One of my students took the staunch position that atheists could not possibly have any valid foundation for morality since they don't believe in a god or gods. This statement echoed in my head for quite a while. It wasn't the first time I h ...

Zika could have been an ordinary epidemic, like the ever-changing influenza that emerges each winter and spreads across the Northern Hemisphere with sad but rare complications. But the Religious Right’s antagonism to birth control and abortion—and ho ...

Despite the fact that the United States has a very, very high rate of gun deaths compared to other developed countries, we actually know very little about the public-health threat posed by firearms. That's because Congress, working closely with ...

Some prominent economists contend that a minimum wage high enough to provide a decent standard of living poses too high a risk of job loss. But this fear is purely speculative; we have no reliable evidence that a $15 wage floor, phased in over four t ...

Phyllis Schlafly, a leading US conservative and outspoken opponent of feminism and abortion, has died at the age of 92.

Everywhere I look, Pope Francis, the 266th pope of the Catholic Church, seems to be in the news—and he is being positively portrayed as a genuinely progressive leader. Frankly, this baffles me. Few major religions have as backwards a philosophical an ...

According to Clinton — and many conservative intellectuals who oppose Trump — the conspiratorial, winking-at-racists campaign he has been running represents a novel departure from Republican politics. That’s not quite true, though. Trump’s style and ...

He explained that the new wave of voting restrictions is about disenfranchising black voters, not stopping voter fraud.

As the Catholic Church prepares to canonize her as a saint, the city formerly known as Calcutta is poised for a rare moment in the spotlight. But not everyone is celebrating.

One of the most famous of Thomas Aquinas' arguments is one for a “prime mover” or an “unmoved mover”. The argument itself isn’t really important per-se, it’s actually air tight in terms of premises following to their conclusions. The issue is t ...

During the span of her term, Corey sent far more people to death row than any other Florida prosecutor. Most of these capital defendants were black men. She was unapologetic about her use of the death penalty; when one victim’s mother said she oppose ...

Despite the effusive praise from gun advocates, and respectful treatment by the mainstream media, The War on Guns is riddled with errors and falsehoods that undermine most, if not all, of its major claims.

Right now the University of Michigan Wolverines football team is hosting the Minnesota Golden Gophers. More than 100,000 humans are attending this football game. More than 100,000 humans have attended every Michigan home football game since 1975. The ...

While Democrats are signaling they're playing to win back the House, most forecasters still see a flip of the lower chamber to be a long shot. But that doesn’t mean Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI) and the other GOP leaders committed to steering the par ...

A federal appeals court in California on Monday dismissed a U.S. government lawsuit that accused AT&T Inc of deception for reducing internet speeds for customers with unlimited mobile data plans once their use exceeded certain levels.

**Submitter's note: browse this site in Privacy/Incognito Mode.** Something terrible has happened to pregnant women in Texas: their mortality rate has doubled in recent years, and is now comparable to rates in places like Russia or Ukraine. Alth ...

The state’s new climate law will mean so much more than a few solar panels and electric cars.

A guiding tenet has emerged through years of climate change discussions and other polarizing scientific debates: Framing issues as “us versus them”—with a clear ingroup and outgroup—encourages polarization. The term pseudoscience inherently creates t ...

If the next president is to avoid past mission failures and end the wars in the greater Middle East, she or he must confront dangerous myths, perpetuated by many of those who served as cheerleaders for the senseless invasion and occupation of Iraq.

The world's first cancer vaccine has halved the number of new cervical cancers ten years after it was first administered in Australia.