Writer Kate Cohen discusses her new Substack “Scratch,” exploring the human need to cook, build, sew, and create in a world increasingly dominated by algorithms and AI.
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I am a writer whose most recent book is We of Little Faith: Why I Stopped Pretending to Believe (and Maybe You Should Too). I am a former contributing columnist for The Washington Post, where I wrote on culture, politics, and religion. I left that extremely pleasant perch in March, after Jeff Bezos declared that his opinion writers should espouse certain, predetermined opinions. I didn’t want to do that, or to be associated with a publication that asked me to. For the previous five years, though, I had the privilege of writing about a lot of what I cared about, including the pleasure of making soup, the challenge of raising a girl, and — over and over — America’s relentless and increasingly toxic deference to religion.
Because of my column and We of Little Faith, the Freedom from Religion Foundation named me its Freethought Heroine of the year in 2023. If “freethinker” means rejecting religious dogma, I prefer the more direct “atheist.” But if it means a person who thinks for herself rather than letting other people, institutions, and traditions think for her, then I strive to be worthy of the title — not least, in Scratch.