Nine Decades of Progress

by | October 24, 2021

By James Haught I’ll be 90 on my next birthday. My long life is sinking, shrinking, slip-sliding away. My wife is worse: bedfast, under Hospice care. Soon, our world will end, not with a bang but a whimper. Looking back over nine decades, I’m proud and pleased because secular humanism — the progressive struggle to make life… Read more »

Ask Jon 39: “That person’s religious beliefs are hurting him and his community.”

by | October 21, 2021

By Scott Douglas Jacobsen Jonathan Engel, J.D. is the President of the Secular Humanist Society of New York. Here we talk about changes in the secular New York community with COVID. *Interview conducted July 25, 2021.* Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Okay, we are back after an approximately three month and three week hiatus with Ask Jon. So, the Biden/Harris… Read more »

Is Zen Enlightenment Real?

by | October 17, 2021

By James Haught I’m intrigued by Zen meditation as a supposed path to enlightenment. I’ve tried repeatedly — lying silent in bed, blanking out my mind, hearing nothing but the rhythm of my breath, seeing nothing but dark blurs behind my eyelids. But all it does is put me to sleep. In the end, I never get… Read more »