Philosophy

Speaking from the State Department this morning, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called the Islam-motivated slaughter of four Americans at the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi “an attack that should shock the conscience of people of all faiths.” This statement is correct—although not in the way Clinton means it. The conscience of…

Slate’s Amanda Marcotte argues that a new Florida law attempts “to get around the spirit” of the 1962 Supreme Court decision Engel v. Vitale—a decision that banned government-sponsored prayer in public schools on the grounds that it violated the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment. The Florida law “allows students…

Labor is nothing to celebrate. Man's muscle is not the cause of wealth and prosperity; his mind is.

According to a recent WIN-Gallup International poll, the number of Americans saying they are “religious” has declined since 2005 from 73 percent of the population to 60 percent. In that same period, the number of “convinced atheists” has risen from 1 to 5 percent of the population. In the 39…

Dan Ariely, a professor at Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business, has released a new book, The Honest Truth About Dishonesty: How We Lie to Everyone—Especially Ourselves. If that title makes you go “hmmm” you might appreciate Eric Daniels’s review of Ariely’s last book, Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces that…

Takes to task claims that religion was somehow responsible for the profound scientific advancements that animated the 16th and 17th centuries, and shows that the cause of these advancements was not religion or faith but the partial freeing of the mind from religious restrictions and the consequent use of observation and logic.

Surveys the history and tenets of religion and shows that religion, in every essential respect, is utterly at odds with the requirements of a rational, practical, life-serving morality

[caption id="attachment_8844" align="alignright" width="300"] Image: Gage Skidmore[/caption] GOP vice presidential nominee Paul Ryan sets forth his basic political philosophy in an August 13, 2012 article for American Spectator, “Who Built America?” Ryan explicitly attempts to make the “moral case” for capitalism, arguing that “people have a God-given right to use…

Presumptive GOP nominee Mitt Romney has just selected Wisconsin Congressman Paul Ryan as his vice-presidential nominee. Although we'll undoubtedly hear much more about Ryan in the next few days, I'd like to offer some early thoughts on how Ryan's selection will and will not change the 2012 political debate. On…

Islamists commit so many atrocities—from slaughtering Americans and Israelis, to murdering homosexuals and Christians, to disfiguring and murdering women, to raping and mutilating little girls—that one can become lackadaisical about the countless related stories that stream past us on the internet and television every day. But once in awhile we…