Centre for Inquiry Transnational

What We Do Worldwide

The Centre for Inquiry is a unique institution. Although modern world civilization is based upon the achievements of science and technology, there is no other institution that utilizes scientific methods and reasoning in examining both pseudoscience and religion and that studies and promotes human values based on a naturalistic outlook.

The Centre for Inquiry Transnational is home to the Skeptical Inquirer and Free Inquiry magazines and serves as an anchor point for hundreds of skeptic and humanist societies throughout the world. From the Centre for Inquiry, scientists, philosophers, media professionals, students, and members of the public obtain information about CFI’s three areas of interest:

1. Religion, Ethics and Society

2. Pseudoscience, Paranormal and Fringe-science claims

3. Medicine and Health

Nineteen publications, a large variety of online services, and international programs of education in science and philosophy are among our other activities. Comprising 36,000 square feet and housing a 60,000 volume scholarly library, CFI’s international headquarters in Amherst, New York coordinates undergraduate-level summer school, seminars, and workshops in critical thinking and the scientific outlook. A Masters in Education program is also offered by the State University of New York at Buffalo, in cooperation with the CFI Institute.

CFI maintains branch centres in Los Angeles, New York, Tampa, Grand Rapids (Michigan), Austin (Texas), Indianapolis (Indiana) and Washington DC. CFI Centres and Communities with vigorous local programming operate in dozens of locations in the US, Canada and other nations.

The Centre for Inquiry: a hub for rationality and critical inquiry worldwide – and a resource for the local, academic, and media communities.

CFI focuses on three broad areas:

Religion, Ethics, and Society

The Committee for the Scientific Examination of Religion (CSER), which publishes the CSER Review, has attracted leading scholars in many disciplines to examine the claims of Eastern and Western traditions. The Centre affiliate, the Council for Secular Humanism, promotes naturalism and secular values to the public and stimulates critical inquiry into the foundations and social effects of the world’s religions. Through Free Inquiry magazine and its other projects, it defends the dignity of those who dissent from today’s reigning orthodoxies. The Council’s various projects focus on grassroots humanist activism and the development of humanist community groups. The Centre for Inquiry’s peer-reviewed journal of academic philosophy, Philo, specializes in the philosophical defense of naturalism in metaphysics, epistemology, and moral theory.

Paranormal and Fringe-Science Claims

Through the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry and Skeptical Inquirer magazine, the Centre for Inquiry evaluates claims of the paranormal. It also explores the fringes and borderlands of the sciences, attempting to separate promising research from irresponsible pseudoscience, such as “creation science” and astrology. CSI (formerly CSICOP) monitors and reports on the irresponsible promulgation of pseudoscience, hoaxes, and urban legends on the Internet and in the mass media.

Medicine and Health

Medicine and mental-health practice have advanced along with natural science. Yet the widespread embrace of “complimentary and/or alternative medicine” seeks to sever this anchor to the naturalistic outlook. Meanwhile, dominant substance-abuse recovery programs, such as Alcoholics Anonymous, invoke reliance on a “Higher Power.” The Centre for Inquiry stimulates critical scientifi c scrutiny of New Age and alternative medicine via its Commission for Scientific Medicine and Mental Health and publishes

The Scientific Review of Alternative Medicine and The Scientific Review of Mental Health Practice. It supports naturalistic addiction recovery practices through an affi liated program, Secular Organizations for Sobriety (SOS) with hundreds of groups convening around the world.

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