Monday, April 02, 2007

Sam Harris author of "The God Delusion" takes on Rick Warren of "A Purpose Driven Life". This should be good.

My favorite quote:

Sam, what are the secular sources of an acceptable moral code?

HARRIS: Well, I don't think that the religious books are the source. We go to the Bible and we are the judge of what is good. We see the golden rule as the great distillation of ethical impulses, but the golden rule is not unique to the Bible or to Jesus; you see it in many, many cultures—and you see some form of it among nonhuman primates. I'm not at all a moral relativist. I think it's quite common among religious people to believe that atheism entails moral relativism. I think there is an absolute right and wrong. I think honor killing, for example, is unambiguously wrong—you can use the word evil. A society that kills women and girls for sexual indiscretion, even the indiscretion of being raped, is a society that has killed compassion, that has failed to teach men to value women and has eradicated empathy. Empathy and compassion are our most basic moral impulses, and we can even teach the golden rule without lying to ourselves or our children about the origin of certain books or the virgin birth of certain people.

1 comment:

  1. Thanks for posting this link. I finally got around to reading the article. Harris makes some excellent points and although I am not an atheist I do crave a rational, secular society to live in. Now, if we can just get rid of religion....

    ReplyDelete

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