The History and Philosophy of Humanism - CFI online course March-May

The CFI Institute is offering a new course in its Institute Online program:

The History and Philosophy of Humanism (SEC 200)
March 1st - May 30th, 2010
Instructor John Shook, PhD, CFI VP

This three month course contains six lectures by Shook, from his next book on Humanism.  The six main topics are: Humanism Defined, Humanism and Naturalism, Humanism and Ethics, Humanist Ethics and God, Principles of Humanist Ethics, and Humanism's Destiny.  Visiting Lecturers Nica Lalli (during March) and Dale McGowan (during April) will participate in the discussion areas of the course.  

Course Fees: $60.00 for registration, $50.00 for Friends of the Center, and $20.00 for students.
Online registration begins February 1st.
Click here to register.

John Shook is Vice President and Senior Research Fellow at the Center for Inquiry Transnational in Amherst, N.Y., and Research Associate in Philosophy at the University at Buffalo.  He has authored and edited more than a dozen books about philosophy and naturalism.  He has debated the existence of God with notable theologians including William Lane Craig, and his book The God Debates will soon be published by Blackwell.

Nica Lalli is a writer, educator, and former PTA president.  She is the author of Nothing: Something to Believe In (Prometheus Books, 2007), a memoir which tells the story of her life outside of organized religion and traces her many mishaps and misadventures she has had with religion.

Dale McGowan edited and co-authored Parenting Beyond Belief and Raising Freethinkers, the first comprehensive resources for nonreligious parents.  He writes the secular parenting blog The Meming of Life, teaches nonreligious parenting seminars across the United States, and serves as executive director of Foundation Beyond Belief, a humanist charitable and educational foundation.

The CFI Institute Online offers CFI courses entirely online - everything about the course is provided on a CFI website.  You will read the course lectures, follow links to other webpages, ask questions, and participate in class discussions with the instructor and other students on our website.  There are no specific times that you must be online.  There is no "live" aspect to these courses, and you cannot miss anything even if you can only get online at 6am or 11pm - you can log in and participate anytime day or night, 24/7.

Click here for the CFI Institute Online on our website.

For more information about online courses,
contact John Shook, jshook@centerforinquiry.net.
For questions about registration and technical support,
contact Institute Staff channy@centerforinquiry.net.

Panel Discussion - Dawkins, Tyson, Druyan, Stenger, Grothe - Center For Inquiry

source: http://richarddawkins.net/article,4087,n,n

HASSNERS.org highlights

HASSNERS.org comments

Thanks to David for the link.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KEeBPSvcNZQ

This panel discussion took place at a Center for Inquiry - New York City conference titled "Secular Society and its Enemies." The panel discusses a wide variety of topics, including, science, science education, the nature of science, the correct political methodology and much more.

Richard Dawkins, Neil Degrasse Tyson, Ann Druyan and Victor Stenger. Moderated by D.J. Grothe. 





This work by crabsallover is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-Share Alike 2.0 UK: England & Wales License.

The explanatory Power of Darwin by Richard Dawkins

source: http://www.secularhumanism.org/index.php?section=library&page=dawkins_29_2

Richard Dawkins on the explanatory power of Natural Selection v ID
source: Free Enquiry Feb/March vol 29, No 2 published by Council for Secular Humanism

RD (Richard Dawkins) says Charles Darwin had a big idea, arguably the most powerful idea ever. A powerful idea assumes little to explain much.
Power of a Theory = That which it explains / that which it needs to assume in order to do the explaining

in Neo-Darwinist terms

Power of Darwins Theory = The diverse complexity of life / Non-random survival of genes in a gene pool
or in Charles Darwins terms

Power of Darwins Theory = The diverse complexity of life / Natural Selection

Darwin didn't define the fittest as those that survive. His 'fittest' were those endowed with the best equipment to survive, and that makes all the differnence!

The Power of Darwin

RICHARD DAWKINS

Charles Darwin had a big idea, arguably the most powerful idea ever. A powerful idea assumes little to explain much. It does a lot of explanatory “heavy lifting” while expending little in the way of assumption or postulation. It gives you plenty of bang for your explanatory buck. Its Explanation Ratio—what it explains divided by what it needs to assume in order to do the explaining—is large.

