Category: 221

Humanist Perspectives Short Submission Contest 221

Humanist Perspectives Short Submission Contest 221

We invite you to share your humanist views with us in a paragraph or two (MAX 1000 chars) on one of the following subjects reflected by these 3 images. [...]
Interview with Steven Pinker

Interview with Steven Pinker

“There is a fundamental split between two mindsets… is it that society is like a diseased patient where a bunch of medical professionals try to diagnose the cause of the problems and try to [...]
Super-Concise Bios

Super-Concise Bios

Recently I asked, as I do, for short bios from our writers, except in one case I mistakenly said “2 to 3 words” instead of my usual “2 to 3 sentences.” [...]
Memoir: The Day the Ceiling Fell

Memoir: The Day the Ceiling Fell

A somewhat dubious idea: to think one can move to an elderly farmhouse and escape trouble. Terry’s encounter with trouble was quite dramatic. [...]
Dodging the End Times

Dodging the End Times

Religious prophets once reigned as authorities on the end of time, but fortunately their warnings were premature, and based on questionable evidence. Modern day scientists have taken up the [...]
On Roots, Fruits, and Religious Disputes

On Roots, Fruits, and Religious Disputes

Ian Johnston invokes William James in arguing for tolerance of those who hold religious beliefs. Religion has persisted, even prospered, in the face of rationalist criticism. Perhaps it fill [...]
Moral Detachment, One Key to the Persistence of Dubious Ideas

Moral Detachment, One Key to the Persistence of Dubious Ideas

Why do dubious ideas persist? Janet Keeping argues that part of the problem is moral detachment. One can have the “right intellectual concepts in one’s head, but that is of little value if w [...]
Military Defeat and the Smashing of Ideas

Military Defeat and the Smashing of Ideas

We like to think that pernicious ideologies can be defeated by the use of military force. We thought that Nazism was finished off after 1945. We thought that antisemitism could not persist a [...]
They’re Out to Get You

They’re Out to Get You

American historian Kyle Burke writes about Robert Welch, the man who paved the way for the paranoid American right. Many liberals thought of Welch and his John Birch society as irrelevant an [...]
Freedom Misunderstood

Freedom Misunderstood

What does it mean now when we see Canadian flags displayed in windows of cars and houses? It used to be that these were signs of a touching and genuine patriotism. Now, they seem to be coopt [...]
Voice of a Humanist

Voice of a Humanist

It is a cause for celebration when progress is made regarding human rights. Victories won bring a period of hope and relief from suffering. The lifting of oppression is accompanied by an exp [...]
EDITORIAL: The Strange Persistence of Dubious Ideas

EDITORIAL: The Strange Persistence of Dubious Ideas

The best estimate is that something close to 200,000 needless deaths have occurred as a result of what is politely called “vaccine hesitancy,” while, as one study shows, an unvaccinated adul [...]
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