philosophy
The problem with eternity
Thinking 500 or 10,000 or a million years in the future is hard enough. Yet some people toss around eternity as if they understand it.
It may be time to accept that we're living in a simulation
New religion incoming.
‘Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow’: How time travel creeps into Trek today
Reading Time: 11 minutes This week’s episode of Strange New Worlds takes us boldly to Canada, but I promise: just because most of the show is set in my birthplace of Toronto, we won’t go off-mission too much to reflect on how it uses the location. I will only say that if you’re buying street meat (v
The deathbed perspective
Reading Time: 4 minutes It’s easy to forget that life is temporary. How would you live differently with that knowledge in front of you?
The longtermism that works—and the kind that doesn’t
Reading Time: 10 minutes In 2004, a tsunami and earthquake killed almost 230,000 people in 14 Indian Ocean countries. Many forms of relief then mouldered on the beaches—used clothes, high heel shoes, expired medicines—because “in-kind” donations are well known not to be effective forms of aid on a g
Can Ukraine find meaning in Russia’s murderous invasion?
Reading Time: 4 minutes After Nazi leader Adolf Hitler’s occupation of Austria in 1938 and shortly before the United States entered World War II three years later, Dr. Viktor E. Frankl, an Austrian Jewish psychiatrist, noticed a piece of marble lying on a table at his parents’ home in Vienna. His fa
One cosmic incarnation or (very, very) many?
Would there be an alien Jesus? What would it look like?
The revolutionary power of optimism
Optimism isn’t a naive faith in inevitable betterment, but a tenacious belief that the world can be made better—and that belief is at the root of all progress.
Strange New Worlds: Star Trek’s return to humanist form
Reading Time: 9 minutes I almost didn’t watch Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, which started airing this month. I’m glad I did: it’s deservedly being called the best of the recent Treks, and there’s a lot to be said about this series as a humanist. I had reason to be reluctant. The franchise hasn’t be
An ethical maze: Designing babies for a greater good?
Reading Time: 16 minutes “At ten months old, we were told he would need a heart transplant. There was no cure for his condition, so we would have to go to Great Ormond Street Children’s Hospital at some point. If they had a bed. And a heart. And agreed to the procedure.” Great Ormond Street, the fam