WHAT ABOUT SAINT PAUL?      For all of my criticisms of Paul of Tarsus I must in the end admit that he was a, if not the, key pivot point in the origin of the Christian Religion. On the one hand, I think he invented the whole “sacrificial atonement” business and manipulated several other unfortunate…

EARLY MODERN MORAL THEORY: Hobbes, Spinoza, and Hume             Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) was a British ethics thinker who maintained that since material reality is all there is, our moral behavior should be directed by physiological drives to avoid pain and maximize pleasure. This psycho-physical view of human life led him to conclude that what we…