Hope Is What Remains

April marks the fortieth anniversary of the release of Rush’s album 2112, described by Rolling Stone as the band’s “prog-rock magnum opus” and by Rush guitarist Alex Lifeson as their “protest album.” It was reported earlier this year that Neil Peart, drummer for the Canadian rock trio, Rush, would retire from touring after four decades […]

Rules Are for Schmucks: Islam vs. Toilet Paper

It’s not the kind of headline you see every day: “Chef prepared curry after wiping bottom with his bare hands ‘for cultural reasons.’” If you’re not a traveler, the good news is that this particular chef isn’t located in the United States but in Swindon, England. The bad news is that “cultural reasons” is a […]

Faith Without God

I grew up with a Catholic mother and a humanist father. We went to church on Sundays, and I went to Sunday school as a child. My most vivid memory of that time was eating donuts after church—I guess I should have known religion wasn’t going to stick. I was baptized, but never confirmed. I […]

Secularism the Scottish Way: What the US Can Learn from a Majority Non-Religious Country

How can religion be discussed in a secular way? Do conversations about religion inherently promote a religious agenda, or can the topic of religion be neutral? These are difficult questions to answer, especially in particularly religious regions of the United States, where majority faiths all too often end up dominating conversations surrounding belief and nonbelief […]

Jamie Raskin, Open Humanist, Wins Maryland Primary Election

On April 26, Jamie Raskin, a member of the American Humanist Association and humanist candidate endorsed by the Freethought Equality Fund (FEF), won a very competitive race in a crowded field of candidates in Maryland’s 8th Congressional District. In this heavily Democratic district, Raskin is expected to handily win the general election on November 8, […]

The Call of the Rewild

Seventeen thousand years ago, Stone Age artists painted numerous beautiful pictures on rock walls of wild, cattle-like creatures called aurochs, indicating they must have been very important to the lives of our ancestors. Although these paintings have been preserved in the sterile environments of the now famous Lascaux caves in France, the aurochs were not […]

On the Hill: Senators Discuss Religious Diversity

America’s religious makeup is changing in the new millennium, according to a recent Pew poll that shows the number of American Christians declining while the population of atheists and the nonreligious has increased to nearly 23 percent of the total population. This poll, and the various public battles over religious freedom that have occurred over […]