Center for Inquiry

The Center for Inquiry (CFI) is a US nonprofit organization that works to mitigate belief in pseudoscience and the paranormal, as well as to fight the influence of religion in government. The Center for Inquiry was established in 1991 by atheist philosopher and author Paul Kurtz. It brought together two organizations: the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal (founded by Kurtz in 1976) and the Council for Secular Humanism (founded by Kurtz in 1980). The Center for Inquiry Inc was registered as a tax-exempt nonprofit organization in April 2001. Kurtz, a humanist who founded CFI to offer a positive alternative to religion, led the organization for thirty years. In 2009, Kurtz said he was forced out of CFI after conflict with Ronald A. Lindsay, a corporate lawyer hired to become CEO in 2008. Robyn Blumner succeeded Lindsay as CEO in January 2016 when CFI announced that it was merging with the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science. Through the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry (CSI), and its journal, Skeptical Inquirer magazine, published by the Center for Inquiry, CSI examines evidential claims of the paranormal or supernormal, including psychics, ghosts, telepathy, clairvoyance, UFOs, and creationism. They also examine pseudoscientific claims involving vaccines, cellphones, power lines, GMOs, and alternative medicine. In the area of religion, they examine beliefs that involve testable claims, such as faith healing and creationism, but stay away from untestable religious beliefs such as the existence of God. The Committee for Skeptical Inquiry (CSI), then known as the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal (CSICOP), was, alongside magician and prominent skeptic James Randi, sued by TV celebrity Uri Geller in the 1990s after Randi told a newspaper interviewer that Geller's tricks "are the kind that used to be on the back of cereal boxes when I was a kid." The case ran for several years, and was ultimately settled in 1995 with Geller ordered to pay the legal costs of Randi and CSICOP.