Truth or Happiness: Must We Choose?

I recently heard a talk by Gary Brill , who teaches psychology at Rutgers, discussing studies showing religious believers are happier than nonbelievers. Defining happiness can be elusive – a feeling that one is happy? Perhaps a more useful concept is well-being, or flourishing, which describes an entire life rather than just one emotion. Anyhow, Brill did discuss data showing religious believers report greater happiness, suffer fewer psychological disorders (unless you count religious belief itself), recover better from setbacks, cope … Read on…

God, responsibility, and ethics

The religious argument that says it is their God that shows us all the right and wrong ways to act has always seemed full of holes to me. I have seen many of these bubbles pricked in the past on this site, but I am worried by another one, which has a long philosophical history. Of course, it may be just me… Read on…

The Prison of Moral Judgements

The majority of people live immersed in a world of moral judgments. They like talking about other people expressing an explicit or implicit judgment of them. “This man is good.” “That man I don’t trust.” “She is really hiding something.” “It is good – or bad – to be a cynic.” “She acted unprofessionally.” Read on…

Humanist Ethical Values

This third value espoused by the 2003 Humanist Manifesto is perhaps more complex than the first two, and requires what I see as a divorcement between the concept of ethics and the concept of morals. In its entirety, this third item reads: Ethical values are derived from human need and interest as tested by experience. Read on…

“Is faith necessary for ethics?”

Last night I participated in a debate on this topic, at a local college; there were representatives of five different religions, and I spoke for the humanist viewpoint. Here is my opening statement: The French scientist Laplace wrote a book about planetary physics; and Napoleon asked him why it didn’t mention God. Laplace replied, “Sir, I have no need of that hypothesis.” We humans get morality first from our human nature, developed through biological evolution, and second, from our thinking … Read on…

Francis Fukuyama: Why Civilization Is not Going to Hell

Francis Fukuyama’s 1992 book, The End of History and the Last Man, taught me a lot about the world. In 1999, he authored The Great Disruption. This refers to the current, and third, major discontinuity in humanity’s way of life. The first was the emergence of agriculture; second, the Industrial Revolution; and now, transition to a more highly technological, “information society.” Each entails social disruption. Fukuyama sought to assess those consequences of our current civilizational upheaval. He recognizes a lot … Read on…