#oral

To be charitable, one may admit that the religious often seem unaware of how insulting their main proposition actually is. Exchange views with a believer even for a short time, and let us make the assumption that this is a mild and decent believer who does not open the bidding by telling you that your unbelief will endanger your soul and condemn you to hell. It will not be long until you are politely asked how you can possibly know right from wrong. Without holy awe, what is to prevent you form resorting to theft, murder, rape, and perjury? It will sometimes be conceded that non-believers have led ethical lives, and it will also be conceded (as it had better be) that many believers have been responsible for terrible crimes. Nonetheless, the working assumption is that we should have no moral compass if we were not somehow in thrall to an unalterable and unchallengeable celestial dictatorship. What a repulsive idea! ↗

— Christopher Hitchens

#morality #religion #religion

Альтруизм, сострадание, сочувствие, любовь, совесть, чувство справедливости — всё это скрепляет общество, и даёт людям основания для высокой самооценки. И всё это, как теперь можно уверенно полагать, имеет твёрдый генетический базис. Это хорошие новости. Плохие новости в том, что хотя эти качества в каком-то роде и осчастливливают человечество в целом, но они не сделали человека «хорошим» видом и не слишком надёжно служат людям до конца. Скорее наоборот, и теперь это яснее, чем когда-либо, как (точнее — почему?) моральные чувства используются с отвратительной гибкостью, включаются или выключаются в зависимости от личного интереса, и сколь непринуждённо мы часто не осознаём такие переключения. Новый взгляд на людей полагает их видом, обладающим великолепным набором моральных инструментов, но трагически склонным использовать их не по назначению, и находящимся в жалостном институциональном невежестве насчёт этих злоупотреблений. ↗

— Robert Wright

#morality #science #science

Is psychiatry a medical enterprise concerned with treating diseases, or a humanistic enterprise concerned with helping persons with their personal problems? Psychiatry could be one or the other, but it cannot--despite the pretensions and protestations of psichiatrists--be both. ↗

— Thomas Stephen Szasz

#medicine #morality #psychiatry #medicine

Fearlessness is the first requisite of spirituality. Cowards can never be moral. ↗

— Mahatma Gandhi

#fearlessness #morality #spiritual

I absolutely refuse to associate myself with anyone who cannot discern the essential night-and-day difference between theocratic fascism and liberal secular democracy, even less do I want to engage with those who are incapable of recognizing the basic moral distinction between premeditated mass murder and unintentional killing. ↗

— Christopher Hitchens

#collateral-damage #false-equivalence #moral-equivalence #war-on-terror #iraq

The question is not, "Can they reason?" nor, "Can they talk?" but "Can they suffer? ↗

— Jeremy Bentham

#moral #vegetarian #morals

In our postmodern culture which is TV dominated, image sensitive, and morally vacuous, personality is everything and character is increasingly irrelevant. ↗

— David F. Wells

#culture #media #morality #personality #postmodernism

The obligation to endure gives us the right to know. ↗

— Jean Rostand

#morality #environmentalism

It is vital that we avoid any hint of moral superiority in our dealings with one another in the environmental movement; if it developed into factionalism it would destroy us, as factionalism has destroyed so many other progressive movements in America. ↗

— Edward Abbey

#factionalism #moral-superiority #environmentalism

I think the ethics and morals of genetic engineering are very complicated. It intrigues me. ↗

— Roger Spottiswoode

#engineering #ethics #genetic #genetic engineering #i