Philosophy

Jihadists have called for the murder of Salman Rushdie, and have attempted to assassinate him, for his “blasphemous” depiction of Mohammed in his novel The Satanic Verses . . . Jihadists slit the throat of Theo van Gogh and stuck a knife in his chest for directing the film Submission,…

In response to death threats by a Muslim group against Trey Parker and Matt Stone for portraying Mohammed dressed as a bear in a South Park cartoon—and in defense of the freedom of speech, on which civilized society depends—Dan Savage of The Stranger has pronounced May 20, 2010 “Everybody Draw…

[caption id="attachment_31275" align="alignright" width="300"] Image: Ensceptico[/caption] Following thinly-veiled death threats by a Muslim group against Trey Parker and Matt Stone (the creators of South Park) for portraying Mohammed dressed as a bear in a cartoon, Anderson Cooper interviewed the author of Infidel, Ayaan Hirsi Ali. I grew up as a…

A recent story in the New York Times draws attention to recent legislative attempts by creationists to force public schools to “teach the controversy” between evolution and creationism, and between the man-made global warming hypothesis and criticisms of it. Two recent developments have pushed the creationists to draw parallels between…

Heike Larson reviews Infidel, by Ayaan Hirsi Ali.

Identifies and concretizes the principles by means of which one can fill one’s life with meaning and joy.

[The following is an excerpt of from Craig Biddle’s article “The Creed of Sacrifice vs. The Land of Liberty.” Citations have been omitted here but are available in the article, which is accessible for free.] The correlation between the morality of sacrifice and the violation of rights is no accident.…

In my last post, I responded to Will Wilkinson's allegation that Ayn Rand's ethical egoism cannot support the principle of individual rights, because the egoist has no self-interested reason to refrain from using force against others. Wilkinson contended that bureaucrats who feast at the public trough seem to fulfill their…

Commenting on the recent revival of interest in Ayn Rand, libertarian blogger Will Wilkinson recently asserted that while "Rand's emphasis on the role of individual rights in generating creativity and entrepreneurial effort remains enlightening," her moral justification for individual rights fails. Wilkinson, himself a former Ayn Rand enthusiast who became…

In my post about the contradiction between the technological sophistication of the Burj Dubai and the primitive superstition on display in the mosque at its pinnacle, I argued that this disparity is another example of the general disparity in progress between science and morality. But what accounts for this gap?…