From the Richard Dawkins Foundation Newsletter. Subscribe here. Hello! Words can have incredible power. If we didn’t think so, we wouldn’t produce magazines, podcasts, or this newsletter! But their power comes from how they transmit information, how they make us feel, and how they move us to act.  What words cannot do is cause things to …

From the Richard Dawkins Foundation Newsletter. Subscribe here. Hello! Words can have incredible power. If we didn’t think so, we wouldn’t produce magazines, podcasts, or this newsletter! But their power comes from how they transmit information, how they make us feel, and how they move us to act.  What words cannot do is cause things to …

Triskaidekaphobia, rabbits’ feet, horseshoes, throwing salt over your shoulder, and fear of black cats. Old and silly superstitions are remarkably common, with even some of the most skeptical among us feeling beholden to some ritual, trinket, or omen to determine our fortunes. On the latest Skeptical Inquirer Presents online event, psychologist Stuart Vyse explored the …

You probably don’t need the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason & Science to tell you that underground water can not be detected by channeling psychic energy through a couple of sticks. While obvious to you, it is anathema to those who believe in the power of “dowsing,” in which a person holding two rods can …

You might have noticed that when a discriminatory, religion-privileging, science-denying bill gets introduced in one state’s legislature, the same kind of bill tends to start popping up in other legislatures as well. This is no accident. While Christian nationalists and religious-Right zealots have coordinated state-level lobbying for decades, in 2018 that coordination reached new levels …

We would like to think of exorcisms as an ugly chapter in human history, from a time when backward, helplessly ignorant people, frightened by things they couldn’t understand, came to believe that literal demons could inhabit the bodies of victims, causing all manner of damage, sickness, and outrageous behavior.  And then we remember that it …

If prayer actually worked—that is, if praying actually had some power to affect anything in the real world—it stands to reason that those whose wellbeing is most prayed for would feel the effects. Outside of the sudden outpourings of “thoughts and prayers” in the wake of tragedies, the people who are perhaps the most frequent …