I have a great respect for religion, and the subject has always fascinated me [:]. Much of this fascination lies in the stunning historical paradox that organized religion has fostered, throughout Western history, both the most unspeakable horrors and the most heartrending examples of human goodness in the face of personal danger. (The evil, I believe, lies in an occasional confluence of religion with secular power. The Catholic Church has sponsored its share of horrors, from Inquisitions to liquidations-but only because this institution held great secular power during much of Western history. When my folks held such sway, more briefly and in Old Testament times, we committed similar atrocities with the same rationales.)

When puzzled, it never hurts to read the primary documents-a rather simple and self-evident principle that has, nonetheless, completely disappeared from large …

Our indirect methods have taught us a mountain of things about horses, but if you wished to learn even more, would you rather be Whirlaway in the stretch, than…

A very sincere and serious freshman student came to my office with a question that had clearly been troubling him deeply. He said to me, 'I am a devout Christi…

'All morality has been modelled on immorality and to this day has reinstated it at every level. The slave morality is indeed bad: it is still the master morali…

Mais qu'un marchand de chameaux excite une sedition dans sa bourgade; qu'associe a quelques malheureux coracites il leur persuade qu'il s'entretient avec l'ang…

That is the great end of empires before God, to be Catholic and draw nations into their Catholicism. But our empire is less and less Christian as it grows.