Organization Promoting Secularism and Science
Granted Representation at United Nations

AMHERST, N.Y. August 3, 2005—The Center for Inquiry–Transnational (CFI), devoted to science, reason, and free inquiry in all areas of human interest, announced today that it has been granted “special consultative status” as a non-governmental organization or NGO under the United Nations Economic and Social Council.

This entitles the Center for Inquiry to designate official representatives to UN headquarters in New York and UN offices in Geneva and Vienna. The Center for Inquiry can participate in conferences and briefings open to NGOs, and generally present the scientific and secular perspective to the international community.

The Center for Inquiry maintains Centers or CFI Communities in Amherst, N.Y., New York City, Los Angeles, Tampa, and communities in fourteen other cities in North America. It also has Centers in Germany, France, Spain, Poland, Russia, Peru, Argentina, Egypt, Nigeria, Uganda, Kenya, India, Nepal, and New Zealand, and is in the process of establishing a Center in China and elsewhere.

Professor Paul Kurtz, chairman of the Center movement, commented, “As the planetary community faces unprecedented challenges in the future, it should be guided by humanist values and scientific rationality. In an age of clashing fundamentalisms and unprecedented missionary evangelism, the commitment to secular government and freedom of conscience should be heard. In the coming century of bio-genetic science, scientific inquiry offers great opportunities for humankind and should be encouraged, not censored. Scientific rationalism needs to be present in deliberations at the UN.”

Officials at the Center for Inquiry noted that “given right-wing opposition to the UN, it is important that its supporters be enlisted to defend its aims. The world needs a new planetary ethic that recognizes our interdependence, and we need to find common ground for all members of the global community,” they said.

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The Center for Inquiry–Transnational, a nonprofit educational, advocacy, and scientific-research think tank based in Amherst, New York, is home to the Council for Secular Humanism, founded in 1980, the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal, founded in 1976, and the recently formed Commission for Scientific Medicine and Mental Health. Research and educational projects focus on three broad areas: religion, ethics, and society; paranormal and fringe-science claims; and medicine and health. The New York office of the Center for Inquiry, headquartered at Rockefeller Center, will coordinate its UN activities.

Press Contact:	Nathan Bupp
Tel:	(716) 636 4869 x218
Fax:	(716) 636 1733
E-mail:	nbupp@centerforinquiry.net