Power of a theory	=
		That which it explains
		That which it needs to assume in order to do the explaining

If any reader knows of an idea that has a larger explanation ratio than Darwin’s, let’s hear it. Darwin’s big idea explains all of life and its consequences, and that means everything that possesses more than minimal complexity. That’s the numerator of the Explanation Ratio, and it is huge. Yet the denominator is spectacularly small and simple: natural selection, the non-random survival of genes in gene pools (to put it in neo-Darwinian terms rather than Darwin’s own).

Power of Darwin’s theory	=
		The diverse complexity of life
		Non-random survival

Natural selection is an improbability pump—a process that generates statistical improbability. It systematically seizes the minority of random changes that have what it takes to survive and accumulates them, step by tiny step over unimaginable timescales, until evolution eventually scales mountains of improbability and diversity whose height and range seem to know no limit.

Yet it is so magnificently simple that you can pare Darwin’s big idea down to a single sentence (again, this is a neo-Darwinian way of putting it, not quite Darwin’s): Given sufficient time, the non-random survival of hereditary entities (which occasionally miscopy) will generate complexity, diversity, beauty, and an illusion of design so persuasive that it is almost impossible to distinguish from deliberate intelligent design.

I have put “which occasionally miscopy” in parentheses because mistakes are inevitable in any copying process. We don’t need to add mutation to our assumptions. Mutational “bucks” are provided free. “Given sufficient time” is not a problem either—except for the problem of comprehension by human minds struggling to take on board the terrifying magnitude of geological time.

It is mainly its power to simulate the illusion of design that makes Darwin’s theory seem threatening to a certain kind of mind. The same power constitutes the most formidable barrier to understanding it. People are naturally incredulous that anything so simple could explain so much. To a naïve observer of the wondrous complexity of life, it seems self-evident that it must be intelligently designed.

But intelligent design (ID) is the polar opposite of a powerful theory: its explanation ratio is pathetic. The numerator is the same: everything we know about life and its prodigious complexity. But the denominator, far from Darwin’s pristine and minimalistic simplicity, is at least as big as the numerator itself: an unexplained intelligence big enough to be capable of designing all the complexity we are trying to explain in the first place!

Power of ID theory	=
		Everything
		An unexplained intelligence big enough to design everything

Darwin understood the immense power of his theory. So did Alfred Russel Wallace, the magnanimous hero whose independent discovery galvanized Darwin into shelving his magnum opus on natural selection in favor of what he called its “abstract”: On the Origin of Species. Claims to priority were made on behalf of others, including Patrick Matthew in the appendix to a work on raising trees for shipbuilding, as Darwin punctiliously acknowledged in later editions of Origin. How­ever, though Matthew understood the principle of natural selection, it is not clear that he understood its power to explain the whole of life. Unlike Darwin and Wallace, he seems to have seen selection as a purely negative, weeding-out force, not the universal driving force. Indeed, he thought natural selection so obvious as to need no positive discovery at all.

---

Here may lie the answer to a nagging puzzle in the history of ideas. After Newton’s brilliant synthesis of physics, why did it take nearly two hundred years for Darwin to arrive on the scene? Newton’s achievement seems so much harder! Maybe the answer is that Darwin’s eventual solution to the riddle of life is so staggeringly simple, nobody thought to look for it.

It is so simple that in the guise of “survival of the fittest” (the renaming that Darwin adopted from Herbert Spencer at the urging of Wallace), it has even been described as a tautology: the fittest are defined as those that survive, so the catchphrase amounts to “those that survive survive.” But if it were really a tautology, the same mud should stick to artificial selection, the non-random breeding of domestic animals and plants (to which Darwin devoted so much attention). Imagine the dusty reception a certain kind of bad philosopher might get after saying this to a cattle breeder: “You are wasting your time. No improvement in milk yield can come from a tautology!”

But Darwin didn’t define the fittest as those that survive. His “fittest” were those endowed with the best equipment to survive, and that makes all the difference.

