Right-wing columnist Marc A. Thiessen recently wrote an op/ed claiming that “liberal presidents tend to nominate judicial activists who legislate from the bench and shape the law to reach their preferred outcomes” (Concerning “Chief Justice is incorrect on both counts,” by Marc A. Thiessen, The Houston Chronicle, 11/26, p. A17). Further, “These liberal judges hold that the Constitution can be “interpreted to mean whatever they want it to mean.” Conservative justices, on the other hand, “follow our laws as written.” In… Read more

I have long enjoyed posting and commenting on Secular Outpost. I also frequently leave acerbic comments on Friendly Atheist. I think that both sites are hosted by Patheos. I may have to stop however. While I am trying to comment–and I do try to put thought into my comments–advertisements are rapidly flipping just below and beside the space where I am trying to write. While trying to think of a philosophical point, ads are doing their best to distract me…. Read more

In his classic essay “The Ethics of Belief,” mathematical and philosophical wunderkind W.K. Clifford (1845-1879) famously made rationality a branch of ethics. A belief is rational when we have discharged all of our epistemic duties in forming that belief and are thereby within our epistemic rights in holding it. Your epistemic duty is to carefully examine beliefs to retain only those that pass strict standards of belief-worthiness. It is always and everywhere wrong, Clifford tells us, to hold to a… Read more

I have been away from Secular Outpost for about six months due to a very heavy teaching schedule and publishing commitments. However, recent events compel me to come back and say some things. The morning of 10/31/18 on NPR’s 1A program with Joshua Johnson they were discussing the question of whether overheated rhetoric can lead to violent attacks, as with the recent pipe bomb mailings and the massacre at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh. This last incident was… Read more