During my lifetime, our foreign policy has been defined by two wars: a cold one with Soviet-style Communism and a hot one with Islamic-style terrorism. Neither kind of war is good, but cold is better. We have no monuments, sites, or dates to honor American victims who died on our soil because of the Cold … Pluralism at Ground Zero

The Harun Yahya operation, responsible for much Islamic creationist literature, has apparently decided to strike a blow against infidel bus ads. They have put up ads on London buses themselves:

“They can send me to college, but they can’t make me think,” bragged a bumper sticker I recently spotted in my hometown. I can tell you from personal experience that this is sometimes true. It’s even more unfortunate that many college students want to take courses where they can get good grades without being critically … A religious and secular studies major

Are supernatural hypotheses testable? This was a question raised by Victor Reppert on his Dangerous Idea blog, and I responded a couple of weeks ago. The subsequent discussion got rather confused and confusing, and I would like to try to untangle things and see if I can get clearer on the issue here. Thanks much … Testing Supernatural Hypotheses

Republican candidate Rick Perry is being compared to George W. Bush, our most recent president from Texas. Here is one place the comparison breaks down. Perry is not campaigning to be the “Education President,” as Bush did. Whatever its merits, Bush was president when the “No child left behind” act became law. Based on Perry’s … Science is not democratic

Take a look at Joel Mark’s short essay in the NYT; “Confessions of an Ex-Moralist.” It’s nice to see amoralist points of views expressed once in a while.

“DM,” who had been flooding this blog with threats (which occasionally got through the spam filter and other trapping devices), finally seems to have overreached. We’ll see if he stops. It would save me some time and general headaches.

At ten-years-old, while still an Orthodox Jew, I wondered why an all-powerful God had to take a day off each week to rest. I also worried about what bad things might happen to us if such a controlling God should fall asleep at the wheel of the universe. As an atheist, I now appreciate the … Rest is a human need

On his Dangerous Idea blog Victor Reppert reprints an old exchange between us (we have been going at it for over 35 years now): An Old Exchange between Keith Parsons and myself over theistic explanations This is one that appears in my paper on Hume on Miracles, Frequencies and Prior Probabilities. [Parsons] Science is unavoidably … Laws of Supernature

Prayer, at best, can be an effective placebo. It helps believers feel they are doing something positive, and prayers might even “cure” some psychosomatic disorders. Now let’s look at the prayers of politicians. Several presidential candidates asked God whether they should run, and God said “yes.” Funny how God’s plan always seems to be the … Human solutions for human problems