By the way, Darwin had plenty of other good ideas (for example his ingenious and largely correct theory of how coral reefs form),

but it is his big idea of natural selection that I am talking about here. I think it is even more powerful than I have so far suggested. Not only is it the explanation for life on this planet, it is the only theory so far suggested that could, even in principle, explain life on any planet. If life exists elsewhere in the universe (and my tentative bet is that it does), however strange and alien and weird its nature may be (and my tentative bet is that it will be weird beyond imagining), some version of evolution by Darwinian natural selection will almost certainly turn out to underlie its existence. That is at least how I would bet: on the principle that I have called “Universal Darwinism.”

There is a different sense of Universal Darwinism that I want to counsel against. This is the uncritical dragging of some garbled version of natural selection into every available field of human discourse, whether it is appropriate or not. Maybe the “fittest” firms survive in the marketplace, or the fittest theories survive in the scientific marketplace, but we should at the very least be cautious before we get carried away.

And of course there was Social Darwinism, culminating in the obscenity of Hitlerism.

Less obnoxious but still intellectually unhelpful is the loose and uncritical way in which amateur biologists apply selection at inappropriate levels in the hierarchy of life. “Survival of the fittest species, extinction of poorly adapted species” sounds superficially like true natural selection, but the apparent resemblance is positively misleading. As Darwin himself was at pains to point out, natural selection is all about differential survival within species, not between them.

Darwin’s great idea has moved on. Twenty-first century evolutionary science, if Darwin could return to see it, would enthrall, excite, and amaze him. But he would recognize it as his own. We are just coloring in the details. For my money, the most important thinker the human species has ever produced was Charles Darwin.

I’ll end on a subtler legacy of Darwin’s big idea. Darwin raises our consciousness to the sinewy power of science to explain the large and complex in terms of the small and simple. In biology we were fooled for centuries into thinking that extravagant complexity in nature needs an extravagantly complex explanation. Darwin triumphantly dispelled that illusion. There remain big questions, in physics and cosmology, that await their own Darwins. Why are the laws of physics the way they are? Why are there laws at all? Why is there a universe at all? Once again, the lure of “design” is tempting, but we have the cautionary tale of Darwin before us. We’ve been through all that before. Darwin raised our consciousness, and we are emboldened to seek true explanations of genuine power.

Richard Dawkins, F.R.S., is emeritus professor of the Public Understanding of Science at Oxford. His latest book is The God Delusion (First Mariner Books Edition, 2008).

Center for Inquiry - Promotion

via Darwins Dagger

Center For Inquiry - a humanist organisation with an overriding emphasis on science

Center for Inquiry is a organisation that does not generally use the term 'humanist' or 'humanism' - but its founder Paul Kurtz has created several Humanist manifestos in the past. I've taken quotes from their website.

A Global Federation Committed to Science, Reason, Free Inquiry, Secularism, and Planetary Ethics

The Center for Inquiry is a daring new concept. Although modern world civilization is based upon the achievements of science and technology, until this time

there has been no authoritative and credible voice defending the scientific outlook

in examining religion, human values, and the borderlands of science. If the naturalistic outlook is to supplant the ancient mythological narratives of the past, it needs a new institution devoted to its articulation and dramatization to the public. The Center for Inquiry is that institution.

About Center for Inquiry

The purpose of the Center for Inquiry is

to promote and defend reason, science, and freedom of inquiry in all areas of human endeavor.

The Center for Inquiry is a transnational nonpartisan, nonprofit 501(c)(3)

organization that encourages evidence-based inquiry into science, pseudoscience, medicine and health, religion, ethics, secularism, and society.

The Center for Inquiry is not affiliated with, nor does it promote, any political party or political ideology.

Through education, research, publishing, and social services,

it seeks to present affirmative alternatives based on scientific naturalism.

The Center is also interested in

providing rational ethical alternatives to the reigning paranormal and religious systems of belief, and in developing communities where like-minded individuals can meet and share experiences.

Mission

There are many institutions that engage in scientific research in specific fields of inquiry; there are fine schools, colleges, and universities that offer a large range of science programs and degrees; and there are numerous science journals and magazines. Many communities sponsor science museums and/or planetariums, for the public is often fascinated with the many exciting discoveries on the frontiers of science.

But until the Center for Inquiry, there were no institutions dedicated primarily to promote and defend science, reason, and free inquiry in all aspects of human interest.

