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This concept of the afterlife really functions as a substitute for wisdom. It functions as a substitute for really absorbing our predicament, which is...more

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Needless to say, there are people who hate Arabs, Somalis, and other immigrants from predominantly Muslim societies for racist reasons. But if you can...more

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In the year 2006, a person can have sufficient intellectual and material resources to build a nuclear bomb and still believe that he will get seventy-...more

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We read the Golden Rule and judge it to be a brilliant distillation of many of our ethical impulses. And then we come across another of God’s teaching...more

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It's simply untrue that religion provides the only framework for a universal morality.

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One of the most pernicious effects of religion is that it tends to divorce morality from the reality of human and animal suffering. Religion allows pe...more

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Could there be any doubt that the Jews would seek to harm the Son of God again, knowing that his body was now readily accessible in the form of defens...more

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There is a sense in which all cognition can be said to be motivated. One is motivated to understand the world, to be in touch with reality, to remove ...more

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If our well-being depends upon the interaction between events in our brains and events in the world, and there are better and worse ways to secure it,...more

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our moral reasoning is plagued by two illusions. The first illusion can be called the wag-the-dog illusion: We believe that our own moral judgment (th...more

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We will embarrass our descendants, just as our ancestors embarrass us. This is moral progress.