August 6 and 9 mark the anniversaries of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. I’ll be visiting those cities in October, doing research for a book. For months I’ve been reading histories and commentaries about the end of the war in the Pacific, and I’ve been brushing up on my Japanese. More months of research will follow my trip.

My particular focus is the rhetoric of the bombings: How do people talk about and debate them? Most particularly, how do people talk about and debate the morality of the bombings, if they refer to moral issues at all?

For as long as I can remember, as July has merged into August, Americans of all states of life have written about the bombings. Magazines, newspapers, and websites are filled with opinions. Countless words...

Theists and atheists wield many weapons in the battle over the truth of God’s existence. One such weapon for theists is the moral argument, which asserts moral obligation is impossible without God. But since moral obligation is real, so the argument goes, it follows God must exist.

When it seems to the theist he has conquered his foe, the atheist grabs his own weapon of choice and fires back. That weapon is what has come to be known as the Euthyphro dilemma, taken from Plato’s dialogue Euthyphro.

Philosopher Scott Sullivan, founder and president of Classical Theist productions, formulates the dilemma as follows:

Premise 1: Either an action is good because God commands it, or God commands an action because it’s already...