Author: Russell Blackford

Criticizing the idea of human dignity is about as popular as attacking motherhood, apple pie, and cute puppies. In its current form, the idea is well-intentioned, and the phrase itself—“human dignity”—has a satisfying emotional ring. But I have serious misgivings about invoking human dignity as a consideration in political and legal contexts. Let me explain. …

As humanity faces immense global challenges, such as the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and the increasingly visible effects of global warming, a new school of thought has emerged. Its essence is that we should investigate possibilities for “moral enhancement”: that is, we should consider how to alter human nature so that it becomes …

Studies by University of Melbourne researcher Nick Haslam and his collaborators have demonstrated a trend, beginning in the late 1970s or early 1980s, for concepts related to harm to expand their meanings and applications. For the past forty years or so, many people have contributed, deliberately or otherwise, to concept creep for such words as …

Questions about religious toleration have arisen in many great civilizations, including those of China, India, and the Islamic world. In Western Christendom, however, they became most salient after the sixteenth-century Protestant Reformation triggered persecutions and wars across Europe, with such highlights (or lowlights) as the burning of Michael Servetus at the stake in Calvinist Geneva, …

Humanists who read magazines such as this one might be puzzled by the existence of something called “posthumanism,” sometimes called “critical posthumanism,” and by its hostility toward what posthumanists call “humanism.” So, why do posthumanists have a beef with whatever they understand humanism to be? Posthumanism is grounded in traditions of continental philosophy that have …

More often than not, cultural products such as novels, movies, paintings, photographs, and songs are open to multiple interpretations. At the same time, it’s not a case of anything goes. Intelligent, well-informed interpretation takes place against an understanding of artistic traditions and cultural contexts. Skilled interpreters of contemporary literature, for example, might disagree among themselves …

John Stuart Mill’s On Liberty, first published in 1859, is a preeminent, almost unrivaled contribution to liberal thought. It is a splendid defense of our freedom to live in unconventional, perhaps eccentric, ways—provided we don’t thereby harm others or place them at risk. Most famously, Mill defended what he called our “liberty of thought and …

I am writing this piece at the end of March 2020 for publication in the June/July 2020 issue of Free Inquiry, which means a two-month pipeline between completion/filing and publication. Normally, that is a short time, even if it spans events that are highly consequential in one domain of life, such as the outcome of …

Secularity and Science: What Scientists around the World Really Think about Religion, by Elaine Howard Ecklund, David R. Johnson, Brandon Vaidyanathan, Kirstin R. W. Matthews, Steven W. Lewis, Robert A. Thomson Jr., and Di Di (New York, Oxford University Press, 2019, ISBN 9780190926755). 352 pp. Hardcover, $29.95.   Elaine Howard Ecklund is a sociology professor …

Since the rise of a recognizably modern form of science early in the seventeenth century—associated above all with Galileo—science has emerged as “our most authoritative source of knowledge about the natural world” (Heather E. Douglas, whose work partly inspired this column) within which I include knowledge of a general kind about ourselves. Almost everyone agrees …

We live in a sharply polarized political and cultural environment in which it has become increasingly difficult to discuss urgent issues across the divides. With the emergence of purity policing and call-out culture, amplified by social media, it is difficult enough to conduct honest, civil conversations even with people who share most of our own …

Voluntary assisted dying, also known as voluntary euthanasia or physician-assisted suicide (though all these terms have their own nuances), is a perennial issue dividing religious conservatives from secular liberals. In Australia, several legal jurisdictions have been engaging with the issue since the 1990s, and it is currently under consideration by the parliaments of two states. …

Christchurch, New Zealand, is a beautiful, peaceful city located on the country’s south island. Its people have suffered in recent years from a series of earthquakes (2010 to 2012) that ruined much of the city’s infrastructure and cultural heritage. Christchurch became internationally notorious on March 15, 2019, when a fanatical racist and anti-Muslim bigot, subsequently …

