It has been asserted, that a moral Atheist would be a monster beyond the power of nature to create: I reply, that it is not more strange for an Atheist to live virtuously, than for a Christian to abandon himself to crime!
If we believe the last kind of monster, why dispute the existence of the first?
In matters of religion it is very easy to deceive a man, and very hard to undeceive him.
— Pierre Bayle Read on…
One sometimes encounters people who assert that, unless there is a
God, life has no meaning. Now, as soon as we ask what they mean by
God and by the meaning of life we enter a quagmire from which it is
impossible to get out. Read on…
Prayers and sacrifices are of no avail.
All human actions have one or more of these seven causes: chance, nature, compulsion, habit, reason, passion, and desire
All virtue is summed up in dealing justly. Read on…
“Theism is so confused and the sentences in which “God” appears so incoherent and so incapable of verifiability or falsifiability that to speak of belief or unbelief, faith or unfaith, is logically impossible.”
— A.J. Ayer Read on…
The last two values espoused in the Humanist Manifesto III continue the general feeling set by the previous two, which is to say they may tend to inspire a yawn. But again, I will attempt to find something positive about the statement “Working to benefit society maximizes individual happiness.” In attempting to do so, I once again consulted the AHA on the subject: Read on…
Dim theories of an afterlife,
Reincarnation, grip our mind. Read on…
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…
When Humanists last endeavored to define themselves, the did it in the Humanist Manifest III, released in 2003. It is not so much a statement of what is wrong with the world, as was much of the first two Manifestos, but a statement of what could be right. There is so much in the world that is negative; it can mire one in society’s mud. And examination of the basic principles of humanism should be a positive experience, one that I need. Read on…
Tolerance is often discussed as one of the grand issues, of which there could never be too much. That opinion speaks both of very little critical thought and too much “What would jebus do?” Tolerance may seem bland, like water, but regardless of how many times doctors tell us that water is good for us, no water at all is bad and 40 gallons a day is just as dangerous, if not more so. As with most things in life, tolerance needs a little balance. Read on…
There is a tiny area at the back of my head where I run mental jobs that are the human equivalent of background tasks. I can poke them back there to run on their own, and they pop out with a “DING!” when they have something to say. Some of them have been there for years; they keep dinging but still need more work, so I put them back. Read on…