The Bible has been loudly, publicly, and repetitively criticized for a long time, and it’s most vocal defenders have been those who demand that it be treated as a divine oracle. In other words, the public has been given a binary choice: Either the Bible is…

“Righteousness” is a seldom heard word in modern life, but the concept is still very much with us. In fact, political arguments all through the West focus on shows of righteousness. So, how does someone show themself to be righteous without ever coming near…

“The mark of an educated mind,” taught Aristotle, is “to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.” And that’s what I’ll be asking of you today. Because as certain as I am that I’m substantially right on this, I’m also sure that its acceptance…

People frequently tell children “You can do anything you want.” And this causes a lot of confusion, because in the real world, they can’t. And after their first clash with the aforesaid real world, the child is left wondering all sorts of unpleasant things:…

A free, post-scarcity world will not be prevented by archaic systems scratching and clawing to retain their domination. We will evolve freely, unburdened by an unfortunate past. This will happen, and today I’m going to tell you why. But more than that, I…

The people who have kept the world from a slide into darkness and pulled it forward have, to a shocking extent, been heretics of one form or another. I’m using “heretic” more broadly than in just a religious context, but please consider this: It’s the punisher…

“Call me pisher” is a Yiddish phrase from my youth, and it was used to instruct me in a very important lesson. (Though I hardly realized it at the time.) And since Yiddish speakers were often not particularly delicate persons, I’ll have to be a bit less than…

I regularly go on about the necessity of forming your own opinions and making stands upon them. And while I’m quite certain about that, there’s another side to such things. We are complicated creatures, after all. The more we express and defend our own opinions…

Since the Bronze Age, human societies have been arranged around brute force. Even now, governments are monopolies of violence. More than that, the very structure of government serves one primary end: to deliver violence. All else is supplemental.

I can still remember the first time someone told me that they believed in the Calvinist doctrine of “the depravity of man.” It shocked me. To complain about human behavior I very well understood; there’s plenty of bad behavior in the world. But to flatly…