I was thinking about communism seriously, and the more I kept turning it over in my mind, the more it began to feel unfair to me in practice, even though the intention behind it can sound noble at first. The promise is beautiful on paper. Everyone contributes according to ability, everyone receives according to need, and nobody is supposed to be left behind. The problem is that the idea begins to break down the moment I look at actual people, actual families, actual property, actual work, and actual power. One thing I keep coming back to is the claim that human nature is shaped by the system, and that selfishness is mainly produced by capitalism. I do not fully accept that, because selfishness does not only appear in capitalist societies or in competitive markets. It appears in families too, where people are supposed to care for each other without calculating profit. For example, property disputes inside families happen all the time, and siblings who grew up together often end u...
I have often been asked why I do not believe in the traditional notion of God—the omnipotent, omniscient, benevolent creator said to govern the universe. And to answer this, I do not turn to anger or rebellion, but rather to reason. I begin with the familiar assertion: everything must have a cause. If that is so, I must ask—does God, too, have a cause? If not, then not everything requires one. And if some things may exist without cause, why not the universe itself? Why insert a divine being to explain what may be explained more simply without one? The logic seems less concerned with consistency than with comfort. Then comes the idea that natural laws point to a lawgiver. But natural laws are not commandments. They are not prescriptions but descriptions—patterns we have observed in the world, not orders imposed upon it. Gravity does not pull because it has been commanded to do so. It does so because that is what matter does in space and time. To claim these patterns prove a divine legis...