I think a lot of moral debates are not over what is the basis of justice, but who gets a ticket to play in the game.

As long as your ideology identifies the main source of the world's ills as a definable group, it opens the world up to genocide.

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.

A decent government with an effective, but not gratuitously violent, police force and a fair court system are essential. This deters and incapacitates psychopaths, bullies and hotheads - and if it earns the confidence of the people, they don't have to become violent in self-defence.

If you give people literacy, bad ideas can be attacked and experiments tried, and lessons will accumulate.

Statisticians tell us that people underestimate the sheer number of coincidences that are bound to happen in a world governed by chance.

The stirrings of morality emerge early in childhood. Toddlers spontaneously offer toys and help to others and try to comfort people they see in distress.