2024-04-19 06:09
Note: this is a very slightly revised version of a piece originally written for my personal Substack and published on 7 February of this year.
Fiolent, Crimea, Black Sea. Cape Fiolent is… Read More
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A blog version of The Freethinker - a British magazine for atheists and secularists, published continuously since 1881.
2024-04-16 06:19
The ‘Four Horsemen of the non-apocalypse’. Image credit: direktor, based on works by david shankbone, ensceptico, mathias schindler, and unknown. image used under the Creative… Read More
2024-04-15 05:49
Editorial note: this is a lightly edited republication of the speech given by Leo Igwe at the American Atheists National Convention in Philadelphia on 30 March 2024.
leo igwe giving his… Read More
2024-04-12 06:07
Image credit: Amy Hasbrouck.
I am in a minority. As an atheist who supports the aims of the National Secular Society and Humanists UK in almost every other area, including abortion, I fin… Read More
2024-04-11 13:00
It looks like there’s trouble brewing north of the wall. A giant ginger beast that has lain dormant for the past three years has awoken, possibly the illegitimate love child of Ed Shee… Read More
2024-04-09 05:51
Credit: ben morse
Introduction
Frank Turner is an English singer and songwriter whose music I have loved for years. His songs are wild and varied, sometimes sad and sometimes happy but… Read More
2024-04-08 04:36
image credit: Karl Withakay. image used under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license.
Every couple of years, whenever he declares that he is a ‘cultu… Read More
2024-04-06 06:48
In March 2021, fearing for his life and his family, a religious studies teacher at Batley Grammar School fled his job and home. A campaign of threats and intimidation was underway, inst… Read More
2024-04-05 06:58
‘Friends are ready for Iftar in Ramadan @ Margalla Hills – Islamabad‘. © AQAS Clicks | Waqas Photography. image used under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alik… Read More
2024-04-02 05:59
khadija khan at the council of ex-muslims of britain ramadan protest outside the Pakistani embassy in London. image: khadija khan.
While Ramadan is a sacred month for Muslims, let us not… Read More
2024-03-29 10:16
Cover of Freethinking, by Simon McCarthy-Jones. Image: Oneworld PublicationsIntroduction
Simon McCarthy-Jones is Associate Professor of Psychiatry at the Trinity Institute of Neuroscience… Read More
2024-03-27 04:40
Emile Chartier (1868-1951), known as Alain. Image: philosophe-alain.fr‘Thought is free, or it isn’t thought.’
This fine remark comes from Emile Chartier (1868-1951… Read More
2024-03-25 13:13
Images: from a ‘History of witches and Wizards’ (1760) via wikimedia commons; screen grab from the police Scotland video via Youtube.Since their earliest origins, Christian cultu… Read More
2024-03-22 05:54
Susie Alegre with her book. Image: E. ParkIntroduction
In the last few years, researchers in several disciplines have become increasingly interested in the topic of free thought, its stat… Read More
2024-03-19 04:25
Faith Watch is an idiosyncratically compiled monthly round-up of the errors, disasters and absurdities following in the wake of religions around the world, by our assistant editor, Daniel Ja… Read More
2024-03-15 04:04
Part of a Mural in Beijing depicting ‘The great united family of peoples’, or China’s recognised ethnic groups. Image: Vmenkov (August 2008) via Wikimedia Commons.‘Cr… Read More
2024-03-12 05:24
The following article is adapted from a talk given to the Leicester Secular Society on 3 March 2024.
Women’s march 2018, Seneca Falls, USA. Image: Marc Nozell via Wikimedia Commons… Read More
2024-03-08 08:02
A chapel used for discipleship training, Jos, northern Nigeria. photo: S. Audu (2024).There are many ‘harams’ – things that are ‘religiously forbidden’ –… Read More
2024-03-02 01:56
Abdel Fattah al-Burhan (left) and Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, also known as Hemedti. al-burhan image credit: president.az. Hemedti image credit: government.ru. Both images used under the Creative… Read More
2024-02-28 16:40
Credit: Mohammed Jones (2013).The post Image of the week: Jesus and Mo on clerical fascism appeared first on The Freethinker Read More
2024-02-27 04:17
Louise AntonyIntroduction
At the Freethinker, one of our aims has always been to foster a culture of free speech and open debate. It was from this perspective that, as editor in 2022, I f… Read More
2024-02-23 04:45
Adam Wakeling, ‘Why the Enlightenment matters‘, Australian Scholarly Publishing, May 2023.In Why the Enlightenment Matters, Adam Wakeling sets himself the ambitious task of defin… Read More
2024-02-19 04:41
Tehreem Azeem, with and without the Hijab and Abaya. Photos: Tehreem Azeem.It is hard to tell the story of my transformation from a practising Muslim to a freethinker. It did not happen in a… Read More
2024-02-13 02:34
Pro-Palestine protest in Boston, 16 May 2021. Photo: Amir Hanna, via Unsplash.Following the barbaric terrorist attack of 7 October 2023 on innocent Israeli civilians, large numbers of young… Read More
2024-02-12 13:04
Integration, BY POLYP (PAUL FITZGERALD).
