Conspiracy theorists like to claim NASA’s moon landing was faked. Well of course it was! But the biggest conspiracy of all is the Columbus landed in the new world in the late 15th century. There is no new world. It simply doesn’t exist. And Ameri...
Last year I built a Courage Machine, but I thought it might be noisy and was too afraid to turn it on. So I coated it with glue, covered it with cat hair, mounted it on my wall, and started claiming it was an exotic animal I killed on a Safari in Afr...
Naturalistic atheism debunks itself. It has no power to explain even some of the most basic principles of the universe and existence. It cannot even explain how its own claims can be reasonably believed.
Reading is not as insignificant as we claim. First we must steal the key to the library. Reading is a provocation, a rebellion: we open the book’s door, pretending it is a simple paperback cover, and in broad daylight escape! We are no longer there...
Most anti-vaccine books claim that all shots are bad, the diseases aren't really anything to fear, and as long as you live a natural and healthy lifestyle, you don't have to worry. I think this is a very irresponsible approach to the vaccine issue. V...
As a pauper, the obvious destination for James Tilly Matthews was the Bethlem Hospital, already long known in popular slang as Bedlam. The principal public asylum in London, it had accepted dangerous and insane paupers as 'objects of charity' for cen...
What if good institutions were in fact the product of good intentions? What if the cynicism that is supposed to be rigor and the acquisitiveness that is supposed to be realism are making us forget the origins of the greatness we lay claim to - power ...
De jure objections are arguments of claims to the effect that Christian belief, whether or not true, is at any rate unjustifiable, or rationally unjustified, or irrational, or not intellectually respectable, or contrary to sound morality, or without ...
Claim whatever you want. Say you only want a happy family or a successful career or a big house. I say: no, that's not what you want. You'll settle for those things, but you really want a monkey that does your evil bidding. Pullman is a genius just f...
...early medieval Ireland sounds like a somewhat crazed Wisconsin, in which every dairy farm is an armed camp at perpetual war with its neighbors, and every farmer claims he is a king.
The character of Jesus is the character of God. God would never do something Jesus would find morally reprehensible, so if you can’t find it in Jesus, then you really ought to think twice before you claim you’ve found it in God.
As those of you with children know, rational parenting is like the Loch Ness Monster. We all hope it's out there somewhere, but we don't know anyone who has actually discovered it (and if we do come across someone who claims to have found it, deep do...
If a writer manages to be fascinating about his own novels, then there are only two possibilities: either he is merely voicing out loud what he wrote in his book, and he is a parrot; or he is explaining interesting things that he didn't discuss in hi...
I’m very fond of the concept of choice as the basis for sexual preference. This point of view is unpopular in an era in which every claim for gay rights is bases on pseudoscientific sulking about how we can’t help being queer; we’re just born t...
My father started growing very quiet as Alzheimer's started claiming more of him. The early stages of Alzheimer's are the hardest because that person is aware that they're losing awareness. And I think that that's why my father started growing more a...
Theories cannot claim to be indestructible. They are only the plough which the ploughman uses to draw his furrow and which he has every right to discard for another one, of improved design, after the harvest. To be this ploughman, to see my labours r...
And yet many of us do it without families," Nynaeve said. "Without love, without passion beyond our own particular interests. So even while we try to guide the world, we separate ourselves from it.We risk arrogance, Egwene. We always assume we know b...
Number three: Stay away from the church. In the battle over science vs. religion, science offers credible evidence for all the serious claims it makes. The church says, 'Oh, it’s right here in this book, see? The one written by people who thought t...
There is clear evidence from internal investigations in the past that some raters actually see themselves as adversaries to veterans. If a claim can be minimized, then the government has saved money, regardless of the need of the veteran. Just recent...
She bent and placed a single daisy upon the grave. A simple white daisy. The plainest of flowers, perhaps the purest, Elspeth thought. It had cost next to nothing at all, and perhaps that was the point. She wasn’t being cheap. She was being symboli...
Pluto claimed that in ancient times, all humans had been a combination of male and female. Each person had two heads, four arms, four legs. Supposedly, these combo-humans had been so powerful they made the gods uneasy, so Zeus split them in half - ma...
