The Freethinker

In the last quarter of the nineteenth century, Joseph Turmel, a French priest born in Brittany in 1859, embarked on what would be a lifelong and intense study of biblical literature and church history. By the age of 26, this course of study had converted him to rationalism. But unlike his near contemporary, Joseph McCabe, he decided to conceal his apostasy and remain a priest.

Introduction Enginel B. Johnson (also known as Bwambale Johnson) is the founder of Hillside Nursery and Orphanage School, located in the mountainous region of Mount Rwenzori, Kasese, Uganda. The school was established to support orphans and children from impoverished families affected by numerous regional hardships. With over 300 children under his care, Johnson works tirelessly to provide food, education, and shelter despite limited resources.

In the images many of us grow up with, certain figures are meant to stand for safety and moral order: the priest, the judge, the officer, the guardian of faith and law. They appear as protectors, guides, listeners, or saviours. But what happens when these same figures begin to embody control, silence, and coercion instead? This question sits at the centre of my six-poster series about the collapse of protective institutions, The Fall of the Guardians.

A day late and a dollar short, as the old saying goes. Yes, it is the fifth, rather than the Fourth, of July.

Women displaying placards during Aurat March 2019. image credit: Nawab Afridi. Image used under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license. The placard on the left reads: ‘If you like scarf (dupatta) this much, then tie it over your eyes.’ The placard on the right reads: ‘A woman is not a child-making machine.’ The placard in the middle reads: ‘This is not your father’s road.’ translations: tehreem azeem.

It might seem strange to some, but in the earliest days of the Royal Society, everyone was at least somewhat religious. Convinced that the world was rational and ordered, the first official scientific society on Earth was driven to use this new thing called ‘science’ for the good of one’s fellow humans. Medicine, research, and investigation changed forever and took on a trajectory that transformed first the Western world, and then the entire world.

The original version of this interview was conducted by Helen Nicholls of the National Secular Society (NSS) and published on the NSS website on 29 May 2026. This interview celebrates and looks back upon Keith Porteous Wood’s three decades of NSS activism; he joined as executive director in 1996 and became President in 2017. The interview is republished here with the permission of the NSS, with a small amount of extra material added.

In 1978, after I had written several articles for medical journals in favour of what was then called voluntary euthanasia, I was invited to join the committee of the Voluntary Euthanasia Society (VES). Its founders in 1935 included the royal surgeon. The next year, during the first Westminster debate on the topic, the royal physician, Lord Dawson of Penn, said that there was no need for legislation because ‘all good doctors do it anyway’.

Note: this piece was originally published on the National Secular Society website on 5 June 2026 and it is republished here with permission. Essex County Council has announced it will start full council meetings with a recitation of the Lord’s Prayer. It is one of at least three county councils to introduce prayers since Reform UK took control.

The Expectant Valley, by Desmond Morris, which featured on the cover of the first edition of The Selfish Gene and which is pictured here hanging in Richard Dawkins’s Oxford home in 2022 Photo: Emma Park (cropped from her original). Ernest Rutherford is supposed to have said that ‘all science is either physics or stamp collecting’. This reflects an enduring perception that, with their test tubes, lab coats, and dense equations, the physical sciences are hard.