For the Freethinker‘s coverage of the Michaela Community School story, see Khadija Khan’s essay on religious exceptionalism and assis… Read More
2024-02-09 04:45
Michael Laccohee Bush, Thomas Paine and the Polity of the Blood. With an Appendix on the Bones. Mot Juste, 2023.But I will dance to Tom Paine’s bones
Dance to Tom Paine’s bone… Read More
2024-02-06 13:30
Adults and children together on a Pro-Palestine march, London, 11 November 2023. Photo: Julian Stallabrass via Wikimedia Commons. The culture of intolerance that has grown over time in the U… Read More
2024-02-05 15:09
‘Wha wants me’, a caricature of Thomas Paine by Isaac Cruikshank (1792). Find out more here.
9 February marks the birthday of the great revolutionary and freethinker Thomas Pa… Read More
2024-02-02 05:32
Faith Watch is a monthly round-up of the errors, disasters and absurdities following in the wake of religions around the world, by our assistant editor, Daniel James Sharp.
Fanatics in… Read More
2024-01-30 11:12
François-Marie Arouet, known as Voltaire (1694–1778). Copy of a lost original By Maurice Quentin De la Tour, 1736. Image: Musée Antoine-Lécuyer, via Wikimedia Comm… Read More
2024-01-16 12:00
women in a National Campaign on the prevention of violence against women, India Gate, New Delhi, 2 October 2009. Image: Ministry of Women and Child Development, India, via Wikimedia Commons… Read More
2024-01-13 15:07
Filippino Lippi’s 15th-century fresco ‘Triumph of St Thomas Aquinas over the Heretics’. Are western values inherently christian? Read more here. Image: public domain, from… Read More
2024-01-12 10:49
Vladimir Putin in Patriot Park with members of the Russian Orthodox Church and the armed forces, September 2018. Image: www.kremlin.ru via Wikimedia Commons. Amid all the horror, the Russian… Read More
2024-01-10 06:01
image credit: Sgerbic. Image used under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International licence.
Introduction
Lawrence Krauss is a Canadian-American physicist and writer… Read More
2023-12-22 10:12
‘Two journalists discuss freedom of speech’, Image generated by Dall-E from a prompt by E. Park, December 2023.2023 has been an eventful year for free thought, humanism and secul… Read More
2023-12-18 02:24
Daniel Dennett in 2012. image credit: Dmitry rozhkov. image used under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.
Introduction
Daniel C. Dennett… Read More
2023-12-15 05:46
Yasser arafat, chairman of the palestine Liberation Organization 1969-2004 and president of the palestinian national authority 1994-2004, pictured in 1996. Photo credit: Gideon Markow… Read More
2023-12-11 05:32
graham smith photographed during this interview in the conway hall foyer café. Image: Freethinker (2023).
