Latest Articles
Convicted for blasphemy in modern Britain: an interview with Hamit Coskun
An interview with the man recently convicted for burning a Quran in public.
Image of the week: 20 years since the Jyllands-Posten cartoons controversy
30 September will mark the twentieth anniversary of the publication of various cartoons of the supposed prophet Muhammad…
Islam and free speech, 20 years on from Jyllands-Posten: interview with Jacob Mchangama
Today marks the twentieth anniversary of the publication of several cartoons of the supposed Prophet Muhammad by the…
Lost in the manosphere: interview with James Bloodworth
James Bloodworth is an author and journalist. In this interview, I speak to him about his latest book,…
Freethought History Webinar #4: Thomas Paine, the Freethinking Democratic Hero Cancelled from Popular History. With Paul Fitzgerald (9 September 2025)
An invitation to the fourth in our Freethought History Webinar series.
Image of the week: ‘Allah is lesbian’ (#FreeBetty)
Ibitissamme Lachgar, known as Betty, is a feminist, human rights activist, and ex-Muslim who for many years has…
The ‘Freethinker’: The Voice of Freethought (Freethought History Festival panel)
Last year, from 30 August to 1 September, the Freethinker-sponsored Freethought History Festival took place at Conway Hall…
Freethought History Webinar #3: A Paine Party? Thomas Paine’s Relevance in America’s Gilded Age—and Today. With Dermot Trainor (27 May)
An invitation to the third in our Freethought History Webinar series.
Image of the week: The Scopes Monkey Trial of 1925
July 2025 marks the hundredth anniversary of the infamous Scopes Monkey Trial, held in Dayton, Tennessee, which saw…
Freethought History Webinar #4: Atheism and Vegetarianism in the 19th and 20th Centuries: A Match Made in Heaven? With Nathan Alexander (8 July 2025)
An invitation to the fourth in our Freethought History Webinar series.
The Fourth of July and the Battle for America’s Soul
Happy Independence Day, America.
Image of the week: Francisco Goya’s ‘The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters’
Francisco Goya’s c. 1799 etching is usually regarded as an expression of Enlightenment principles. The imagination, untempered by…
Image of the week: Hamit Coskun, victim of a new form of blasphemy law?
The conviction on 2 June of Hamit Coskun for setting a Quran alight in public has rightly worried…
‘The New Theism’: Talk given to Leicester Secular Society, 18 May 2025
With thanks to the Leicester Secular Society for having me. See here for more on the New Theism.
Image of the week: ‘A Paine Party?’
In anticipation of the Freethinker’s upcoming webinar (to be held on 27 May 2025) on the legacy of…
The ‘New Theism’ and the resurgent threat of Christianity (London Metropolitan University guest lecture)
This lecture was recorded in April 2025 for London Metropolitan University’s SS7058 Radicalisation and Counter-radicalisation Strategies course. It…
Image of the week: A papal plague
As the conclave to elect a new pope gets underway, I thought it appropriate to share a good,…
Verses of Life: A Review of ‘Woman Life Freedom: Poems for the Iranian Revolution’, edited by Bänoo Zan and Cy Strom
Are poets really ‘the unacknowledged legislators of the world’, as Percy Bysshe Shelley put it in 1821? This…
Can there be peace in the culture wars? Interview with A.C. Grayling
On 15 April 2025, I spoke with the philosopher A.C. Grayling about his new book Discriminations: Making Peace…
Some Brief Reflections on the Death of a Pope
Here we go again. Another round of swooning, gushing, and utterly emetic media coverage for a deceased pontiff.…