Robert Talisse argues that skepticism is required for a healthy democracy, and provides some illuminating and amusing examples of popular dismissive attitudes towards skepticism.

A philosophical inquiry into whether, and, if so, why, marriage is good.

In the first of our three pieces responding to Richard Dawkins's The God Delusion, David Benatar suggests that Dawkins is preaching ‘the gospel of secular optimism’.

Tim Mawson argues that moral values hold objectively.

Peter Cave reflects on morality and belief in God.

Nick Bostrom presents an argument that our species will shortly disappear.

In the second of our pieces on Dawkins's The God Delusion, Douglas Groothuis defends intelligent design.

Following on from Nick Bostrom's discussion of the Doomsday argument, Alasdair Richmond considers how anthropic reasoning can lead from Doomsday to some odd conclusions about computation and our place in reality.

D.J. Sheppard reflects on Carey's controversial What Good are the Arts?

Here is the third of our three responses to Dawkins's The God Delusion.

Wolff suggests by way of the following argument (adapted by Wolff from Plato's Republic) that democracy appears to be irrational. Here is the argument given:

1) Ruling is a skill.

2) It is rational to leave the exercise of skills to experts [sic]

3) In a democracy the people rule.

4) The people are not experts. Therefore:

5) Democracy is irrational.

Dan Strimpel makes a plea for calm in ethical debate.

Carl Thoman asks what is and isn't legimate when it comes to ‘performance enhancement’?

Philosophical debate over the infamous Danish cartoons of Muhammad continues.

After examining arguments for and against the view that death is a bad thing, Mikel Burley tentatively endorses the Epicurean claim that death cannot rationally be judged bad. For moral reasons, however, this conclusion is acceptable only with regard to one's own death.

Mark Lovas asks to what extent are we all morally blind — and morally wanton?

There are other sound reasons to destroy the Social Security system. It is based upon principles that are deeply offensive to the moral values of the political leadership … Social Security is based on the idea that it is a community responsibility to ensure that the disabled widow on the other side of town has food to eat, or that the child across the street should be able to go to a decent school. Such evil ideas have to be driven from the mind. … According to right thinking, it isn't my fault if the widow married the wrong person or if the child's parents made bad investment decisions, so why should I contribute a few cents to a public fund to take care of them?

In this article Luke Pollard examines and expounds the integrity objections to Utilitarianism. He argues for their veracity, and concludes that any ethical theory, such as Utilitarianism, which makes itself impossible for humans to follow, is not what may be considered as a ‘valid moral framework’.

Peter Cave's new book, Can a Robot Be Human? 33 Perplexing Philosophy Puzzles, covers a wide range of perplexities and paradoxes. Here, Peter raises some timely puzzles.