Introduction
On 25 November, 2023, at the historic Conway Hall in Londo… Read More
2023-12-07 06:19
Paul Scriven in Parliament just after our interview, 5 December 2023. Image: FreethinkerIntroduction
On the afternoon of Wednesday 6th December 2023, Paul Scriven, a Liberal Democrat peer… Read More
2023-12-04 04:45
statue of jean lesage, father of ‘the quiet revolution’ and Quebecois secularism, in front of quebec’s parliament building. image credit: Bouchecl. Image used under … Read More
2023-11-28 05:00
Rory Stewart, Spotted At a café in central london. Image: Freethinker (2023)It is rare for a political memoir to be anything but a blandly written exercise in self-congratulation, and… Read More
2023-11-24 04:43
This article is the third in our series of reflections from different perspectives on the Israel-Palestine conflict, one of the most complex, contentious and emotive conflicts of recent time… Read More
2023-11-20 11:03
IMage copyright NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, J. Diego (Instituto de Física de Cantabria, Spain), J. D’Silva (U. Western Australia), A. Koekemoer (STScI), J. Summers & R. Windhorst… Read More
2023-11-20 07:00
Taj Hargey, interview with the Freethinker. Image: E. ParkIntroduction
Dr Taj Hargey is one of the most dynamic, outspoken and controversial figures in Islam today. He is a citizen both o… Read More
2023-11-17 05:00
Introduction
Charles Freeman is a scholar of the ancient world, perhaps best known for his books Egypt, Greece and Rome: Civilizations of the Ancient Mediterranean (first edition 1996… Read More
2023-11-13 10:41
Protest against Iranian Theocracy in Trfalgar Square, London, 16 September 2023. Image: Alisdare1 via Wikimedia Commons.A 16 year old girl, Armita Geravand, is one of the latest victims of t… Read More
2023-11-07 07:41
Introducing ‘Faith Watch’ – a monthly round-up of the errors, disasters and absurdities following in the wake of religion around the world, by our assistant editor, Daniel… Read More
2023-11-03 11:43
The Freethinker editorial team: Daniel Sharp and Emma Park. A round-up of recent and upcoming talks by the Freethinker editorial team, as well as a couple from the National Secular Society a… Read More
2023-10-31 14:03
Top: ‘You don’t need to be Muslim to stand up for Gaza, you just need to be human’. Pro-Palestine demonstration in London, 14 October 2023. Image: Alisdare Hickson via Wiki… Read More
2023-10-31 11:02
The Transhumans Are Coming: image produced by Rahman Toone using the generative AI text-to-image programme Zoo, an open source project from Replicate.
Enjoy this post? Subscribe to our f… Read More
2023-10-27 05:00
AI image produced by R. Toone using Zoo, an open source project from Replicate.9 June this year marked the tenth anniversary of the death of the Scottish author Iain Banks. A self-declared … Read More
2023-10-24 04:22
Shalu Raizada (Middle). Photo provided by the author.On August 15, India’s 76th Independence Day, Aditi* and Shrey*, a married Hindu couple, visited Ishrat Kazmi, a retired school prin… Read More
2023-10-13 05:20
‘Children at Fen Ditton Junior School sit at their desks and say Grace before they drink their mid-morning milk’, 1944. Image: Ministry of Information Photo Division Photographer… Read More
2023-10-05 09:46
Image: Professor Alex Byrne in his office at MIT. Introduction
Alex Byrne is not necessarily the sort of person whom you would have expected to become involved in the ‘culture wars… Read More
2023-09-29 08:59
A protest in front of the Swedish Embassy in Tehran against the Quran-Burning in Sweden, 23 July 2023. Image: Tasnim News Agency via Wikimedia commons.The recent burning of the Quran in the… Read More
2023-09-29 08:19
From the Jesus and Mo series. First published 14th January 2015.
Enjoying the Freethinker? Subscribe to our free fortnightly newsletter for the latest updates on freethought. Or make a do… Read More
2023-09-20 05:20
Eliza Flower, from a drawing by Mrs E. Bridell-Fox. Image: Conway Hall Ethical Society. I first encountered Eliza Flower (1803-46) in an online search for women composers from Essex during t… Read More
2023-09-19 19:52
Exo-planet K2-18b: artist’s impression. Image: Arndt Stelter via Wikimedia Commons.New signs of life elsewhere in the galaxy? The BBC recently reported that NASA’s James Webb Spa… Read More
2023-08-29 16:12
Cartoon by Mohammed Jones. First published on jesusandmo.net, 31 May 2023. Reproduced with permission.
