Volume 126

Issue 1: January/February 2011

Cover story: Philip Ball looks at the timeless fascination of the monster myth; is dialogue with believers necessarily a bad thing? asks Paul Sims; Olivier Roy talks to Caspar Melville about the rise of holy ignorance; Andrew Mueller revels in the vituperative opinions of HL Mencken; dangerous delusion or heart of humanism? Sally Feldman searches for the essence of love; Michael Bywater revisits the sacred texts of Scientology's L Ron Hubbard; is there more to the Institute of Ideas than hollow liberal-baiting? asks Richard Wilson; information systems professor Ian Angell tells Laurie Taylor where science has gone wrong; Sharon Shelev goes inside America's super-maximum security prisons; John Appleby unravels the history of humanism's dalliance with eugenics; was Freud a humanist? asks Alfred Tauber; Marcus Chown reveals Saturn's two-faced moon; Ophelia Benson climbs Karen Armstong's 12 steps; Louise Foxcroft has good news and bad news for two neuroscience writers; Jake Wallis Simons uncovers the God instinct; Philip Womack is uninspired by the end of the world; PLUS find out which charlatan has been crowned winner of our 2010 Bad Faith Award

Issue 2: March/April 2011

Cover story: Richard Wiseman explains the science behind gods and ghosts; Winston Fletcher warns that the religion question in this year's census is designed to distort; Angela Saini on the crisis of faith facing educated Indians; Laurie Taylor talks to biologist Lewis Wolpert about the science of ageing; Jonathan Rée reassesses the romantic rationalism of Percy Bysshe Shelley; how will the new free schools deal with creationism and evolution? asks James Gray; is the Big Society driving women back into the home? asks Sally Feldman; psychologist Nicholas Humphrey tells Caspar Melville about the science of the soul; Eliza Griswold reports on the conflict between Muslims and Christians in Nigeria; Owen Hatherley pays a visit to Dublin Science Gallery's new exhibition Visceral; Conor Gearty admires Ronald Dworkin's mind; Andrew Mueller has fun with a history of protest songs; Marcus Chown enters Brian Greene's multiverse; Owen Hatherley tires of John Gray's shtick; Jake Wallis Simons isn't blown away by a debut novel; PLUS: Philip Pullman on what he owes the library; Mona Eltahawy on Egypt's popular revolution and Paul Sims on the pitfalls of 'Islamophobia'

Issue 3: May/June 2011

Cover story: Jake Wallis Simons has a few tips on secular weddings for the royal couple; AC Grayling tells New Humanist why has put together a humanist bible; Richard Wilson reports on the battle against Africa witch-hunters; Christopher Lane extols the benefit of doubt; Kenan Malik takes issue with Sam Harris's attempt to derive morality from science; the beauty of religious relics should not blind us to the cruelty of the medieval Church says Charles Freeman; Sally Feldman delves into the pathology of collecting; Ann Oakley reviews the remarkable career of the great humanist Barbara Wootton; Stuart Hall talks to Laurie Taylor about race, relativism and revolution; Michael Bywater worries how God will take his atheism; Stephen Howe discovers the best book to be written on modern Pakistan; Jenny Bunker is intoxicated by Barbara Ehrenreich's rites of war; Angela Saini feels at home with Tim Radford; Andrew Mueller takes Jon Ronson's psychopath test; Philip Womack is uninspired by a dystopian debut. PLUS: Jim Al-Khalili on the legacy of Arabian science; Padraig Reidy defends free speech from the Qur'an burners; Kerem Oktem surveys the Arab Spring.

Issue 4: July/August 2011

Cover story: When does criticism of Islam cross the line into racism? asks Paul Sims; Terry Pratchett makes the case for assisted dying; Marcus Brigstocke talks God and addiction; the Moon could be the reason we are here at all, explains John Gribbin; AL Kennedy on the psychics turning grief into money; Simon Baron-Cohen discusses the science of evil; what's a prison chaplain for? asks Richard Smyth; a new expansive philosophy of humanity is mounting a fight-back against neuroscience, writes Raymond Tallis; since there is nothing useful about the God hypothesis, we can happily discard it, says Mano Singham; Laurie Taylor spends an evening with John Berger; Andrew West's photos of the Mustard Seed Secular School in Uganda; Matthew Adams meets literary critic James Wood; what causes the dust devils on the surface of Mars? asks Marcus Chown; PLUS: just say 'No' to Nadine Dorries and the attack on sex education, warns Zoe Margolis; Sally Feldman on the trouble at Grayling Hall, Sami Zubaida on the Fatah-Hamas reconciliation; Richard Wilson confronts the horrors of war in the Congo; Michael Bywater learns the lingo of crime; Keith Kahn-Harris discovers religion in modernity; Jenny Bunker enjoys Caitlin Moran's flippant feminism; Richard Norman explores the matter of the human predicament.

Issue 5: September/October 2011

Cover story: Ricky Gervais on shock comedy and why God loves him really; James Gray asks whether religious groups can be trusted to deliver public services in the Big Society; Vicky Simister recounts her experience of being excommunicated by the Jehovah's Witnesses; Owen Jones on tackling class hatred with his new book Chavs; a decade after 9/11 the reverberations continue, says Stephen Howe; as the new football season kicks off Sam Delaney has a crisis of faith; there are many ways not to believe, finds Jonathan Rée; Erasmus unwittingly ignited a secular revolution, says Matthew Adams; Aaron Rosen frames John Martin's images of the Apocalypse; Adam Rutherford looks forward to Godless Christmas 2011; Warning! Susan Greenfield could rot your brain, says Sally Feldman; Marcus Chown looks for life in the oceans of Europa; Pamela Haag offers a humanist defence of marriage; Stephanie Merritt is spooked by MR James's ghost tales; Philip Womack is absorbed by AS Byatt's Norse myth; Nina Power chooses The Tyranny of Choice; Bill Thompson goes Barefoot into Cyberspace; Angela Saini is frustrated by Steve Fuller; PLUS: Austin Mackell on Egypt's three revolutionary fronts; Padraig Reidy on the future of Catholic Ireland; Kenan Malik on the shared worldview of Anders Breivik and the Islamists; and Ebenezer Obadare on Africa's imaginary gay crisis

Issue 6: November/December 2011

Cover story: we talk to Al Murray, the man behind Britain's favourite Pub Landlord; Paul Sims meets the ex-Met detective accused of getting too close to Islamists; Alice Onwordi reports on the shocking prevalence of female genital mutilation in the UK; Chief Petty Officer Chris Holden on an atheist's experience of attending memorials to the fallen in Afghanistan; Radio 4 host and country vicar Reverend Richard Coles talks Jesus, fame and ecstasy; Kenan Malik challenges the myth of Christian Europe; we don't need religion, but mystical traditions still have a lot to teach us, says John Burnside; Sally Feldman revisits the politics of the orgasm; Jonathan Rée on the theologians picking a fight with the Almight; Mia Bloom on the rise of the female suicide bomber; Marcus Chown examines spiral galaxy Hoag's Object; Keith Kahn Harris finds religion in evolution; Mark Pagel weathers The Viral Storm; Natalie Haynes endures a painful crime novel; John Appleby wonders What It Means To Be Human; Jenny Bunker pursues the elusive David Hume; PLUS: nine highlights from Nine Lessons and Carols for Godless People; Laurie Taylor sidesteps a scam; Padraig Reidy dissects Scotland's misguided clampdown on sectarian football chants; Rob Deering asks what his kids are learning in RE; Peter Tatchell demands equal rights in marriage; and Manjit Kumar hands Dawkins's new book for kids to some young experts.

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