I think the reason that swearing is both so offensive and so attractive is that it is a way to push people's emotional buttons, and especially their negative emotional buttons. Because words soak up emotional connotations and are processed involuntarily by the listener, you can't will yourself not to treat the word in terms of what it means.

If anything, Powerpoint, if used well, would ideally reflect the way we think.

If we are not to abandon values such as peace and equality, or our commitments to science and truth, then we must pry these values away from claims about our psychological makeup that are vulnerable to being proven false.

Natural selection is not the only process that changes organisms over time. But is the only process that seemingly designs organisms over time.

Like the early days of the Internet, the dawn of personal genomics promises benefits and pitfalls that no one can foresee.

As every student in Philosophy 101 learns, nothing can force me to believe that anyone except me is conscious. This power to deny that other people have feelings is not just an academic exercise but an all-too-common vice, as we see in the long history of human cruelty.

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.