The Freethinker

Credo: I Believe I believe for every drop of rain that falls a flower grows – Every? I believe that somewhere in the darkest night a candle glows – Well, yes, probably. So what? I believe for everyone who goes astray someone will come to show the way – Why do we have prisons? Which way was Cranmer shown? Captain Scott, ‘Mad’ Mike Hughes, Anne Boleyn, Peoples’ Temple, Steve Irwin?

Many believe and place faith In an entity that may take All of which fall under the same Watching over us, as if inside a tower In churches and in the synagogue, Just to list some of the types Of places, among other sites, Has its own; some elect to pray, others meditate, A call out to the aforementioned deity When they feel it needs to be Called upon; but maybe we exist with no creator As the atheists say, and won’t meet a maker In the end, or maybe the humans of Earth Have foreign origins...

I’m excited to announce the thirteenth in the Freethinker’s series of free online seminars for all those interested in freethought history and its enduring relevance. The webinars, hosted by me and lasting around one hour, will feature expert guest speakers, to whom you’ll have a chance to ask your questions.

A poem on the December 2025 Bondi Beach shooting.

The origin, among our species, of belief in gods and other supernatural beings is so ancient—it seems that no matter how far back we go in human prehistory, we find hints of it—that we really ought to wonder whether chimpanzees believe in gods too. More precisely, not chimps but our common ancestor with them.

Books From Bob’s Library is a semi-regular series in which freethought book collector and National Secular Society historian Bob Forder delves into his extensive collection and shares stories and photos with readers of the Freethinker. You can find Bob’s introduction to and first instalment in the series here and other instalments here. I recently had the pleasure of opening a small, tidy package from Australia containing a copy of Lord Raglan’s The Hero, complete in its dustjacket.

In early 1944 I was born in London, a city I love. I spent much of my childhood in rural north Oxfordshire, an area to which I have a great sense of belonging. And I have lived in Victoria, Australia (mainly in the Melbourne area), since 1976. I am now 82 years old, so I hope I have gained a little wisdom, or at least enough to take stock and sum up my life. We are all, I think, products of our genes and environments.

Tribute to the victims of the Berlin Pride attack, 26 July 2026. Photo: Orator. CC BY-SA 4.0. During the vibrant and colourful celebration of Berlin’s Christopher Street Day on 25 July, one of Europe’s largest LGBTQ Pride events, darkness descended when a 21-year-old Muslim extremist wielding a van and a blade unleashed terror upon people celebrating love, diversity, and equality. As he careened through the festivities, unabated chaos erupted, leaving one person dead and 29 others injured.

Benedict de Spinoza (1632-1677) was an atheist. He was a systematic atheist. His atheism was fundamental to his ethical and political project. Spinoza’s contemporaries in the seventeenth-century republic of letters were in little doubt on these points. Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646-1716), who knew Spinoza personally and must count as one of the most perceptive observers of the age, wrote that he ‘was truly an atheist’.

Many years ago, I attended a sales course where we were taught to begin a presentation with what was called, if my memory serves me correctly, an ‘Initial Advantage Statement’. The idea was simple: start with something which everyone in the room could agree on. Having established that initial agreement, you could then move on to the rather more difficult business of persuading them to accept your proposition. Listening to politicians today, I sometimes wonder whether they attended the same course.