Perhaps there is nothing morally wrong with homosexuality. But does that mean that those who find it abhorrent should be forced to tolerate, it? Michael Levin questions some common liberal preconceptions about homosexuality, and also responds to my own ‘What's Wrong With Gay Sex?’ (which appeared in Issue 5 of Think).

Psychologists and common sense recognize blaming the victim as a cognitive error (fallacy) that many of us use to support the just-world hypothesis — the view that life is basically fair. In this article Richard Double compares a related phenomenon, blaming the culprit. When we commit the fallacy of blaming the culprit we mistakenly conclude that judging a culprit to deserve blame for an action exonerates everyone else from blame for that action. Double provides several examples of the fallacy.

Should you always do unto others as you would have them do unto you? Brad Hooker investigates a seemingly plausible-looking moral principle: the Golden Rule.

In Issue 7 of Think, Brendan Larvor criticised the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, for suggesting that atheism and humanism ought not to be taught in schools alongside the religious faiths. In Issue 9, Brenda Watson defended the Archbishop's view. Here, Larvor replies to Watson. The numbers below refer to numbered points in Watson's piece.

Marilyn Mason, Education Officer at the British Humanist Association, also joins the debate about the relationship between philosophy and religious education in the school curriculum.

Is morality laid down by God? Many think there is a fatal objection to this view, an objection rooted in Plato's famous Euthyphro dilemma. Derrick Farnell explains why he is not convinced by the objection.

If we are going to treat other species so very differently from our own — killing, eating and experimenting on pigs and sheep, for example, but never human beings — then it seems we need to come up with some morally relevant difference between us and them that justifies this difference in treatment. Otherwise it appears we are guilty of bigotry (in just the same way that someone who discriminates on the basis of race or sex is guilty of bigotry). But what is this morally relevant difference? Julia Tanner's article examines, and rejects, some of the most popular answers to this question.

I hope I'll be forgiven for including this piece about the infamous Priory of Sion, which, as, anyone who has read The Da Vinci Code can tell you, is a secret organization dedicated to keeping the secret of the Holy Grail — an organization led down the centuries by eminent scientists, thinkers and artists including Da Vinci himself. While not strictly philosophical, this article is an excellent exercise in the kind of scrupulous detective work rarely done by those who spread such myths. It also nicely illustrates how such myths are often started.

In this article, Tom Wanchick addresses a common criticism of theism — that the concept of God is logically incoherent. Elizabeth Burns responds to Wanchick in the piece that follows.

A response to the preceding article by Tom Wanchick.

Warwick Fox questions the question set by Shell and The Economist for their year 2003 essay prize.

Julian Baggini has managed to lay his hands on some newspaper articles from the future.

Does our future lie in global citizenship?

An epistemological investigation into photography

Thinking Tools is a regular feature that introduces tips and pointers on thinking clearly and rigorously.