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Lizzie Kirkwood

Edited by Lizzie Kirkwood

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History of ideas

Can God lie?

Until the Scientific Revolution, God’s power included a licence to deceive. How did science make an honest man of Him?

Dallas G Denery II

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Cosmopolitanism

The essence of evil

You don’t have to be a monster or a madman to dehumanise others. You just have to be an ordinary human being

David Livingstone Smith

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Cognition and intelligence

No pain, no game

Pain and suffering are not just incidental elements of the sporting life: they are at the centre of every game

Michael Thomsen

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Stories and literature

Tell me a story

Even in our digital age, live storytelling has a spellbinding effect more potent than any DVD box set

Richard Hamilton

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Death

The digital soul

My Facebook page may be part of my identity, but can it give me a virtual afterlife?

Patrick Stokes

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Death

Life after death

The idea of life after death lives on in near-death experiences and messages from beyond the grave. What’s the evidence?

Jesse Bering

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Cognition and intelligence

Are you looking at me?

What goes on in our minds when we see someone naked? The more we see of a person’s body the stupider they seem

Matthew Hutson

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Computing and artificial intelligence

The attention economy

It costs nothing to click, respond and retweet. But what price do we pay in our relationships and our peace of mind?

Tom Chatfield

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Political philosophy

Life in the fishbowl

In the future, most people will live in a total surveillance state – and some of us might even like it

Stuart Armstrong

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Ethics

Perversions

Atheists and homosexuals were called perverts once. Why do we still see perversion where no harm is done?

Jesse Bering

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Cognition and intelligence

Too much information

Our instincts for privacy evolved in tribal societies where walls didn’t exist. No wonder we are hopeless oversharers

Ian Leslie

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Stories and literature

Inner peace

We yearn for silence, yet the less sound there is, the more our thoughts deafen us. How can we still the noise within?

Tim Parks