The purpose of the Center for Inquiry is to contribute to the public understanding and appreciation of science and reason, and their applications to human conduct.

Unfortunately, the general public does not fully appreciate the nature of science and its methods of inquiry, nor are many willing to explore the broader philosophical implications of scientific discoveries for society. Although there is undoubtedly widespread public support for scientific technology, and while vast investments in new products and industries have grown out of this (e.g., space technology, biogenetic engineering, medical research, and other fields on the frontiers of knowledge), polls have shown that

large sectors of the public remain scientifically illiterate, even regarding the most elementary scientific facts about our universe.

There is,

in the public mind, a vast confusion between genuine science and fringe or pseudoscience.

Moreover,

there is a large reservoir of antiscientific attitudes about the dangers of scientific research, and fear that scientists who tread in unknown domains are aping the work of Frankenstein.

The widespread apprehension about cloning research is reminiscent of the fear of nuclear physicists expressed only a generation ago, that in investigating elementary particles they have opened a Pandora's Box which will destroy humankind.

Many even insist that there are areas of human life that scientific inquiry cannot or should not enter.

The scientific revolution, which is now four centuries old, has made great progress in expanding the frontiers of knowledge in the natural, biological, behavioral, and social sciences; and this has led to enormous contributions to human welfare.

Witness, for example, the strides made in improving nutrition, health, and longevity, in enhanced travel and communication and the many goods and services available for human enjoyment and happiness. Yet

along with the advancement of the agenda of scientific inquiry, there persists a culture of mysticism and faith that resists it.

What would it mean to extend the scientific spirit to our most basic and cherished convictions?

It would be to embrace a thoroughly scientific outlook (an outlook referred to in the scholarly literature as scientific naturalism or philosophical naturalism). The naturalistic outlook is at once a method of inquiry, a cosmic world view, and a new form of ethical inquiry.

A Method of Inquiry

The naturalistic outlook is first and foremost a commitment to a distinctive method of inquiry. The term inquiry refers to the evaluation of belief claims, many of which are largely unexamined in contemporary society-particularly basic beliefs. Many modern thinkers have argued that we should examine our beliefs and theories carefully and assent only to those for which there are adequate grounds.

Wherever possible, inquiry should provide rational guidelines for thought and conduct^[1].

Skepticism is an essential aspect in this process of inquiry, and it contributed to the development of reliable knowledge. It is used effectively within the sciences. The basic premise is that we need to question our beliefs, particularly those that are central to life, to see if they are well grounded by reason and evidence.

We do so in order to advance human knowledge and enhance life.

Bertrand Russell held "that it is undesirable to believe a proposition when there is no ground whatever for supposing it true."

He thought that this doctrtine appears to many people to be "widely paradoxical and subversive," for if consistently applied it would overturn some of the most cherished beliefs and sacred cows of society^[2]. At the very least, one might agree with Russell's recommendations:

1. we should not accept a belief as true if there is a preponderance of evidence against it, or if it is found to be rationally inconsistent with other well-founded beliefs, or both. To cling to beliefs for which there are abundant evidence and reasons to the contrary is irrational. Another application of this rule is reasonable, that is,
2. that we ought not to accept a belief as true if there is inadequate evidence and insufficient reasons to do so, and conversely,
3. we should accept a belief claim only if it is based on adequately justifying reasons and sufficient evidence. A corollary of this is that
4. where we do not have adequate grounds for believing that something is the case, then we should, wherever possible, adopt the stance of the skeptic and suspend judgment. Reason also dictates that
5. we should always leave the doors open to further inquiry; we should not censor or block the objective examination of truth claims, and any belief claim that is accepted on adequate reasons and evidence should not be insulated from further inquiry.

Notes

1. The term "inquiry" was used by both Charles Peirce (1839-1914) and John Dewey (1859-1952), two leading American philosophers who maintained that it should be interpreted functionally by its relevance to the solutions of human problems. Both held that the methods of science are the most effective ways of fixing beliefs.
2. Bertrand Russell, Skeptical Essays. London: Allen and Unwin, 1928, p. 11. W. K. Clifford, English mathematician and philosopher, in his influential essay, "The Ethics of Belief," makes a bolder statement: "It is wrong always, everywhere, and for anyone," he said, "to believe anything upon insufficient evidence." This latter injunction of Clifford is no doubt too sweeping; for it is sometimes difficult in ordinary life, if not impossible, to examine all of our beliefs and to reject those that do not meet this rigorous criterion. W. K. Clifford, Contemporary Review, 1888. See his Ethics of Belief and Other Essays (London: Watts, 1947).

