Around 1998, internet postings began appearing under the alias ‘Timetravel_0’. This alias was later replaced by ‘John Titor’, and it's as such I'll designate the posts' author(s). Remarkably, Titor claimed to have time-travelled from 2036 on a mission to retrieve an IBM 5100 in 1975. Titor refrained from public appearances and any evidence for his story remains web-bound but before closing shop c. March 24th 2001, he described various future events, e.g.:

Peter Williams (‘The Emperor's Incoherent New Clothes: Pointing the Finger at Dawkins’ Atheism', THINK 24) complains that Richard Dawkins wraps his naturalism in ‘a fake finery of counterfeit meaning and purpose’. For his part, Williams has wrapped his complaint in an unoriginal and inapt analogy. The weavers in Hans Christian Andersen's fable announce that the Emperor's clothes are invisible to stupid people; almost the whole population pretends to see them for fear of being thought stupid. Fear of being thought stupid does not seem to trouble Richard Dawkins. Moreover, Williams offers no reason to think that such fear motivates any of Dawkins' readers. Perhaps all we are supposed to take from the fable is that Dawkins' naturalism is obviously lacking in meaning and purpose. If that is the intended reading, then by using this analogy, Williams has given himself an unnecessarily difficult task. Surely, it would be achievement enough for him to show that Dawkins' naturalism lacks meaning and purpose. There is no reason for Williams to make the extra claim that it obviously lacks meaning and purpose. After all, there is an obvious difficulty with arguing over several pages that something is obviously the case.

I remember at school someone once raising the problem of what would happen when an irresistible force meets an immoveable object. It's a bit like that with my present subject. For any possibility of an afterlife for human beings has long seemed to me out of the question because of the obvious complete dependence of our minds and consciousness on the brain, and because our minds, like our brains, must be a product of evolution. So how could a mind or its consciousness possibly exist independently? But I've recently learnt of apparently undeniable evidence for the possible existence of disembodied minds or spirits. I'll give some account of one particular case – a staggering one, as far as I'm concerned. But suppose – just suppose – such do exist. All sorts of new problems then rear up. I'll give some examples of these too. So in the end I'm left baffled.

Thomas Nagel has recently discussed whether intelligent design theory (IDT) is scientific and should be taught in public schools alongside the theory of evolution (ET). Nagel writes:

C.S. Lewis, the scholar of English mediaeval and Renaissance literature who died in 1963 and is still widely respected as a Christian apologist, complained that academic biblical scholars simply assume that miracles cannot have occurred in the fashion reported in the New Testament. In a lecture quoted by A.I.C. Heron1, he said: ‘The canon “If miraculous, unhistorical” is one they bring to their study of the texts, not one they have learned from it.’ In fact, as John Kent retorted, they did not rule out in advance the idea of supernatural events, but were able, without it, to give adequate and plausible accounts of how the biblical documents reached their present form, by means of a method ‘based on questions of probability in terms of evidence’, not ‘on an a priori rejection of miracle’.2 Conclusions concerning historical events of any kind are similarly based. ‘No historians’, says the historian R.J. Evans, ‘really believe in the absolute truth of what they are writing, simply in its probable truth, which they have done their utmost to establish by following the usual rules of evidence’.3 To this question of ‘absolute’ truth I shall return.

The following argument presents a refutation of the existence of God under a certain description, which, it will be maintained, is the only description that most traditional monotheists could accept. Therefore, either God, as defined by traditional monotheism, does not exist or something that might be called ‘God’ exists, but would not be acceptable to monotheism as truly being God. Either way, God does not exist.1

Have you ever picked up a self-help book from a bookstore and, although perhaps agreeing with its advice to take responsibility for your life and to treat other people kindly, wondered a little as to where the author's moral certaint as to how to approach the world comes from?

Millions of Americans, as well as millions in Europe, have used or will use a library established by Andrew Carnegie. In his lifetime Carnegie gave the equivalent of several billion dollars in today's money to establish 1,689 public libraries in the United States, Hawaii and Puerto Rico. Moreover, 660 libraries in Britain and Ireland, 125 in Canada, 17 in New Zealand, 12 in South Africa and scattered others around the world exist because of this man.1 And this does not include the extensive positive influence of the foundations and grants established by Carnegie. Aristotle would likely have called him ‘magnificent’. Carnegie had the virtue beyond mere generosity available only to those with the means and position to benefit the polis on a grand scale. Unlike generosity, magnificence involves what Irwin has called ‘the judgment and tact that are needed for large benefactions.2 Whether ‘magnificent’ or ‘generous’ is a better term for Carnegie's character is not my major concern. Carnegie's recent biographer simply uses ‘generous’. So, for the remainder of this paper, I will use ‘generous’.3 But was Carnegie, in fact, generous? This paper will explore both the definition of the virtue and its application to Andrew Carnegie.

Some people believe that God made it a condition for His forgiveness even of repentant sinners that Jesus died a sacrificial death at human hands. Often, in the New Testament, this doctrine of Objective Atonement seems to be implied, as when Jesus spoke of his blood as ‘shed for many for the remission of sins’ (Matth. 26:28), or when St Paul said that ‘Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures’ (1 Cor. 3:15). And for many centuries the doctrine was indeed accepted by most if not all Christian theologians. It seems in fact to be an essential part of Christianity, which adherents of that religion cannot reject without undermining the authority both of their scriptures and of a very long tradition. It looks then as if objections to the doctrine are objections to the Christian scheme itself. Here is one of them. As the Gospels present it Jesus was murdered, by one or more of Pilate, the Sanhedrin and the Jewish mob. Given Objective Atonement, God ordained the sacrificial death of Jesus, and so, as it seems, this murder. Murder requires freedom on the killer's part. And many have doubted that an action can be both free and ordained by God. Leave that aside. A good God would in any case not make it a condition for our forgiveness that someone acquired the guilt of murder.

When one finds a philosopher inspiring, it is all too easy to adopt an uncritical reading. This would be to treat the author as an exception. The hallmark of such arguments from reverence is that they often start with ‘As so-and-so said…’ and appear as the final statement on the matter. Friedrich Nietzsche is subject to such reverential treatment at the hand of undergraduate and A-Level devotees. I hope in the course of this brief survey to suggest some worthwhile criticisms of Nietzsche while at the same time point to criticisms that are ineffective. First, popular criticisms that I deem unsuccessful.

If called upon would you fight in a war you thought unjust? This article attempts to explain why the majority of military officers and soldiers when faced with this question do fight despite moral misgivings they may have. I will explain why on one hand officers are morally obligated to refuse unjust orders in jus in bello cases, but on the other hand it can be argued that they are also obligated to follow orders they believe to be unjust concerning jus ad bellum. The war in Iraq has and continues to presents military officers and their soldiers with a particularly difficult moral dilemma. As citizens of a democratic government it is important that we understand why our military officers act in ways that may seem counter to what we believe is right.