Philosophy
Philosophy, Politics & Rights
There Is No Right to Religious Proselytizing in U.S. Military
Natalie Ogle May 22, 2013
Todd Starnes of Fox News recently ignited a firestorm of controversy when he reported: Religious liberty groups have grave concerns after they learned the Pentagon is vetting its guide on religious tolerance with a group [the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, or MRFF] that compared Christian evangelism to “rape” and advocated that…
Philosophy, Reviews
Review: The Year of Living Biblically, by A. J. Jacobs
Daniel Wahl May 20, 2013
Daniel Wahl reviews The Year of Living Biblically: One Man’s Humble Quest to Follow the Bible as Literally as Possible, by A. J. Jacobs.
Philosophy, Reviews
Review: The DIM Hypothesis: Why the Lights of the West Are Going Out, by Leonard Peikoff
Ari Armstrong May 20, 2013
Ari Armstrong reviews The DIM Hypothesis, by Leonard Peikoff
Philosophy
The Is-Altruism Dichotomy
Craig Biddle May 20, 2013
Shows why, even after Ayn Rand created a complete morality based exclusively on observation and logic, many people persist in believing that moral principles cannot be derived from the facts of reality.
Education & Parenting, Philosophy
Teach Rational Morality, Not Religious Dogma
Natalie Ogle May 16, 2013
The Freedom from Religion Foundation recently threatened to sue public schools in the town of Muldrow, Oklahoma, if they refused to remove plaques inscribed with the Ten Commandments from classrooms. Unfortunately, when Republican State Representative John Bennett weighed in on the controversy in his district, he upheld the popular yet…
Philosophy
Penny Nance’s Strange Bedfellows
Ari Armstrong May 5, 2013
Fox News host Steve Doocy recently invited Christian activist Penny Nance to comment on the so-called “Day of Prayer.” In response to Charlotte Mayor Anthony Foxx’s call for a “Day of Reason,” Nance denigrated reason: You know, the Age of Enlightenment and Reason gave way to moral relativism. And moral…
Philosophy
Pope Absurdly Blames Unemployment on Profit
Ari Armstrong May 2, 2013
This morning, the new head of the Catholic Church, Pope Francis, sent the following Tweet: “My thoughts turn to all who are unemployed, often as a result of a self-centred mindset bent on profit at any cost.” The Pope has this exactly wrong. The profit motive is responsible not for…
Philosophy
“There Are no Values” through Islam
Ari Armstrong April 24, 2013
Boston bombing suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev once said, complaining about American culture, “There are no values anymore.” What his actions demonstrate is that there are no values through Islam, the religion to which he turned for guidance and meaning. According to the FBI, “in early 2011, a foreign government” informed the…
Philosophy
Mom Who Regrets Her Children Is Example of Altruism at Work
Heike Larson April 19, 2013
In an online article that swept the Web, Isabella Dutton, a fifty-seven-year-old mother of two grown children, admits publicly that she regrets having children. She never wanted a child, yet had two because she felt it would be “unfair of me to deny [my husband] the chance to be a…
Ayn Rand & Objectivism, Philosophy
Why "Sacrifice" Means Loss, Not Gain
Craig Biddle April 6, 2013
In this episode of Reason at Large, I address the question "Why do you use 'sacrifice' to mean giving up a greater value for a lesser value, when the widely accepted meaning of that term is the opposite: giving up a lesser value for the sake of a greater value?"…