For decades, Israeli politicians have systematically violated the human rights of the Palestinians with virtually no repercussions. When confronted about these violations by the community of nations, Israel plays the Holocaust card to try and shame its critics into silence; and it often works. Former Israeli minister, Shulamit Aloni, admitted…

It’s that time of year again, when Christians celebrate god sacrificing himself to himself to save mankind from himself. Let’s look at some of the insanity behind it all. The timing of Easter tracks with (or used to, at least) Passover, another celebration of the Abrahamic god’s apparent bloodlust. The…

Throughout history, religious institutions have been subject to political authority, as the Vatican was in its early years. However, the bishops of Rome suddenly earned a windfall after finding themselves as the only heirs of a power vacuum starting in 476 when the last Western Roman emperor was deposed. …

All religions contain a spectrum of zealotry among their members, from the very liberal to the fiercely orthodox. The Buddhist monks in Myanmar are no different in this regard. Among the protestors, BBC reports that ‘monks were seen heading out onto the streets of Yangon’ in support of democracy. …

The question and answer site, Quora, pretends to be about knowledge dissemination. This claim is utter nonsense. In the same week as Twitter and Facebook banned Trump, Quora moderators, once again, deleted replies I made directly challenging the false information provided by another user in their answer. …

Many early modern philosophical ideas have precedents from Classical Antiquity, but what is less obvious is just how interconnected many of the concepts are and where the later Europeans got their inspiration. Hyperlink Philosophy connects these ideas in brief overviews. Ezequiel de Olaso opens his 1993 paper, Hobbes: Religion and…

This popular quote is often posted on atheist and freethinking blogs, Facebook pages, and Twitter feeds. The more astute observers will have noticed that in none of the postings is the source of this quote ever cited. There is a reason for that. …

Professor of Italian Studies at Brown University, David I. Kertzer, has written a number of books on the history of the Vatican rule in Italy. …

The opening section of my forthcoming book, Dangerous Ideas. Of those, then, who have inquired as to the existence of God some say that God exists, some that he does not exist, some that he has existence “no more” than non-existence. That he exists is the view of most of…