Atheism and Theism as Model Choices

One way to think about the comparative rationality of atheism and theism is to treat atheism as the rational default. After all, atheism postulates no God, theism does, and so theism bears the burden of proofs, especially because God’s existence is extraordinary or random postulate. That’s the wrong way to think about the rationality of […]

Abortion, Fetal Personhood, and Artificial Intelligence

Part of the point of this blog is to make people with different perspectives more comprehensible to one another. That’s hard when it comes to abortion, so I tried to think up a case that would put each side in the other’s shoes. Here goes. Imagine, as many of you believe, that one day we […]

Chik-fil-a, Hate, and Moral Error

Chik-fil-a has made a major decision. They will no longer support the Fellowship of Christian Athletes and the Salvation Army in order to avoid being associated with groups that are “anti-LGBT.” In this post, I want to explore the ethics of the decision to divest. One line I hear from supporters of CFA’s decision is […]

CFA 2020: Assailing the Anthropocene Workshop

Each year, my department at BGSU hosts a workshop in applied ethics and public policy. Faculty take turns organizing the conferences, which are always excellent. This year, my colleage Justin Donhauster is organizing the conference, whose them is Assailing the Anthropocene: The Ethics of Disruptive Innovations for Surviving Our Climate-Changed World. The workshop will examine […]

Why are so many artists inclined towards (non-traditional) supernatural belief?

I have an experience I wonder if you share. I know a number of artists. Almost none of them are Christians, but none of them are naturalists. That is, none of them think that the world is exhaustively described by the natural sciences. The artists I know usually believe in some kind of cosmic order, […]

Can Nationalism Promote Trust?

I’m fond of the claim that liberal institutions can and do create social and political trust, but sometimes I wonder whether nationalism can too. Well, it turns out there’s now some evidence in favor of the latter claim, from a recent paper from Christian Bjørnskov, Martin Rode, and Miguel Ángel Borrella Mas. The process of […]

Discussion of Gaus on Self-Organizing Moral Systems at PEA Soup

Readers of the blog may find this discussion of interest. Jeppe von Platz provides some critical remarks on Jerry Gaus’s new paper “Self-Organizing Moral Systems” at the PEA Soup blog.

When are Religious Exemptions Morally Required?

I’m writing this post as a reference for future discussions about religious exemptions. Conditions Sufficient to Morally Require a Religious Exemption I think religious exemptions from a law morally ought granted whenever the following four conditions are met: (1) The law is endorsed by the subset of the population whose support makes the law democratically […]

The Strange Death of the New Atheism

Scott Alexander at Slate Star Codex has posted a fascinating set of reflections on the rise and fall of the New Atheism. Most readers of the blog will know that many New Atheists seem to have gotten caught up with right-wing or centrist politics, often with the men’s rights movement, opposition to political correctness, and […]

House of the Dragon Greenlighted – Some Hopes and Fears

We finally have some good news about the Game of Thrones spin-off shows. We’re getting House of the Dragon, which will cover the first half of the wonderful, but dark and gruesome history of House Targaryen’s rise and fall in Westeros (including the especially gruesome but awesome tale of the Princess and the Queen). Here […]