Atheist Ethicist

Morality exists as an institution for promoting socially useful behavior and inhibiting socially harmful behavior. Law and medicine (speci...

Moral philosophers have a serious problem when it comes to talking to non-philosophers about morality. This is because moral philosophers ...

I'm back. I am making some changes in my life that will give me both opportunity and reason to spend more time reading and writing abo...

The primary defense that Bill Maher and Sam Harris use against the charge of bigotry against their assertions against Islam is that it is pe...

The most common objection currently being raised to my claim about criticizing a bad idea goes something like this: "You say that it ...

When is a criticism of Islam bigoted, and when is it not? This has been a hot topic of debate in some circles recently after an exchange b...

I haven't used this blog in a while. However, I have found a lot of nonsense on a recent question of whether Sam Harris and Bill Mahar a...

There is more Republican idiocy going on in the House of Representatives concerning NASA's budget. Among the elements of the Republican ...

False beliefs are bad. Desirism accounts well for the badness of false beliefs. People seek to objectively satisfy their desires, but act ...

There is a fundamental inconsistency in the way many atheists relate religion to good and bad actions. When a theist does something bad, r...

I have been looking into the movement known as “Effective Altruism” recently, particularly in the light of Peter Singer’s presentation at TE...

Yesterday, I wrote that if you want to talk a person off the ledge, you need to tie that action to current desires. Future desires do not wo...

I have been presented with the following scenario: Imagine a healthy, intelligent, priveleged young guy with the entire life ahead of him....

If desires is the thing that tells us what is morally right / wrong, doesn't that impose upon us to procreate as much as possible? So th...

Another question from the studio audience. Given the premise that determinism is correct, how can you say that the universe has no purpose...