stephen P. Weldon, The Scientific Spirit of American Humanism. In the latest issue of Free Inquiry magazine, Editor Tom Flynn brings his own deep knowledge of …

Not surprisingly, Scientific American already knows how to report on things such as UFOs in a way that is grounded in reality. Leonard David rounded reactions to what is known so far (remember, the report hasn’t even been released yet) from actual astronomers, astrophysicists, and scholars.  Among them are two fellows of the Committee for …

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 …