Enjoy this cartoon? Subscribe to our free fortnightly newsletter for the latest upda… Read More
2023-08-29 11:27
Charlotte Johnson, the first clothing designer of the Barbie dolls, with the 1965 model. Photograph: Nelson Tiffany for Los Angeles Times, via Wikimedia Commons.The series of plastic dolls m… Read More
2023-08-16 05:44
Mustafa Kemal Atatürk (1881-1938) in 1917. Image via Wikimedia Commons.President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan triumphed in a closely contested election in May, ensuring another five years… Read More
2023-08-10 05:56
Front page of Milton’s Areopagitica, published in late 1644 without a licence. Image: US Library of Congress, via Wikimedia commons.In June 1643, amidst the furnace heat of civil war… Read More
2023-07-28 04:22
‘KaZoHa’, the Abuja Safe House, at its launch in late 2019. Mubarak Bala is standing on the far left; Amina Ahmed is in blue, third from the left. Image: Humanist Mutual Aid Netw… Read More
2023-07-27 07:26
Redacted: Speech and Thought in jail, by Paul Fitzgerald.For a bibliography of our articles on free speech and free thought, see Free Speech in the Freethinker.
Enjoy this cartoon? Subscr… Read More
2023-07-25 10:52
The last film censor’s certificate signed by James Montgomery (1939), the first film censor of independent Ireland, who objected in particular to ‘partial nudity, stage-Irishness… Read More
2023-07-05 03:51
[Editor’s note: Reprinted from the Freethinker, 28 March 1970, pp. 100 – 101. Images of the article as originally published appear at the end. Some organisations have changed the… Read More
2023-06-30 04:46
Centenary celebrations at the Freethinker, July 1981, with Jim Herrick centre. Photograph by Barry Duke, editor of the Freethinker from 1998–January 2022. page copyright: Freethinker (… Read More
2023-06-28 04:04
Hong Kong riot police, 7 September 2019. taken in front of the Tung Chung MTR station during the 7 September airport protest. photo and context by: Tauno Tõhk. Photo under licence via… Read More
2023-06-27 09:46
‘Dogmaril’, by Paul Fitzgerald.The post Image of the week: thought medicine appeared first on The Freethinker Read More
2023-06-21 04:01
Amree Maharaj, Chanda’s mother. Still from a filmed interview conducted by Shaukat Korai, Pakistan, 2023.‘We are Hindus. Shoot to kill us, but don’t take our children away… Read More
2023-06-19 18:51
a posthumous portrait of the ancient Greek philosopher Anaxagoras, expelled from Athens for impiety, because he claimed that the sun and moon were inanimate objects, not gods. Image via Wiki… Read More
2023-06-13 03:12
Freethinker, vol. 102, no. 12, December 1982, p. 190.The above image is of page 190 of the Freethinker, vol. 102, no. 12, December 1982. It includes a letter by Albert E. Standley, which led… Read More
2023-06-09 04:13
Abolish the Monarchy, cover of first edition. Image: Penguin, 2023. During the coronation of King Charles III, the Metropolitan Police arrested 64 people, most of whom they claimed were ther… Read More
2023-06-01 04:21
Same-sex marriage equality demonstration in Paris, 27 January 2013. Image: Vassil via Wikimedia Commons.Official secular states are falling like dominoes into the hands of radical religionis… Read More
2023-05-26 04:44
Humanly Possible, by Sarah Bakewell. Image: Chatto & Windus 2023. Sarah Bakewell is what you might call a non-organised humanist. That is not to say she is disorganised (far from it), bu… Read More
2023-05-25 19:13
Thinker (2019), glass sculpture by the czech artist Martin Janecký. Image: Gabriel Urbánek, via Wikimedia CommonsThe post Image of the week: ‘Thinker’, by Martin Ja… Read More
2023-05-19 08:30
St Stephen’s Hall, Houses of Parliament, Westminster. IMage: Snapshots of the Past, via Wikimedia Commons. In the last fortnight, the National Secular Society participated in two quite… Read More
2023-05-16 03:08
Nuriyah Khan, an ex-Muslim who runs a YouTube channel. In Pakistan, religion exerts a significant influence over society. This often results in restricted freedom of expression for those wit… Read More
2023-05-12 03:17
Management consultancy is not the most obvious preparation for founding a new ethical system. But that is what Jamie Woodhouse was doing when he came upon the idea of ‘sentientism&rsqu&hell…Read More
2023-05-09 04:00
Image: Academica Press.On April 26, I returned to my alma mater, the University of Edinburgh, to attend a film screening hosted by the Edinburgh chapter of Academics for Academic Freedom. Th… Read More
2023-05-03 12:27
Shona stone sculpture, Zimbabwe. Image: Ishmael Muchena (2014) via Wikimedia Commons.The purpose of this article is to briefly discuss the absence of the concept of a deity in the Shona trad… Read More
2023-05-03 09:00
Divine right of kings? Charles I and Charles III. Image of the week: Charles I and Charles III. Plus ça change?