A Cosmic World View

As a broad picture of the cosmos, the naturalistic-scientific world view underlies modern technological civilization itself. And yet it faces numerous cultural competitors.

Paranormalists and antinaturalists maintain that we must go beyond the concepts and methods of science to probe transcendental realms beyond the normal or natural world.

The paranormal and antinaturalist paradigm, on the contrary, maintains that some things are “unknown” or “unknowable” and transcend the methods of objective scientific inquiry.

They hold “the doctrine of two truths”: the natural world is amenable to reason and experience, but the deeper reality of the supernatural spiritual universe is allegedly known only by faith and intuition. Naturalists are never willing to abandon their search for causal explanations; spiritualist-paranormalists are content to invoke occult explanations.

Theists have heralded their faith in a mysterious sacred reality beyond; naturalists have chosen to focus on understanding this world and our life within it.

Many scholars in the humanities and philosophy today offer highly sophisticated critiques, claiming that there are no possible standards of objectivity or meaning, that it is never possible to develop reliable knowledge, and that science is simply one “mythic narrative” among others. The postmodernists have attacked the Enlightenment, and they question any effort to progressively improve the human condition by means of scientific knowledge. Subjectivists maintain that all knowledge is irremediably private and that no claim to truth is any more warranted than any other. In the name of tolerance they insist that any one truth or virtue is as good as any other.

The naturalistic picture of the cosmos is based upon converging lines of inquiry of many scientific disciplines. What are its main outlines?

1. First, mass/energy and physical/chemical laws are in some sense the basic building blocks of the physical universe. This allows us to develop concepts and hypotheses at various levels of inquiry—from the birth and death of galaxies, star systems, planets, and moons to the evolution of life on this planet and possibly elsewhere.
2. Second, the universe is undergoing processes of evolutionary change.
3. Third, Darwinian theories of evolution—natural selection, differential reproduction, genetic mutation, adaptation, etc.—provide more reliable explanations of the biosphere than those of creationists.
4. Fourth, the human species is part of nature; there is no evidence for a mind-body dualism.
5. Fifth, the claim that a separable “spirit” or “soul” has been reincarnated or that it will achieve immortality after the death of the body is unsupported by adequate evidence.
6. Sixth, human civilization and culture demonstrate the courageous efforts of human beings to adapt to challenges posed in the natural and social environment. This includes the progressive development of reason and science and technology in order to realize and enhance human purposes and values.

Rational Ethical Alternatives

A vital question that is often raised is: If one rejects a spiritualist-paranormal universe and/or the creationist drama of human salvation,

can science and reason provide us with a significant body of ethical principles, and can these infuse sufficient commitment to replace the ancient systems of belief?

Can they answer the basic existential questions: "What is the meaning of life?" and "How ought I to live?" Can they provide a moral framework for people longing for significance and direction?

The Buddha, Moses, Jesus, Krishna, Muhammad still inspire countless millions by their moral pronouncements and spiritual guidelines-

can naturalism provide equal role models that can inspire people, and yet not be rooted in spiritual mysticism?

Is it possible today to move beyond these orthodox systems of dogma, based upon faith, custom, authority, and emotion? And can we develop empirical and normative principles which are based on science and which draw upon rationality?

If the naturalistic account of nature is warranted -- and we believe that it is -- then the classical prop for ethics falls by the wayside. If our ethical principles have evolved in human civilization over a long period of gestation, then human beings are responsible for the kinds of moral principles and values that they adopt and hence in some sense for their own destinies. Thus, the key questions emerge,

"Is reason applicable to ethics?" and "Are values amenable to scientific treatment?"

