Mike Powell

At this time, media in Bangladesh is pipelined into a religious system, Pens are made to wear hijab, and a satellite launching must begin with-Bismillah. It is high time that we understand the challenges that democracy face and why it is making a tie with oppressive medieval values. Bangladesh was never an Islamic republic as …

The following article originally appeared in the May/June 2013 edition of The American Rationalist. Does intelligence have anything to do with rationality? Intelligent people are good at reasoning, so we expect them to think things through and reach reasonable conclusions based on evidence and logic. On the other hand, we associate low intelligence with gullibility. Why do …

What could be wrong with sexual purity? A lot, according to Linda Kay Klein, the author of the new book, Pure: Inside the Evangelical Movement that Shamed a Generation of Young Women and How I Broke Free. The title summarizes the story of evangelical churches using a strong message of women’s sexual purity to limit …

The Quran is a book of poetry, which demonstrates the power of the poetic form. At the time of Mohammad in Arabia, poets were believed to be gifted and had enormous influence. One of these was Asma’ bint Marwan, who ridiculed Muhammad and encouraged people to fight against him. At this Muhammad asked his companions, …

Canadian Susan swept the social media headlines this past week with her jaw-dropping tale of entitled, inappropriate rage at not getting free money from her friends and family to fund her $60,000 dream wedding. I, like many, read the screenshots with that familiar sense of tingling schadenfreude that good gossip elicits—and really, it was a …

Of the periodicals published at the Center for Inquiry, none has a longer – or more winding – history than The Truth Seeker. I’ll pause a moment while some of you say to yourselves, “Huh? CFI has something to do with The Truth Seeker?” – and while others of you say “What’s The Truth Seeker?” …

Even as a professor of psychology, I sometimes find all the different terms in mental health confusing. Just in terms of licensed professionals, there are psychologists, psychiatrists, counselors, therapists, social workers, and a dozen other lesser used terms that could all describe a person engaging in helping someone to improve their mental health. The acronyms …

The stories of sexual abuse are seemingly unending. A Pennsylvania grand jury gave us horrible details of seventy years of sexual abuse in six Roman Catholic dioceses. The report revealed that over 1,000 children were harmed by over 300 clergy. The grand jury tells us, for example, that One of these priests ejaculated in the …

I once heard the concept of religious faith compared to a glass of water. When one is young, the glass is small and so is easily filled with a small amount of water. As one grows older, the glass expands, and the same amount of water no longer fills the glass. I am not positive …

Mindware is defined as rules, procedures, and other forms of knowledge that are stored in the brain and can be retrieved to make decisions and solve problems (a term coined by cognitive scientist David Perkins) (Stanovich 2009). Mindware is important when it comes to rational action. The right type of mindware—scientific thinking, probabilistic reasoning, and logic—is …