The portrait of Charles I, now in the National Portrait Gallery, dat… Read More
2023-04-14 05:39
Authority and Freedom: A Defense of the Arts, by Jed Perl (Knopf, 2022). As W.H. Auden put it, ‘If the criterion of art were its power to incite to action, Goebbels would be one of the… Read More
2023-04-05 08:25
Jesus and Mo, ‘Book’, 1 March 2023. Image: Mohammed Jones.The trial of Ashfaq Masih will mean little to people in Britain today. It could be suggested that it means even less in… Read More
2023-04-03 02:00
Bertrand Russell in 1957. Image: Fotograaf Onbekend / Anefo via Wikimedia Commons.Humanists contributed immeasurably to ethical debates in Britain in the mid-twentieth century. Relatively sm… Read More
2023-03-29 11:51
Steven Greer at the Oxford Institute for British Islam. Image: Declan HenryIntroduction
An expert on human rights might seem to be an unlikely target for censorship by a British universit… Read More
2023-03-26 14:10
Laboratory in the Islamic University of TEchnology, Bangladesh (2014). Image: Ibrahm Husain Meraj via Wikimedia Commons.Advancements in scientific research have been overturning clerical heg… Read More
2023-03-22 15:58
Open Door, by Freethinker cartoonist Polyp, aka Paul Fitzgerald.The post Image of the week: Back-door Theocracy appeared first on The Freethinker Read More
2023-03-20 09:16
Tylorstown, Rhondda Valley, Wales (2021). Image: ProfDEH via wikimedia Commons. When Rhodri Morgan, the former First Minister of Wales, was given a public, humanist funeral at the Welsh Parl… Read More
2023-03-10 20:06
The free speech area on the campus of Texas WomAn’s University, September 2015. Image: Michael Barera via Wikimedia Commons. I write this piece about freedom of speech from the perspec… Read More
2023-03-07 10:36
From the Freethinker cover page, January 2000. 23 years later, what has changed?Suppose it were reported that three baby girls had bled to death following Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) in… Read More
2023-03-02 13:34
Doubleplusgood, by Polyp.On Puffin’s attempt to rewrite Roald Dahl: Puffin v. Dahl, by Noel Yaxley.
The post Image of the week: Doubleplusgood appeared first on The Freethinker Read More
2023-03-02 13:29
Eight Classic children’s books and one disney rewrite. Photo by Nick Fewings on Unsplash.‘There’s more than one way to burn a book,’ wrote Ray Bradbury in Fahrenheit… Read More
2023-02-26 20:33
Watson Heston, Two Ways to Go. Originally published in The Truth Seeker and reprinted in The Freethinkers’ Pictorial Text-Book, New York: The Truth Seeker Company, 1890.The post Image… Read More
2023-02-22 02:37
John Lennox and Christopher Hitchens, ‘Is God Great?’ debate, Samford University, Birmingham, Alabama, 3 March 2009. Photo: stepher via Wikimedia Commons. We live in an era of st… Read More
2023-02-17 04:49
‘With you always’, by Polyp. Original here.Is Pastafarianism a parody or a religion? What is a ‘religion’ anyway? Can an internet movement originally intended as a jo… Read More
2023-02-15 04:53
Tauya ChinamaZimbabwe is a deeply religious country. According to the 2017 Inter Censal Survey by the Zimbabwe National Statistics Agency, 10.2% of the population have no faith. The rest are… Read More
2023-02-10 04:18
Laura Dodsworth at Waterstones, Piccadilly, February 2023. Photo: E. ParkIntroduction
Until three years ago, Laura Dodsworth was a photojournalist, known for Bare Reality, a project in th… Read More
2023-02-08 04:49
Cover of Salman Rushdie’s Victory City. Published by Jonathan Cape, 9 February 2023. Image copyright Jonathan Cape.How, it might be asked, can Salman Rushdie’s new novel about a… Read More
2023-02-01 05:21
‘The glorious appearing of Jesus to the Nephites‘ (one of the four groups of settlers of the ancient Americas from Jerusalem, according to the Book of Mormon). Illustration from… Read More
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