Interestingly, the first question has been the central issue in philosophy from Plato and Aristotle through Immanuel Kant, John Stuart Mill, John Dewey, and John Rawls to the present, and the consensus of the philosophical debate is in the affirmative, i.e., that ethics is amenable to reason. To simply dismiss rationality in ethics is to ignore this extensive literature. In the 20th century, the effort to develop a science of value and valuation has also been a central problem for philosophers. This approach, which seeks to relate ethical theories to factual knowledge, is known as naturalistic ethics. Unfortunately,

the public has not been invited to participate in the vital intellectual enterprise of reconciling our values with the scientific worldview.

In sum,

society needs some general understanding of the common methods of rational scientific inquiry and the standards used by scientists to validate and corroborate their findings.

It also needs some comprehension of what the sciences tell us about the universe at large and the place of the human species within it.

The cosmic world view of the modern sciences is naturalistic, in that it involves a rejection of both the spiritual-paranormal paradigm and the subjective postmodernist forms of skepticism.

Isaac Asimov, Stephen Jay Gould, and Carl Sagan, who were stalwart supporters of the Center for Inquiry, were able to popularize and interpret the sciences for the public at large, and to convey some of the awe and excitement implicit in modern scientific discoveries. The purpose of the Center for Inquiry in part is to continue in this grand tradition.

Program Areas

The Center for Inquiry's programs of public education focus on three broad areas.

Paranormal and Fringe Science Claims

Through its Committee for Skeptical Inquiry (CSI) , the Center for Inquiry evaluates claims of the paranormal (phenomena allegedly beyond the range of normal scientific explanations), such as psychic phenomena, ghosts, communication with the dead, and alleged extraterrestrial visitations. It also explores the fringes and borderlands of the sciences, attempting to separate promising research from irresponsible pseudosciences, such as "creation science" and astrology. The interdisciplinary research conducted by CSI has shown that such pseudosciences have not applied the methods of rigorous scientific inquiry and have often violated the standards of confirmation and corroboration.

For example, astrology is considered a pseudoscience because its claims are not clearly formulated in testable form, its theories are often internally inconsistent, and its results have not been empirically corroborated. CSI monitors and reports on the irresponsible promulgation of pseudoscience, hoaxes, and urban legends within the pages of its flagship publication, Skeptical Inquirer and associate newsletter, Skeptical Briefs.

Religion, Ethics, and Society

Matters of faith and values are not immune from the implications of the scientific outlook, and a conception of our selves and our place in the universe can never be intellectually viable while it resists integration with the best knowledge of the day. The Council for Secular Humanism (CSH) promotes naturalism and secular values to the public, and stimulates critical inquiry into the foundations and social effects of the world religions. The Council stands up for the dignity of those who dissent from today's reigning orthodoxies, and assists secular humanist community groups across North America. Different divisions focus on issues specific to the African-American and African experience, and to Islamic societies, with pioneering Koranic criticism and advocacy for separation of mosque and state. The Council's peer-reviewed journal of academic philosophy, Philo, specializes in the articulation and philosophical defense of naturalism in metaphysics, epistemology, and moral theory. The Council also keeps alive the history of nineteenth century American freethought through its Robert G. Ingersoll Memorial Committee, which operates a museum in Dresden, New York.

Medicine and Health

Western medicine and mental health practice have advanced alongside the advancements in natural science. Yet the widespread embrace of "alternative and complimentary medicine" and herbal and homeopathic remedies contemporary would sever this anchor to the naturalistic outlook. Meanwhile, dominant substance abuse recovery programs, such as Alcoholics Anonymous, invoke the reliance on "a Higher Power." The Center for Inquiry stimulates critical scientific scrutiny of New Age medicine via its Commission for Scientific Medicine and Mental Health Practice (CSMMH) , publisher of the Scientific Review of Alternative Medicine and the Scientific Review of Mental Health Practice. CFI supports thoroughly naturalistic addiction recovery practices through Secular Organizations for Sobriety (SOS). Hundreds of SOS groups in North America convene weekly on and off Center premises; and the movement has spread to countries as far and wide as Great Britain, Israel, Italy, and Russia.

Research And Education

Research

The Center has established a Research Institute to coordinate the research of distinguished scholars and social critics from around world, many of whom are appointed CFI research fellows or post-doctoral fellows. These include Professor Richard Wiseman, a parapsychological researcher at University of Hertsfordshire; Ibn Warraq, noted Islamic scholar; Professor Gerd Lüdemann, noted biblical scholar from Göttingen, Germany; Professor Richard Stenger, astrophysicist at the University of Colorado; and others.

