Christopher Hitchens & Tony Blair Debate on Religion

In a civilized and thought-provoking debate that took place just this past week in Toronto, former British Prime Minister and recent Catholic convert Tony Blair defended the motion that religion is a force for good in the world. Opposing the motion with all his cerebral might was his compatriot, the journalist and public intellectual Christopher Hitchens.As the eager audience seems to have correctly anticipated, the intellectual engagement was stimulating,...

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The Awesomest Sentence I Read Today

I've totally neglected this type of blog entry for a while, but maybe now I'll get it started again. Anyway, this is from an essay on gay rights, written by Jonathan Rauch, quoting James Q. Wilson:Of all the institutions through which men may pass--schools, factories, the military--marriage has the largest [domesticating] effect.Rauch then argues that the domestication of men ought to be one of the top three social functions of marriage. Wow....

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Irreducible Complexity Cut Down to Size

Unless you live in hillbilly territory, it's difficult nowadays to be a creationist and not get immediately laughed at. So, what do you do if you believe in the half-baked idea that some designer designed biological organisms as they are? You dress it up with sophisticated-sounding technical terms like 'irreducible complexity', and you also make sure to surround its mention with liberal-sounding principles like tolerance of other views, teaching...

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