It is as difficult to sink a business without debt as it is sink a ship without holes.
- Manlobbi
Halls of Shrewd'm / US Policy❤
No. of Recommendations: 17
The Intellectual and Moral Courage of Atheism
https://richarddawkins.com/articles/article/the-in....
“ Atheists have the intellectual courage to accept reality for what it is: wonderfully and shockingly explicable. As an atheist, you have the moral courage to live to the full the only life you’re ever going to get: to fully inhabit reality, rejoice in it, and do your best finally to leave it better than you found it.”
No. of Recommendations: 7
Yes. We're good because we think it's right, not because of a promise of some reward (or punishment) after we're dead. And we enjoy this life while we have it, because it's the only life we're likely to get.
It does take courage, not only for confronting the finality of death, but also for being in the minority. Though it took more courage in the past when the majority would kill you for not believing in whatever god was in favor. Some parts of the world, that is still true.
Heck, in my lifetime I've seen serious suggestions about rounding up all atheists into concentration camps.
No. of Recommendations: 0
As an atheist, ..... leave it better than you found it..
'It' being reality, it is what it is.
How does one change 'it' to leave 'it' better?
No. of Recommendations: 4
Another snippet from the essay:
It’s fascinating to see how the theological mind works: in particular, the lack of interest in – indeed, the contempt for – factual evidence. Never mind whether there’s any evidence that Mary was assumed bodily into heaven; it would be good for people to believe she was. It isn’t that theologians deliberately tell untruths. It’s as though they just don’t care about truth; aren’t interested in truth; don’t know what truth even means; demote truth to negligible status compared with other considerations, such as symbolic or mythic significance. And yet at the same time, Catholics are compelled to believe these made-up ‘truths’ – compelled in no uncertain terms. Even before Pius XII promulgated the Assumption as a dogma, the eighteenth-century Pope Benedict XIV declared the Assumption of Mary to be ‘a probable opinion which to deny were impious and blasphemous’. If to deny a ‘probable opinion’ is ‘impious and blasphemous’, you can imagine the penalty for denying an infallible dogma! Once again, note the brazen confidence with which religious leaders assert ‘facts’ which even they admit are supported by no historical evidence at all.
