True respect means taking other people’s beliefs seriously and assuming they are adult and intelligent enough to be able to cope with it if you tell them, clearly and civility, why you think they are...

Yesterday’s news feeds our fear that our neighbours are more likely than not to be bad eggs: benefit fraudsters, bogus asylum seekers, paedophiles or jihadist terrorists.

Economics is uncertain because its fundamental subject matter is not money but human action. That’s why economics is not the dismal science, it’s no science at all.

If we now find ourselves looking down on the cheap and convenient, it is only because we now have better things which are affordable.

The reason Buddhism can be so naturalised is because, stripped of its supernatural elements, its core teachings can be giving a sound, secular philosophical interpretation. In other words, it becomes a religion acceptable to the...

Believers are right when they say that to understand a religion properly you need to get under its skin. But to understand it fully, you cannot stay there: you have to take a more objective...

From time to time, it is worth wandering around the fuzzy border regions of what you do, if only to remind yourself that no human activity is an island.

Rules matter, and to be rules they need to be universal in form: always do this, never do that. But it is foolish to rule out in advance the possibility that an occasion might arise...

Happiness is not the same as life satisfaction, while neither are identical to what we might call flourishing.

True humility is expressed in deeds, not words. The humble are those who truly walk the same ground as everyone else – not necessarily with grovelling, hunched backs, but certainly not lording it over others,...

If I hammer my own thumb while doing some DIY, it’s not nice, but it’s not the end of the world. To care obsessively about similar levels of discomfort in animals seems to be a...

When you do the right thing, but not to any particular person, we instinctively feel that we have earned some sort of pay back. Since no-one will do that for us, we opt for self-service...

There is such a thing as fanaticism, it is always wrong, and if you disagree, you’re wrong too.

This is the deal: we are happy to single out people as superior just as long as they don’t accept the description themselves. We want heroes and idols, but we also want egalitarianism, and that...

Heathens are unredeemed outcasts from heaven who roam the planet without hope of surviving the deaths of their bodies. They may have values, but they are not secured by any divine source. Yet we embrace...

Waiting is so unusual that many of us can’t stand in a queue for 30 seconds without getting out our phones to check for messages or to Google something.

Science works because the phenomenon being described can be relied on to remain the same. Even in quantum physics, where phenomena are changed by observation, the way in which observation interferes is regular and falls...

Indeed, without emotion it seems unlikely we can even have morality.

Christmas is a rare occasion when we are reminded that we have obligations to people we did not choose to be related to, and that love is not just a spontaneous feeling but something we...

In my experience, those who make the biggest fuss about not spending much at Christmas are generally the ones who buy what they want and eat where they want 12 months a year.

Progress is more of a challenge for the cynic but also more important and urgent, since for the optimist things aren’t that bad and are bound to get better anyway.

Being virtuous is wonderful thing, but feeling virtuous is a shortcut to vice.

Whatever your religious persuasion, if you believe that that the universe is governed by benign forces, at some point you have to explain why there is so much suffering, misfortune and misery in the world.

I don’t believe in God because certain reasons and arguments weigh more heavily in my mind than others, not because I have willfully decided to reject my creator, as many religious people seem to think....

Many people are never happier than when they get the opportunity to complain, while others are deeply unhappy with how things are but just accept the fact. Complaint occurs when we refuse to accept that...

Atheists have to live with the knowledge that there is no salvation, no redemption, no second chances. Lives can go terribly wrong in ways that can never be put right.

It is true that legality is not morality, and sticking to the law is necessary for good citizenship, but it is not sufficient.

The optimist underestimates how difficult it is to achieve real change, believing that anything is possible and it’s possible now. Only by confronting head-on the reality that all progress is going to be obstructed by...

The capacity to make free choices is not something we either have entirely or not at all. Rather, choices become freer the more they are the result of our own capacity to reflect on and...

Trade has played a vital role in the social evolution of humankind. It allowed people to specialise, which raises both skill levels and efficiency. It brought people from different lands together, co-operating rather than competing...

Love is indeed, at root, the product of the firings of neurons and release of hormones.

Metaphorical tone deafness is when people are unable to discern what is of value in something. I think I’m tone deaf to poetry, for instance. Despite having studied it into a second year of university,...

Philosophy is at its most engaged when it is impure. What is being recovered from the Ancient Greek model is not some lost idea of philosophy’s pure essence, but the idea that philosophy is mixed...

The supposed revelations of God to humanity through Christ, or the word of God to Mohammed through the angel Gabriel, had the power they did because they indicated new truths, new directions for followers.

Being able and willing to complain is what makes us rational and moral animals, capable of seeing and articulating the difference between how things are and how they should be.

No one who has understood even a fraction of what science has told us about the universe can fail to be in awe of both the cosmos and of science.

‘That which does not kill me makes me stronger’ is not a law of the universe. What it can be, if we so choose, is a resolution.

Trying to keep up with health advice can feel like surfing the Net for weather forecasts: what you find is always changing, often contradictory and rarely encouraging.

If you believe you are right, then you should believe that you can make the case that you’re right. This requires you to deal with serious objections properly.

You should protest about the views of people you disagree with over major moral issues, and argue them down, but you should not try to silence them, however repugnant you find them. That is the...

It is often said that having gone through any kind of suffering tends to makes you appreciate life more and live more in the present. I’m not sure how universal or long-lasting these effects really...

I don’t think anyone who genuinely embraced sincerity, charity and modesty could be intolerant or divisive.

The only good reason to embrace a philosophical position is that you are convinced it is true or at least makes sense of the world better than the alternatives.

Perhaps the biggest myth about cynicism is that it deepens with age. I think what really happens is that experience painfully rips away layers of scales from our eyes, and so we do indeed become...

Big sporting events and spectacles might give the national morale a shot in the arm, but they are too transient and taste-specific to stand as robust symbols of nationhood.

Right and wrong are not simply matters of evolutionary impacts and what is natural.

It may not have the virtuous ring of the golden rule, but the maxim ‘never say never’ is one of the most important in ethics.

Daily life is better when it involves interactions with real people who have a personal investment in their labour, like shopkeepers, than it is with someone ‘just doing my job’ or the infernal self-checkout machine.

Most people believe, more or less, that the value of a human life is the same, irrespective of where on the planet it happens to find itself. But, of course, not every life has the...

Nature deals the cards without thought or care, and there is no point in blaming the dealer. All we can do is make the best of the hands we have been dealt.