As the sun sets for us at Patheos, a new dawn will begin on OnlySky
THIS will be my last post on Patheos. Together with such well-known blogs as The Friendly Atheist, Daylight Atheism, The Secular Cinephile and Laughing in Disbelief, I am in the process of moving over...
View ArticleBishops in the Lords:Why are they still there?
Through nearly five hundred years of constitutional change, the Church of England has clung on to its entitlement to bishops in the House of Lords. Never mind that no other country in the modern world,...
View ArticleFreethinker in conversation: the Beyond Atheism podcast
On 8th March I spoke to Nathan Alexander and Todd Tavares for Episode 36 of the Beyond Atheism podcast. We discussed the history of the Freethinker and where it should be going in 2022 and beyond, as...
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Saving Bradlaugh Hall
Andrew Whitehead provides an update on Bradlaugh Hall in Lahore, Pakistan, and the ambition of some architecture students to rescue it. This follows an earlier piece he wrote about the Hall and...
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Atheism, Secularism, Humanism
April 2022 is Secularism Month at the Freethinker. We kick off with an essay by philosopher A.C. Grayling on the relationship between atheism, secularism, and humanism, and some problems with the...
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Secularism and the Struggle for Free Speech
In our second feature for Secularism Month, Stephen Evans, CEO of the National Secular Society, argues for the vital importance of free speech in a liberal democracy, and considers the place of this...
View ArticleChild protection and religious freedom
‘Western governments are increasingly reaching into areas in which the interests of religious freedom and the rights of conscience were long thought no business of government.’ So tweeted Mark...
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Morality without religion: the story of humanism
Humanist Month at the Freethinker continues with an article by Madeleine Goodall, Humanist Heritage Coordinator at Humanists UK. Image credit: Humanists UK Nearly three years ago, Humanists UK...
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Image of the week: the Freethinker on the British Humanist Association, 1967
The National Secular Society and the British Humanist Association (now Humanists UK), and associated organisations and individuals, have had a mixed relationship over the last century and a quarter....
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Reproductive freedom is religious freedom
‘Equal Justice Under Law’: the US Supreme court, Washington DC. Credit: Jeff Kubina, Wikimedia Commons. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:United_states_supreme_court_building.png The U.S....
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Secularism and the limits of progress?
Patrick J. Corbeil, Empire and Progress in the Victorian Secularist Movement: Imagining a Secular World (Palgrave Macmillan) • 2 December 2021 • pp 198 Image provided by Palgrave MAcmillan We live...
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Secular conservatives? If only…
The storming of the US capitol, 6 January 2021, by Tyler Merbler In the United States we are experiencing not a culture war, but something more like a culture Armageddon. I need not illustrate with...
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Introducing ‘Paine: A Fantastical Visual Biography’, by Polyp
Ask people, at least in the UK, who Thomas Paine was, and you will often meet with an embarrassed silence. Which is astonishing, given that his pamphlet Common Sense (1776) galvanised the American War...
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Pastafarian Month at the Freethinker
‘With you always’. Copyright Paul Fitzgerald 2022. July is Pastafarian Month at the Freethinker. This picture of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, by radical cartoonist Polyp (Paul Fitzgerald), was...
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Judging the Flying Spaghetti Monster
Niko Alm’s proposed photos for his identity card and passport, with a ‘modest pasta crown’. Photo: Niko Alm (2022). Although every Western country has the freedom of religion enshrined in its...
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‘Vivesini’– a new rationalist film from India
Vivesini: Poster. Copyright Laburnum Productions 2022. Readers of the Freethinker are cordially invited to a closed private screening of Vivesini, a new rationalist film by Laburnum Productions, a...
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‘We need to move from identity politics to a politics of solidarity’–...
Pragna Patel has been a powerful advocate for women’s rights for over four decades. From 2009-2022, she was Director of Southall Black Sisters (‘SBS’), an anti-fundamentalist, anti-racist and feminist...
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Religion and belief in schools: lessons to be learnt
King James Bible with Prayer card. Photo: Freethinker The law on religious education and collective worship in England means that schools are at risk of breaching human rights law. But the government...
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The secular religion of the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster
Pastafarians outside the Groningen courthouse, the Netherlands, July 2016, for the case of Dirk-Jan Dijkstra v. the Mayor of Emmen. Photo: Mienke de Wilde What is it called when you really, really,...
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Faith and charity law: time for a rethink
Charity, by Maurice Schnell (1830-1902), via Wikimedia Commons. Misogyny, homophobia, child beatings and the Taliban are not causes that most people would associate with charity work. But these are...
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