Philosophy

Many people in the West maintain that the Koran is opposed to terrorism: the initiation of violence against unarmed civilians to incite terror for a political cause. To many westerners, Bin Laden, et al are motivated by a totalitarian political ideology, not by Islam, and are "hijackers" of Islam, not…

A story from an Arabic news site reports an interesting development in Saudi Arabia: female to male sex-change operations: Reports reveal that in 2005, there were no less than five cases of women who underwent surgery to become men in the Kingdom, according to Al Watan…. Some Saudi officials have…

While Bush and company scheme to provide the America-hating Iranian theocracy with nuclear technology, some people are thinking rationally and promoting human life. From the Boston Globe: Harvard scientists announced yesterday that they are beginning an ambitious attempt to create the world's first cloned human embryonic stem cells, bringing the…

I just finished teaching an undergraduate university class on the Ancient Near East: 15 weeks on Ancient Mesopotamia and Egypt. I read as many original documents and modern histories—and looked at as much art—as I had time to do. I became intrigued by the many parallels between radical Islam and…

Here are excerpts from the expatriate Iranian satirist Ibrahim Nabavi's open letter to President Ahmadinejad, in the online Persian daily Rooz: . . . Oh adorable little boy who makes noise and needs attention! . . . you had written to [President] Bush to present a solution to the problems…

Yesterday on NPR's radio show "Fresh Air" host Terry Gross interviewed Michael Farris, president of the fundamentalist Christian school Patrick Henry College. This regrettably named institution seeks to train home-schooled Christians to be tomorrow's leaders, "ready to reclaim the biblical principles upon which our land was founded." The interview with…

Altruism, the idea that being moral consists in self-sacrificially serving others, is accepted to some extent by almost everyone today. But no reason has ever been given as to why people should sacrifice for others. Of course, alleged reasons have been given, but not legitimate ones. So let’s consider the alleged reasons—of which there are approximately six—each of which involves a logical fallacy.

Demonstrates that the tenets of religion are incompatible with the right to free speech, and shows why those who want to establish and maintain freedom of speech must repudiate religion and embrace the rational, secular foundation for rights.

Thanks to Jack Crawford for sending me this hilarious, 48-second clip of comedian B.J. Novak. Oh to be a Muslim woman.  

Ayaan Hirsi Ali is among the most courageous women (and incidentally among the most beautiful) in the world today. She sought asylum in the Netherlands in 1992 as an escape from an arranged marriage brokered in her native Somalia. When established in Holland she was shocked to find the same…