The 1990's über conspiracy-theory television series The X-Files was a decade-defining and culture-reflecting mosh pit of UFOs, extraterrestrials, psychics, demons, monsters, mutants, shape-shifters, serial killers, paranormal phenomena, urban legends turned real, corporate cabals and government cover-ups, and leakages unveiled by a deep-throat-like ‘cigarette smoking man’ character played, ironically, by real-life skeptic William B. Davis. Gillian Anderson's skeptical FBI agent Dana Scully played off David Duchovny's believing character Fox Mulder, whose slogans became posterized pop-culture catch-phrases ‘I want to believe’ and ‘The truth is out there’.

According to some, questions about the meaning of life are inextricably bound up with questions about God and religion. Without God, it is suggested, humanity amounts to little more than a dirty smudge on a ball of rock lost in an incomprehensively vast universe that will eventually bare no trace of us having ever existed, and which will itself collapse into nothingness. So why bother getting out of bed in the morning? If there is a God, on the other hand, then we inhabit a universe made for us, by a God who loves us, and who has given us a divine purpose. That fills our lives meaning.

This is an introduction to some questions about the truth or falsehood of pairs of sentences. Truth is, of course, something philosophers have always been interested in. Finding out the truth can be difficult, but it's usually been thought that truth itself behaves in a very simple way. In particular, every statement is either true or false, and no statement can be both at once.

Compassion (or ‘feeling with’) has attracted fervent admiration and vehement condemnation. Among the critics are some Stoics and early Christians, and early modern philosophers such as Kant and Spinoza. Characteristics that are regarded as ideal in humans tend to be regarded as divine perfections as well. Accordingly, traditional Christian and Jewish theology includes the belief that God is ‘impassible’, that is, both emotionless (in general) and incapable of suffering (in particular). Divine compassion is precluded on both grounds.

We often judge that death is bad for the person who dies – that my death, for instance, will be bad for me when it occurs. It is not easy, however, to explain, justify, or defend this judgment. As Epicurus argued more than 2000 years ago, death is ‘nothing to us’ because ‘when we exist death is not present, and when death is present we do not exist.’ (Letter to Menoeceus, 124–125)

Many are growing increasingly skeptical of the claims by government officials about winning the war against drugs. Should this war be supported because a smaller percentage of teenagers use marijuana, or should it be opposed because a larger percentage of teenagers and young adults use cocaine and crack in the USA? Should people be optimistic when multi-billion dollar shipments of cocaine are confiscated, or pessimistic that seizures continue to increase yet have such little impact on price and consumption? Drug prohibition was doomed to failure from the start, no less so than alcohol prohibition, and the best alternative is an immediate return to complete legalization of such drugs.

Why do believers and atheists seem to talk past each other? From what different perspectives do they see things? The following dialogue suggests that one deep difference is about whether or not the World must make a certain kind of complete sense.

A ‘good society’ is one which is governed by a number of prized social virtues. Amongst these virtues, surely, must be counted a deference to the values of personal liberty and inter-personal equity. (These, after all, are two of the three values embodied in the French Revolution's stirring exhortation to ‘Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity’!) In urging, or professing, an acceptance of these values, there is the implicit judgment that the acceptance entails no possible problem of internal coherence or logical consistency. In this small essay, it will be shown that the apparently unproblematic judgment just mentioned could prove to be suspect. In particular, the reader is invited to consider that there are plausible, but mutually incompatible, ways in which the principles of ‘liberty’ and ‘equity’ can be formulated. The essay draws on the conventions and methods of a body of knowledge called ‘social choice theory’, which lies at the intersection of philosophy, political science, and economics.

Evolution, the human soul, and the lower status of animals continue to stir debate not only in philosophy, religion and science, but in politics as well. In 2007 during a debate for the Republican candidate for United States President, three out of the ten candidates raised their hand when asked by the moderator, ‘Is there anyone on the stage who doesn't believe in evolution?’ The possibility of a lineage from animal life to distinctly human life offers the opportunity for a host of objections from some politicians, religious leaders and philosophers alike. Those who express an objection to the theory of evolution take issue with the idea that humanity is merely another link in the chain, albeit the last link. They share a desire to see human life as somehow unique, different, better.