It's natural to think that living things must be the handiwork of a designer. But it was also natural to think that the sun went around the earth. Ov….

Morality comes from a commitment to treat other as we wish to be treated, which follows from the realization that none of us is the sole occupant of ….

Reading is a technology for perspective-taking. When someone else's thoughts are in your head, you are observing the world from that person's vantage….

Societies that empower women are less violent in every way..

Knowing there is a world that will outlive you, there are people whose well-being depends on how you live your life, affects the way you live your li….

Most wars are not fought over shortages of resources such as food and water, but rather over conquest, revenge, and ideology..

Cognitive psychology has shown that the mind best understands facts when they are woven into a conceptual fabric, such as a narrative, mental map, or….

Sex and excretion are reminders that anyone's claim to round-the-clock dignity is tenuous. The so-called rational animal has a desperate drive to pai….

Without goals the very concept of intelligence is meaningless.

I suspect music is auditory cheesecake, an exquisite confection crafted to tickle the sensitive spots of... our mental faculties..

Being smarter gives you a tailwind throughout life. People who are more intelligent earn more, live longer, get divorced less, are less likely to get….

Cognitive psychology tells us that the unaided human mind is vulnerable to many fallacies and illusions because of its reliance on its memory for viv….

We're living in primate heaven. We're warm, dry, we're not hungry, we don't have fleas and ticks and infections. So why are we so miserable?.

I would argue that nothing gives life more purpose than the realization that every moment of consciousness is a precious and fragile gift..

But the 20th century suffered "two" ideologies that led to genocides. The other one, Marxism, had no use for race, didn't believe in genes and denied….

We will never have a perfect world, but it's not romantic or naive to work toward a better one..

Babies are born with the instinct to speak, the way spiders are born with the instinct to spin webs. You don't need to train babies to speak; they ju….

The idea that children are passive repositories to be shaped by their parents has been massively overstated. A child's peer group is a far greater de….

Anything that makes it easier to imagine trading places with someone else increases your moral consideration for that other person..

Reason is non-negotiable. Try to argue against it, or to exclude it from some realm of knowledge, and you've already lost the argument, because you'r….

The theory that religion is a force for peace, often heard among the religious right and its allies today, does not fit the facts of history..