Intent does matter; that's why manslaughter isn't the same as murder. Racism is bad; almost anything we can do to minimize it will benefit everyone. But the dichotomy you're advocating here is a gross oversimplification. Where there is no obvious intent, one must look to societal, experiential, and psychological factors that influence a person's behaviour - many of which are beyond a person's control.

Having faith is maintaining a belief without or even in spite of evidence. I find faith morally repugnant, except in the default case when no evidence at all to reason about the current state of affairs is available.

I contend that everything we know, except for what we define by fiat, is really just a collection of beliefs, and not “knowledge” at all. Here is an example. One winter evening, I took my dog for her pre-bed walk. It was dark and cloudy, and the only light came…

Odd names for scientific concepts has a long tradition that lay folk don’t appreciate. Take, for instance, the ongoing discussion about whether dark energy is a “quintessence” field. I’ve met lay folk that think it cannot be a real phenomenon because it’s named in such a silly way. But there’s…

You've got it exactly backwards. This should read: One of the reasons life (not necessarily intelligent life) exists on Earth is happens to be our universe's fundamental constants are as they are. Your version could be taken as implying some kind of teleology: that the purpose of our particular universe is to support us - which is complete bollocks. While the values of the fundamental constants in our universe are necessary for our type of life (and only for our type of life), they are not all sufficient. We have no way of knowing (yet) what radically different kinds of life may exist in universes with different fundamental constants.

I don't see anything wrong structurally with the argument, but I think the whole context of the argument is unnecessarily narrow. For instance, what about people who opt to donate to organizations that provide services for the homeless rather than giving money to individual homeless people? What about people who work on activist projects to make politicians take more proactive and beneficial actions for the homeless?

According to Wikipedia, “Scientism is the opinion that science and the scientific method are the best or only way to render truth about the world and reality.” I agree with this, even though many people think scientism is a joke. Here’s an example, from my own experience, of how the…

“Autonomous” is an interesting read, but more of a travelogue than a plot-driven novel. As such, it may not be to everyone’s liking. The events of Autonomous are set about 120 years in the future. Climate change has wreaked havoc on the old order of things, and the world has reorganized itself into what might be best described as several large “economic zones”. There have been two significant technological revolutions. One is that…

The way I see it, the only person who can really judge a person is that person themself. Corollary: don't judge others without robust evidence, and don't accept the judgement of others without robust evidence. As for how one judges oneself, well that's one purpose of philosophy - to help one reflect on oneself. It's really quite easy to separate the hypothetical from the real: just keep asking "How do you know that?" or "Why?". In my experience, it never takes more than 3 or 4 iterations to spot the hole in the evidence.