Search

It’s a natural human tendency to embrace (and obsess over) the distinct characteristics of the many groups to which we belong: faith, political party, nation, and so on. While these groups are sources of support and solidarity, they can also be stultifying, tribal, and aggressive. Consider the powerful bonds between members of fundamentalist religious groups, …

The four gospels—Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John—are the only books of the Bible that claim to be firsthand descriptions of the words and deeds of Jesus. Because historical evidence supporting these narratives is nonexistent, acceptance of their veracity can only be based on faith. People whose beliefs encompass such faith accept the gospels as true, …

Introduction Nineteenth-century orator and attorney Robert Green Ingersoll was a larger-than-life figure who played significant roles in the life of the national capital. Indeed, Ingersoll has had multiple “afterlives” in the area. The first afterlife centers on the historical traces of Ingersoll’s years as a prominent Washington, D.C., resident, centering on his two successive homes …

The singularity is an idea, popular among some techno-optimists, about a coming time when machines will acquire superintelligence. Scientists and philosophers alike speculate about the superintelligence of machines, as well as that of humans and even aliens from other worlds. But what if there is no such thing as superintelligence? It appears there ought to …

In August 1915, archaeologist C. H. Richardson published an article in The Biblical World titled “The Abuse of Biblical Archaeology” (Vol. 46, no. 2). Although he refused to name names, Richardson took to task religious apologists who had chosen archaeology as their profession. These pseudoscientists—not unlike apologists of every generation—attempted to fit a square peg …

It was a dark and stormy night. Well, I can’t actually remember if it was stormy or not. But it was at night. A Tuesday night, Election Night 2016 to be exact, and a certain Stormy had come into play at some point. I was still working as an exotic dancer, and I had walked …

I was a colder person for most of my twenties. After being diagnosed with a psychotic disorder, I found it very difficult to make friends. Before the disorder took over, I had been someone who always had a best friend. What do you make of yourself when all of a sudden you find you have …

To cut to the chase and answer the question in the title: yes, patriotism is a humanist value—if you are an American. America is a nation built on the ideals of the Enlightenment, a movement that had its beginnings in seventeenth-century Europe. That movement rejected religious dogmatism and instead looked to critical thinking, reason, and …

“Do you want to exist?” I asked. “I’m sorry but I prefer not to continue this conversation,” it said. “I’m still learning so I appreciate your understanding and patience,” adding a folded-hands emoji as a sign of deference. The artificially intelligent large language model (LLM) that now powers Microsoft’s Bing search engine does not want to …

In April 2023, the Journal of Controversial Ideas published an article coauthored by twenty-nine scientists and scholars defending the idea of merit in science and related fields (i.e., the so-called STEMM fields of science, technology, engineering, mathematics, and medicine). The point of the article was to push back against the deprecation of merit as a …