Suppose you're standing on a footbridge over train tracks. On one side you see a trolley approaching, and on the other you see five railroad workers. Next to you is an overweight stranger. The trolley is out of control, and the workers can't hear you yelling. The only way to...

In a 2012 Gallup poll, only 15 percent of Americans said humans evolved without God's guidance. By comparison, 32 percent said God guided our evolution, and 46 percent said God created us in our present form (appendix and all). Many countries have done a better job than we...

Most of us care about privacy on the Internet -- we don't want the personal information we place online to be spread without our knowledge or consent. But with clever algorithms or even just a bit of statistics, intimate secrets that we don't express at all can be surmised by...

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Une raquette et une balle de tennis de table coûtent 1,10 $ au total. La raquette coûte 1 $ de plus que la balle. Combien coûte la balle?

Votre réponse à cette question m'aidera à savoir si vous...

A bat and a ball cost $1.10 in total. The bat costs $1.00 more than the ball. How much does the ball cost?

Your answer to this question will help me guess whether you believe in God.

That statement may seem as counterintuitive as the correct price of the ball--$0.05--but...

On Oct. 10 I attended a panel discussion at the New York Academy of Sciences titled "The Thinking Ape: The Enigma of Human Consciousness." The panel was presented by the NYAS, the Nour Foundation and To the Best of Our Knowledge, a nationally syndicated program on Wisconsin Public Radio.

The...

The Puritans often serve as a punch line -- the kind of people who would outlaw dancing -- but their history is complex, and as Americans we may carry their candle to a larger degree than you think. In the New York Times on Aug. 5, I wrote...

In general, what goes around comes around. If you're nice to people, good things come your way, but if you're jagoff, look out (or, as I like to say, "don't put shit on a boomerang.") These expectations make sense in social situations, where people can retaliate or return favors, and...

In the United States, religion and politics have always been (fitful) bed buddies. But whether faith drives people left or right (or neither) is not obvious. On one hand, there is the Christian right, a demographic epitomized by Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson that values tradition and authority and opposes...

In most religions and arguably anything worth being called a religion, God is not just an impersonal force or creator. He has a mind that humans can relate to. Maybe you're not gossiping on the phone with him late at night, but he has personality traits, thoughts, moods, and ways...

In The Year of Magical Thinking, Joan Didion describes the year following the sudden death of her husband. At one point, while collecting his clothes for donation, she stops. She can't give away all of his shoes, for he might need them if he returns. This is the magical thinking...

It's often said that there are no atheists in foxholes. While this isn't technically true -- a group called The Military Association of Atheists and Freethinkers even keeps a roster of them -- new research suggests that inducing fear of death at least makes atheists a little less...

In the early 1990s Trent Reznor (the man behind Nine Inch Nails) purchased the house at 10050 Cielo Drive, in Los Angeles. Before moving in he learned of its dark past. This is the house where members of Charles Manson's "family" had murdered Sharon Tate and four other people in...

I slept with a Beanie Baby for eight years -- from the ages of 18 to 26. Thanks to new research, I can now look back and say it was probably good for me.

(For the story behind my stuffed red dragon, Blip, see chapter 1 of my new...

Whether you think you do or not, you believe in magic.

I don't mean the magic of love or romance or double rainbows. I mean stuff that, as far as scientific consensus is concerned, is not possible, and is a little spooky, and would get you burned at the...