Ideas, opinions, politics, humanities
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Political orientation is partly an extension of our morals
Bill Maher has said that our political orientation is an extension of our morals. He is partly right, but the relationship is more complicated than that statement suggests. Political orientation can reflect morality. However, morality comes first in a much broader sense. Humans differ in their innate moral dispositions, while upbringing, culture, education, experiences and…
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We are truly lucky God doesn’t exist
For thousands of years, believers have described the existence of God as the greatest possible source of hope. God supposedly gives our lives meaning, establishes morality, watches over humanity and promises that death is not the end. But imagine for a moment that the traditional monotheistic God really existed. Not a vague force somewhere beyond…
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What will happen when Le Pen and AfD win?
The European far right no longer lives on the political margins. In France, Marine Le Pen’s National Rally has become one of the country’s dominant political forces. In Germany, Alternative for Germany (AfD) has transformed itself from an outsider party into a major electoral force. What happens if these movements eventually control their respective governments?…
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Venezuela after Trump: Did removing Maduro actually improve the humanitarian crisis?
When Donald Trump ordered the US intervention in Venezuela and Nicolás Maduro was captured in January 2026, one obvious question emerged: Would the lives of ordinary Venezuelans actually improve? Maduro presided over an economic and humanitarian catastrophe. Millions fled the country. Poverty became widespread, healthcare deteriorated, basic services failed, and years of economic mismanagement, corruption,…
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How Jewish people extremely diminished their suffering
Jewish history contains an almost incomprehensible amount of persecution. Long before the Holocaust, Jewish communities were expelled, segregated, robbed, forcibly converted, tortured, massacred, and blamed for catastrophes they did not cause. During the Crusades, entire Jewish communities were massacred. Medieval authorities restricted where Jews could live, what professions they could enter, whether they could own…
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Netanyahu will probably never end up in The Hague
Freethinkers International readers may have been spot on. When we recently asked whether Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu would eventually appear before the International Criminal Court in The Hague, most respondents predicted that he would not. At the moment, their skepticism looks justified. The International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for Netanyahu in November…
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Can AI make people atheists?
Artificial intelligence was not invented to turn believers into atheists. Chatbots do not normally begin conversations by telling Christians, Muslims, Jews, Hindus, or anyone else to abandon their religion. Most mainstream AI systems are actually designed to avoid unnecessarily pushing users toward political, philosophical, or religious positions. Yet AI may still have an unexpected effect…
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Where did belief in God decline? And the sad news: The 21st century will still be a century of religion
For anyone expecting religion simply to disappear as education, science and technology advance, the first decades of the 21st century offer a frustrating answer. In large parts of the developed world, secularization is real. Christianity has lost millions of adherents. More people openly identify as atheists, agnostics or religiously unaffiliated. In some countries, the transformation…
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Will the NYT publish Chomsky’s obituary?
I am not saying I do not wish this esteemed professor many long years to live. I certainly do wish him that. But the question is not whether The New York Times will publish his obituary. It definitely will publish it. The real question is how much you must be pro-establishment, pro-war, and a believer…
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There is no “me”, only a network of neurons
We wake up every morning with an extraordinarily convincing impression. There is someone inside our heads. There is a “me” observing the world, making decisions, remembering yesterday and planning tomorrow. That impression is so powerful that questioning it can sound absurd. Yet neuroscience gives us little reason to believe that a separate self exists behind…