The Tale of the Twelve Officers

A parable on the problem of evil, and my most popular single work.

Cataract

Although most believers seem to believe they can reconcile things like rape and murder with the existence of a perfect god, they also admit that such acts count at least as some reason to believe there is no such god. However, there are philosophers of religion who argue, surprisingly, that even in the absence of any explicit reconciliation that makes sense to us, the presence of horrendous suffering in the world does not count the slightest bit against the existence of a perfect god. Cataract, my second parable on the problem of evil, is my response to them. [Read the article]

What is Philosophy?

What is philosophy, what does it take to do it, and of what value is it? I try to explain this as simply as I can.

The Milesians and the Origin of Philosophy

In the standard account of the history of Western philosophy, the enterprise begins in 624 BCE in ancient Greece with the birth of Thales (THAY-lees). Thales and his two successors, Anaximander (an-AX-ih-man-der) and Anaximenes (an-ax-IH-men-ees), were based out of the city of Miletus (my-LEE-tus), and hence they are known collectively as the Milesian (my-LEE-zhin) philosophers. They are among the first of the so-called Presocratic philosophers, which consists of most of the philosophers who were born before Socrates (though some managed to outlive him). [Read the full article]

Defender's Guide to Science and Creationism

Analysis of over 100 creationist arguments against mainstream science.

Do vestigial organs exist?

The existence of vestigial organs — the evolutionary remnants of structures that used to have a different function — is one of the standard lines of evidence offered for evolution. If life on Earth did not evolve from a common ancestor, then why do some fossil whales have tiny legs? Why do chicken embryos develop, and then reabsorb, teeth? Why do blind cave fish have what appear for all the world to be the remains of eyes? Why, for that matter, do you and I have tailbones? Some creationists, however, deny that there are any such things as vestigial organs at all. Are they right? [Read the full article]