Category: Thinking Out Loud

In the February/March 2021 issue of Free Inquiry, S. T. Joshi wrote, “It is surprising—and dismaying—how little attention antiabortionists pay to the actual person carrying the fetus they are so determined to preserve.” There is another actual person even more forgotten. In the years of bitter argument over abortion, from ancient times to the present, …

Once there was a man who had been taught to believe something that didn’t really make sense. The man kind of knew that it didn’t really make sense, but he had also been taught that believing it—even if it didn’t make sense—made him a better person. He was a good man, and he wanted to …

When I learned I’d be teaching online for seven weeks, my first thought was one that Facebook and YouTube might censor. My second was: What to read while at home? My first answer was Camus’s classic The Plague. Would that be how COVID-19 plays out? Would rats be to blame? Would some atheist doctors eventually …

Among the myriad creatures that inhabit the earth, human beings are, according to prevailing religious opinion, unique for one special reason: they have been endowed by their creator with a soul, an immanent part of human reality that cannot be seen—or, indeed, verified—in any way apart from those same doctrinal precepts that have ordained and …

I know, or at least firmly believe, that I am a person whose name is David Berman. I also believe that I am the same person now as I was an hour ago or ten years ago. Why? Because I believe I can remember my past actions and other happenings in my life. This is …

There is a wicked, wanton war going on. It disrespects, disparages, and denies the American constitutional right to religious freedom for the military men and women serving our country. The U.S. Constitution prohibits our secular government (which includes the military) from promoting or endorsing a religion. The U.S. Supreme Court has continuously confirmed this constitutional …

“No man is an island entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent” (John Donne), and so is every woman, and so is every person a part of the social world. Some countries have implemented bans against covering one’s face with cloth or other material in public.1,2 Countries with comprehensive bans include …

To me, one of the more intriguing aspects of life—in particular, “intelligent” life—is that once a life has ended it is as if it never happened, at least to the one who lived it. The reason is simple: As the memory is housed in the brain and the brain would be dead and hence no …

Infinity may be real, and Zeno’s Paradox may not rebut it.