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Asking children to grow virtues hydroponically, looking only within themselves for guidance, is like asking each one to invent a personal language―a p...more

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Religiosity developed because successful religions made groups more efficient at turning resources into offspring." (including art, cathedrals, cities...more

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The president is the high priest of what sociologist Robert Bellah calls the 'American civil religion.' The president must invoke the name of God (tho...more

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The most powerful force ever known on this planet is human cooperation — a force for construction and destruction.

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Intuitions come first, strategic reasoning second.

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Creating gods who can see everything, and who hate cheaters and oath breakers, turns out to be a good way to reduce cheating and oath breaking.

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The mind is divided, like a rider on an elephant, and the rider's job is to serve the elephant.

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You can see the rider serving the elephant when people are morally dumbfounded. They have strong gut feelings about what is right and wrong, and they ...more

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Moral matrices bind people together and blind them to the coherence, or even existence, of other matrices. This makes it very difficult for people to ...more

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Understanding the simple fact that morality differs around the world, and even within societies, is the first step toward understanding your righteous...more