Can there be a rational argument against suicide? Yes, I think, but, like almost all rational arguments, it can be overcome by the facts. (Mathematical arguments are the exception: they do not rely on any fact, and so can not be overcome by any fact.)
The (or a) rational argument against suicide is this: […]

One charm among many in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, the seventh and concluding book in the wonderful series by J.K. Rowling, is an exchange between Harry’s friend Hermione Granger and one Xenophilius Lovegood, a believer in the legend of the Deathly Hallows. The Deathly Hallows are magical objects, and Hermione, ever the […]

An agnostic (a - without, and gnosis - knowledge) says that the existence of God - neither provable nor disprovable - is beyond our knowledge, and just leaves it at that. He faults the atheist for believing that God does not exist, just as much as he faults the theist, for believing that He […]

The universe is everything that is. Nothing inside the universe explains itself, so the universe as a whole can’t explain itself. Therefore God is necessary, to explain the universe.
But if God explains the universe, what explains God? If you say that God is completely self-sufficient, and doesn’t need an explanation, why can’t […]

Why is there something, rather than nothing? Why does the universe go to all the trouble of actually existing? Wouldn’t it be easier, and somehow more elegant, for there just to be nothing at all? Sort of an existential “principle of least action”…
Questions like these make it seem as if the universe […]