Volume 126 Issue 1 January/February 2011
- Editorial: it just ain't natural
- We shouldn't allow myth and dogma to cloud rational evidence-based argument
Cover Story
- Playing God
- With Danny Boyle's production of Frankenstein due to open at the National Theatre in February, Philip Ball looks at the timeless fascination, and consequences, of the monster myth
Columns
- Two-faced Moon
- Photographs of Saturn’s third largest moon taken by the Cassini probe reveal an explanation of its mysterious two-toned appearance, says Marcus Chown
Features
- Bad Faith Awards 2010
- Who gave the silliest sermon or pious pronouncement of the past year? Thousands of you voted and the results are in
- Solitary
- 30,000 supermax prisoners in the US are denied any human contact. So how does it affect them? Sharon Shalev goes inside
- Inside the mind of Scientology's Messiah
- Twenty-five years after his death, Michael Bywater revisits the sacred texts of the pulp science writer turned prophet L Ron Hubbard
- Delusions of grandeur
- Information systems professor Ian Angell tells Laurie Taylor where science has gone wrong
- It's the faith, stupid!
- Social scientist Olivier Roy has been tracking religion for three decades. Caspar Melville talks to him about his new book Holy Ignorance
- Quite contrary: inside the Battle of Ideas
- The associates of the Institute of Ideas certainly have a talent for getting noticed. But is there more to them than hollow liberal-baiting? asks Richard Wilson
- A many splendour'd thing
- Moons and Junes, hearts, diamonds and red, red roses – this Valentine's Day, what could be more humanist than passionate romance? But, warns Sally Feldman, it may also be a dangerous delusion
- Rationalism's dirty secret
- John Appleby unravels the history of humanism’s dalliance with eugenics.
- Behind the couch
- Was Freud really a rationalist? Lie back and let Alfred Tauber convince you
- Hot type
- Andrew Mueller revels in the vituperative opinions of HL Mencken
- Careless talk?
- Some secularists believe that any communication with believers amounts to collaboration. Paul Sims isn’t so sure
Regulars
- Endgame: The Mild One
- Laurie Taylor goes hell for leather
Book Reviews
- Book review: Apocalypse for Beginners by Nicolas Dickner
- Philip Womack is disappointed by the end of the world
- Book review: The God Instinct by Jesse Bering
- Do we have innate religious tendencies? Jake Wallis Simons turns to a new book to find out
- Book review: Twelve Steps to a Compassionate Life by Karen Armstrong
- Ophelia Benson finds Karen Armstrong's spiritual manifesto lacking in spirit and laughs
- Book review: Self Comes to Mind by Antonio Damasio and The Tell-Tale Brain by VS Ramachandran
- Can the brain be explained? Louise Foxcroft reads two of the world's leading neuroscientists to find out