A recent Canadian case, The Queen v. Sears and St. Germaine, involved the now-familiar issues of free speech, dehumanizing propaganda, and public expression of hatred. Decided in late January 2019, the case ended with convictions for James Sears and LeRoy St. Germaine, the editor and publisher, respectively, of Your Ward News (YWN), a loathsome “community …

The slogan “No platforms for fascists” came from events in the United Kingdom during the 1970s. It was aimed at propagandists and recruiters for violent, indubitably fascist, organizations such as the National Front. This was also a time of protests against the South African regime’s odious Apartheid policy, and student unions in the United Kingdom …

Every year or so, I re-read John Stuart Mill’s great statement of liberal principles and values, On Liberty (first published in 1859). More than any other, I suspect, this book has shaped my own thinking about politics, law, and society. Each time I read it, I notice new twists and subtleties. It’s always worth returning …

The recent cloning of macaque monkeys is impressive, but we’re still a long way from human reproductive cloning.

Disputes about free will may reflect our fears about fatalism and moral responsibility.

Burton L. Mack is a prominent scholar in the field of early Christian history. He is the author of an extensive body of work examining the origins of Christianity up to and including the all-important fourth century CE, when it became the official religion of the Roman Empire.

Philosophy is under attack from many sides, but it is far too important to give up on it.

On July 6, 2017, Donald Trump delivered a speech in Warsaw that was clearly intended as a landmark in the fog and swirl of geopolitical debate. The Warsaw speech evoked a vision of global politics, and it gave a suggestion of what Trump’s confusing presidency stands for.

Philosophical naturalism comes in different flavors, but it is essentially the idea that nothing supernatural affects events in the world around us –– or perhaps that nothing supernatural even exists.

“1517 is usually taken as the beginning of the Protestant Reformation, and this year is its five hundredth anniversary.”

“While I understand the shock and fear—and indeed, I feel some of it myself—we mustn’t allow it to cloud our thinking.”

“Basic ideas of free speech require that people be at liberty to express their commitments in public.”

Words such as tragic are inadequate to describe premeditated acts of murder motivated by religious or political fanaticism.

“… The book is not especially systematic, reading more like a
collection of diverse, thematically linked articles than a systematic effort to define,
iscuss, and defend naturalism of any kind.”

Shutting down speech is authoritarianism in action.

The term Islamophobia serves no unique purpose and tends to discourage any criticism of Islam whatever. It’s time to jettison it.

Far from bewailing the legitimation of same-sex marriage, conservatives might celebrate that so many same-sex couples find matrimony desirable.

The commitment to free speech may admit of exceptions. But a more important principle may be to be vigilant for dishonesty and disingenuity, not only in our opponents’ positions but in our own.

Atheists don’t live up to the myth about their being angry. Rather they get blamed for the anger that even gentle atheist commentary stirs in some believers.

Charlie Hebdo can be subjected to criticism but should not be blamed for the tragedy that befell it.

Civility is valuable, yet not so much so that the state—or a university—can properly require it.

A review of The Soul of the World, by Roger Scruton.

Predictions of the imminent decline of atheism keep on coming . . . and they keep failing to come true.

“Enraged by the presence at a cultural festival of Aziz Nesin, translator of parts of the novel into Turkish, the mob set fire to a hotel, killing thirty-five people.”

Even if we all fully embraced the ideal of secular government, and even if this nudged us all in the direction of liberty and social pluralism, there would remain much scope for political disagreements.

So often, ideologues display an intensity of conviction, and an unscrupulousness in acting upon it, against which good, fair, perhaps liberal-minded people seem helpless.

Why Tolerate Religion?, by Brian Leiter (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2013, ISBN 978-0-691-15361-2) 187 pp. Hardcover, $24.95. Brian Leiter’s new book on secular­ism and religious freedom, Why Tol­erate Religion?, has received much attention. It is a useful contribution to the discussion of an important group of issues, and it was appropriately the topic of a …