I'm still relatively new at administering a blog, but it has now become clear that we need to give our readers notice as to what will and won't fly regarding comments. The starting point is that we love comments. Without them, our posts lack life. Therefore, if you are tempted to…
Silence implies acquiescence.
We live in a culture that is rife with moral controversy, but public education is largely silent with regard to many of these controversies.
In a Free Inquiry article titled “Wanted: Moral Education for Secular Children” (December 2006), Paul Kurtz asks why we aren’t doing a better job of stepping into the moral void to give our children a secular moral education: “Secularists, humanists, and naturalists face a pivotal and deeply practical challenge: how to develop educational curricula and institutions that can provide moral guidelines for our children.”
Kurtz crowns pop culture as a prime contributor to the problem:
“banal and demeaning values often permeate the mass media: popular television, movies, music, radio, the Internet, and literature read by children. These values can herald violence, greed, vindictiveness, and immorality.”
Teaching children to be moral without reference to religion is easier said than done, of course. Secular versions of morality conflict with many authoritarian versions of morality:
…[The authoritarian tradition] holds that “deference to authority” is essential and stresses moral commandments that children simply need to accept and obey. The primary emphasis is on obedience to ancient creeds and codes. Second is the liberal tradition, which encourages young people to be responsible and to think for themselves. This approach stresses personal autonomy and freedom of thought. It is part of a new morality that has become influential since the Enlightenment: an effort to improve the lives of individuals in the current world.
Unfortunately, it is often difficult to
Published here, you can read the ongoing lively debate between Sam Harris and Dennis Prager, who hosts a nationally syndicated radio talk show.
Here’s how Harris responded to the common claim that atheists are arrogant believers that everything “just happened”:
Atheism does not assert that “it is all made by chance.” No one knows why the universe came into being. Most scientists readily admit their ignorance on this point. Religious believers do not. One of the extraordinary ironies of religious discourse can be seen in the frequency with which people of faith praise themselves for their humility, while condemning scientists and other nonbelievers for their intellectual arrogance. You have done a fine job of this above. And yet, there is no worldview more reprehensible in its arrogance than that of a religious believer: The Creator of the Universe takes an active interest in me, approves of me, loves me, and will reward me after death; my current beliefs, drawn from scripture, will remain the best statement of the truth until the end of the world; everyone who disagrees with me will spend eternity in hell…
An average believer has achieved a level of arrogance that is simply unimaginable in scientific discourse—and there have been some extraordinarily arrogant scientists.
Prager argues here that God’s existence is proved by the alleged lack of moral fiber found in secular societies.
…My argument is that unlike Judeo-Christian America, secular societies—generally meaning those of Western Europe—lose their will to survive (by not reproducing), and
It doesn't get any simpler than this. Almost as satisfying as the real thing. And no . . . I don't know the phone number of the "Fresh Sheet" woman.