Beyond nature
The human finger points the way to what makes us truly human, say Raymond Tallis
Ideas
Editorial: Bishops, belief and barnets
Catholic child abuse scandals highlight the dangers of religious privilege
Logicomix: An Epic Search for the Truth by Apostolous Doxiadis & Christos Papadimitriou
Marcus Chown enjoys a graphic maths lesson
Testament by Jean Meslier
Colin Brewer admires the last testament of an atheist priest
Who needs God?
Why is religion on the rise in so many different countries? Tom Rees finds the missing link
Head to head
When we heard that Tzvetan Todorov, author of In Defence of the Enlightenment, was coming to London we couldn’t resist getting him together with our very own contemporary philosophe, AC…
How to defend the Enlightenment
A full transcript of the discussion between Anthony Grayling and Tzvetan Todorov in London, December 2009
First As Tragedy, Then As Farce by Slavoj Žižek
Owen Hatherley finds Žižek actually making sense
Smile or Die: How Positive Thinking Fooled America and the World by Barbara Ehrenreich
Keith Kahn-Harris enjoys Barbara Ehrenreich's antidote to positive thinking
What happened to the women’s movement?
Elizabeth Wilson reviews two new books on how to revive feminism