"humanism"タグの名言

Human decency is not derived from religion. It precedes it.

It is taboo in our society to criticize a persons religious faith... these taboos are offensive, deeply unreasonable, but worse than that, they are getting people killed. This is really my concern. My concern is that our religions, the diversity of our religious doctrines, is going to get us killed. I'm worried that our religious discourse- our religious beliefs are ultimately incompatible with civilization.

If faith is what you have to go on, if faith is the link between your beliefs and the world at large, your beliefs are very likely to be wrong. Beliefs can be right or wrong. If you believe you can fly, that belief is only true if indeed you can fly. Somebody who thinks he can fly, and is wrong about it, will eventually discover there's a problem with his view of the world.

I feel that we should stop wasting our time trying to please the supernatural and concentrate on improving the welfare of human beings. I think that, uh, we should use our energy and our initiative to solve our problems, and stop relying on prayer and wishful thinking. If we have faith in ourselves, we won't have to have faith in gods.

What we do in every other area of our lives (other than religion), is, rather than respect somebody's beliefs, we evaluate their reasons.

What I'm asking you to entertain is that there is nothing we need to believe on insufficient evidence in order to have deeply ethical and spiritual lives.

The split in America, rather than simply economic, is between those who embrace reason, who function in the real world of cause and effect, and those who, numbed by isolation and despair, now seek meaning in a mythical world of intuition, a world that is no longer reality-based, a world of magic.

I know one thing you don't. I know the difference between Right and Wrong. They didn't teach you that at school.' Rose didn't answer; the woman was quite right: the two words meant nothing to her. Their taste was extinguished by stronger foods--Good and Evil.

The faith of religion is belief on insufficient evidence.

We rely on faith only in the context of claims for which there is no sufficient sensory or logical evidence.

When the stakes are this high- when calling God by the right name can make the difference between eternal happiness and eternal suffering, it is impossible to respect the beliefs of others who don't believe as you do.

The problem I want to talk to you about tonight is the problem of belief. What does it mean to believe? We use this word all the time, and I think behind it lurk some really extraordinary taboos and confusions. What I want to argue tonight is that how we talk about belief- how we fail to criticize or criticize the beliefs of others, has more importance to us personally, more consequence to us personally and to civilization than perhaps anything else that is in our power to influence.

A sect or party is an elegant incognito devised to save a man from the vexation of thinking.

Faith does not offer a strong link between our beliefs and actual states of the world.

Belief is otiose; reality is sufficiently awesome as it stands.

Though he never actually joined it, he was close to some civilian elements of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine, which was the most Communist (and in the rather orthodox sense) of the Palestinian formations. I remember Edward once surprising me by saying, and apropos of nothing: 'Do you know something I have never done in my political career? I have never publicly criticized the Soviet Union. It’s not that I terribly sympathize with them or anything—it's just that the Soviets have never done anything to harm me, or us.' At the time I thought this a rather naïve statement, even perhaps a slightly contemptible one, but by then I had been in parts of the Middle East where it could come as a blessed relief to meet a consecrated Moscow-line atheist-dogmatist, if only for the comparatively rational humanism that he evinced amid so much religious barking and mania. It was only later to occur to me that Edward's pronounced dislike of George Orwell was something to which I ought to have paid more attention.

John Stuart Mill certainly underwent a spiritual crisis as a young man, which made him unhappy with the colder kinds of rationalism in which he had been instructed by his father. But he never turned toward any idea of God, a conception he regarded as fatuous and unimpressive, not to say self-evidently silly. He turned instead toward a larger and more humane idea of what reform might be, not his father’s ideal of utilitarian measurement but one that took in Mozart, music, love, and literature. He never stopped thinking that alleviating other people’s pain is the first duty of public policy. What liberals have, he thought, is better than a religion. It is a way of life.

Politics is not going to save this world, science and technology are not going to save this world, religion and spirituality are not going to save this world - what will is our understanding of which belongs where and to what extent.

The life of a human has meaning only and only if that life comes to the aid of others.

Do you know the value of life? Would you give your scripture up for burning in a cold winter evening so that a few people can have some heat? Would you dress up as Santa Claus and give away gifts, bought with your hard earned money, to bring smiles on the faces of your neighborhood children? Would you give your turban up to dress the wound of a stranger? Would you go out and fix the potholes on the streets of your neighborhood yourself, instead of waiting for the government to do so? Would you rush to the aid of strangers when they are struck by disaster? If yes, then there is no greater enlightenment for you to receive - there is no greater divinity for you to acquire - there is no greater godliness for you to attain.