Reading Time: 6 minutes Former atheist anti-Islamic author Ayaan Hirsi Ali recently wrote a column for UnHerd declaring her new identity as a Christian. This caused quite some uproar in certain circles given her previous ardent advocacy for rejecting Islam for unbelief. The author and public critic of Islam was associated with the New Atheist movement. I discussed previously […]
Critical thinking
Understanding critical thinking—what it is, why it’s important—from a secular point of view.
Posted inCritical thinking
The information war over the al-Ahli Arab Hospital explosion
Reading Time: 11 minutes In the information age, more than ever before, war is a threat not only to life and property but to the truth itself. The dueling narratives around the explosion at al-Ahli Arab Hospital in Gaza are just the latest example.
Posted inCritical thinking
When a human individual is worshipped, criticism is blasphemy
Reading Time: 3 minutes In the process of turning a person into an unassailable god, we gradually open ourselves and others to overwhelming danger.
Posted inWar and Peace
War makes us terrible historians
Reading Time: 10 minutes A Canadian embarrassment involving a Ukrainian WWII soldier given undue applause is being put to bed with a political resignation. But we need to deal with the underlying illiteracy in our war history as well.
Posted inCritical thinking
Meet the Fab Five of misleading information
Reading Time: 8 minutes Misinformation, disinformation, and malinformation abound in media, government, and everyday interactions, but they’re not the only misleading games in town. We also have to deal with truthiness and just-so stories. Together, this “fab five” of false forms can mislead us into thinking we have a greater lock on the facts than we do.
Posted inSocial Media
Is there any rock bottom to our crisis of authority?
Reading Time: 5 minutes It hasn’t been a great week for signs of species-wide maturity. In response to criticism for hosting disingenuous anti-vaxxer Robert F Kennedy Jr. on his podcast, Joe Rogan called for vaccine scientist Peter Hotez to debate RFK Jr on air (because of course the court of public opinion is where science is properly reviewed and […]
Posted inCritical thinking
A tale of two vessels lost at sea
Reading Time: 4 minutes A recently shipwrecked migrant vessel at Pylos and a lost submersible near wreckage from the Titanic create an easy contrast for reflecting on injustice. But are we missing the larger lesson?
Posted inWar and Peace
Does the Musk apple fall far from the tree?
Reading Time: 6 minutes In the freethought community, we like to think that evidence-based thinking is something we hold dear, and that conspiracy theory thinking should be met with rational skepticism. We also tend to shy away from divine worship. When humans are treated like gods, revered to extreme degrees, it gives them license to be thoroughly detestable but […]
Posted inPhilosophy
On final solutions
Reading Time: 3 minutes One of the failings of religion is inflexibility. Religious people may conclude that a god is the source of objective morality. Therefore, they are externalizing and objectivizing a relative, subjective concept. Also, they are obviating the possibility of error correction and progress. Religious people sometimes see arguments inside their movements and assume that they are […]
Posted inViolence
‘Guns don’t kill…transgender terrorists do’—the latest in culture war opportunism
Reading Time: 5 minutes The news has sent waves across America: A former pupil returned to their Nashville elementary school to gun down three children and three adults. What happened was horrific. As we discuss the terrible ordeal, no discussion should take away from this reality. What the shooter did was disgusting, and when we seek understanding of what […]