The Center for Inquiry (CFI) is a U.S. nonprofit organization that works to mitigate belief in pseudoscience and the paranormal and to fight the influence of religion in government.

[8] 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.

[13] 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.

"[14] The case ran for several years, and was ultimately settled in 1995 with Geller ordered to pay the legal costs of Randi and CSICOP.

The results of research and activities supported by the center and its affiliates are published and distributed to the public in seventeen separate national and international magazines, journals, and newsletters.

Among them are CSH's Free Inquiry and Secular Humanist Bulletin,[36] and CSI's Skeptical Inquirer, CFI's American Rationalist.

This includes defending the separation of church and state, promoting science and reason as the basis of public policy, and advancing secular values.

[43] The Office is an active participant in legal matters, providing experts for Congress testimony and amicus briefs in Supreme Court cases.

According to the CFI press release, "The recipient will be a distinguished individual from the worlds of science, scholarship, education or entertainment, who publicly proclaims the values of secularism and rationalism, upholding scientific truth wherever it may lead".

The Center for Inquiry Institute[56] offered undergraduate level online courses, seminars, and workshops in critical thinking and the scientific outlook and its implications for religion, human values, and the borderlands of science.

In addition to transferable undergraduate credit through the University at Buffalo system, CFI offered a thirty-credit-hour Certificate of Proficiency in Critical Inquiry.

As part of this project, CFI's libraries, research facilities, and conference areas were available to scientists and scholars to advance the understanding of science's methodologies and conclusions about naturalism.

[69] International programs exist in Germany (Rossdorf), France (Nice), Spain (Bilbao), Poland (Warsaw), Nigeria (Ibadan), Uganda (Kampala), Kenya (Nairobi), Nepal (Kathmandu), India (Pune and Hyderabad), Egypt (Cairo), China (Beijing), New Zealand (Auckland), Peru (Lima), Argentina (Buenos Aires), Senegal (Dakar), Zambia (Lusaka), and Bangladesh (Dhaka).

CFI Canada has branches in Halifax, Montreal, Ottawa, Toronto, Saskatoon, Calgary, Okanagan (Kelowna), and Vancouver.

[73][74][75] Founded in 1998 by former Muslims, the best known being Ibn Warraq,[76] the group aims to combat theologically driven fanaticism, violence and terrorism.

[60][78] It has been an outspoken critic of dubious and unscientific healthcare practices, and engages in public debate on the merit and legality of controversial medical techniques.

[1] In 2011, video expert James Underdown of IIG and CFI Los Angeles did an experiment for "Miracle Detective" Oprah Winfrey Network which replicated exactly the angelic apparition that people claim cured a 14-year-old severely disabled child at Presbyterian Hemby Children's Hospital in Charlotte, North Carolina.

[83] In July 2018, CFI filed suit against CVS in the District of Columbia for consumer fraud over its sale and marketing of ineffective homeopathic medicine.

The lawsuit in part accused the CVS of deceiving consumers through its misrepresentation of homeopathy's safety and effectiveness, wasting customers' money and putting their health at risk.

[85][86] In July 2019, CFI announced that the Stiefel Freethought Foundation was contributing an additional $150,000 to the previously committed $100,000 to support the two lawsuits.

Dawkins said that the country club official accepted Bill O'Reilly's "twisted" interpretation of his book The Magic of Reality without having read it personally.

"[93] CFI Michigan executive director Jeff Seaver stated that "This action by The Wyndgate illustrates the kind of bias and bigotry that nonbelievers encounter all the time.

The initial decision found in favor of the DOC but, on appeal, the case was remanded in 2010 on just the issue of the unconstitutionality of appropriating state funds for this purpose.

[104][105] CFI representative Josephine Macintosh[106] was repeatedly interrupted and heckled by the delegation from Saudi Arabia whilst presenting the center's position on censorship at the UN Human Rights Council.

CFI advocated free speech, and opposed the punishment by Saudi authorities of Raif Badawi for running an Internet forum, whom they accused of atheism and liberalism.

[33] Blasphemy Rights Day International encourages individuals and groups to openly express their criticism of or outright contempt for religion.

[109] The use of confrontational free speech has been a topic of debate within the Humanist movement[110][8] and cited as an example of a wider move towards New Atheism and away from the more conciliatory approach historically associated with Humanism.