Fellows of CSI include E. O. Wilson, Steven Weinberg, Richard Dawkins, Leon Jaroff, Martin Gardner, Susan Blackmore, Neil de Grasse Tyson, Joe Nickell, and Steven Pinker.

Humanist Laureates appointed by the Council for Secular Humanism include Umberto Eco, Arthur C. Clarke, Betty Friedan, Arthur Schlesinger, Richard Rorty, Jurgen Habermas, Peter Singer, Kurt Vonnegut Jr., Gore Vidal, Simone Weil, Thomas Szasz, and Lionel Tiger.

Publications and Libraries

Publications

The flagship magazines for the educated public published at the Center for Inquiry are CSI's The Skeptical Inquirer and the Council for Secular Humanism's Free Inquiry (with a combined readership of nearly 100,000).

Additional magazines at CFI are read in the U.S. (The American Rationalist), United Kingdom (The Skeptic), the Spanish-speaking world (Pensar), Perú (New Skepticism, and The Journal of Applied Philosophy), and Russia (Common Sense).

The Center's peer-reviewed academic journals include The Scientific Review of Alternative Medicine, The Scientific Review of Mental Health Practice, and Philo.

There are a variety of electronic and print newsletters for associated membership organizations: Skeptical Briefs for members of CSI, Secular Humanist Bulletin and Family Matters for associate members of the Council, African-American Humanist Examiner for members of African-Americans for Humanism; Campus Inquirer for members of CFI's campus outreach program; and SOS International Newsletter for participants in Secular Organizations for Sobriety, as well as The Ingersoll Report, a bulletin of the Robert G. Ingersoll Memorial Committee.

The official newsletter of the Center for Inquiry-International is the CFI Report.

Center for Inquiry London

Executive Director and Company Secretary: Suresh Lalvani

Address:
Conway Hall,
25 Red Lion Square
London WC1R 4RL

Email: slalvani@centerforinquiry.net

Welcome to Our London Website

The Centre for Inquiry London offers an opportunity to put your principles into practice by joining other rationalists to work for positive change in society. In addition, the London Centre sponsors social events for freethinkers as well as intellectual programming, and assists with campus outreach.

CFI provides an ethical alternative to religious and paranormal worldviews. In this time of rising religiosity, anti-intellectualism and political turmoil on ethical issues, it is

critical that rationalists and freethinkers join together to protect civil liberties, defend reason, and work toward increasing scientific literacy.

Opening Launch of Center for Inquiry London

NB. Stephen Law has accepted post to lead CfI in London.

February 4, 2008

Held at Conway Hall, London on 18th January 2008, CFI London's inaugural event proved very successful with leading lights from the British and American academic, skeptical, secular and humanist communities speaking and participating in discussions. Nearly 150 people attended the day and evening event, and included delegates from the British Isles, Scandanavia, Eastern and Western Europe and the US.

• 
• 
• 

The theme of the Inaugural Conference was "Secularism in the Multicultural Society: The Civil Limits of Tolerance". The audience widely appreciated the contributions of speakers Joseph Hoffmann, Norman Bacrac, Paul Kurtz, Simon Glendinning, Norman Solomon, Daphne Hampson, Mark Vernon, Stephen Law, Azar Majedi, Julian Baggini, Ibn Warraq, Nigel Warburton, Peter Cave, and D.J. Grothe. The event which started at 11.00 am ended eleven hours later after a lively question and answer section undertaken by Professor Richard Dawkins who is the Honorary Chairman of CFI London's Advisory Board.

• 
• 

Also very well received was the South Place Ethical Society (SPES) event on 20th January at Conway Hall at which CFI representatives spoke. Ibn Warraq spoke on ‘The Origins of the Koran' and Professor Paul Kurtz spoke on ‘Secular Alternatives to Religion'. Over 100 delegates attended and participated in lively discussions throughout the day.

• 
• 

Several of the delegates to the above events have expressed their interest in further CFI London events and have indicated they wish to be involved with CFI London, and a number have expressed interested in volunteering.

Suresh Lalvani
Executive Director
Center for Inquiry London
2nd February 2008