"If a person doesn’t already understand that cruelty is wrong, he won’t discover this by reading the Bible or the Koran — as these books are bursting with celebrations of cruelty, both human and divine. We do not get our morality from religion. We decide what is good in our good books by recourse to moral intuitions that are (at some level) hard-wired in us and that have been refined by thousands of years of thinking about the causes and possibilities of human happiness.
We have made considerable moral progress over the years, and we didn’t make this progress by reading the Bible or the Koran more closely. Both books condone the practice of slavery — and yet every civilized human being now recognizes that slavery is an abomination. Whatever is good in scripture — like the golden rule — can be valued for its ethical wisdom without our believing that it was handed down to us by the creator of the universe."
Text credit Sam Harris, via Suicide Blonde.
Amen to htat.
ReplyDeleteHarris is being cheap and disingenuous in implying that there has been only one type of slavery throughout history.
ReplyDeleteExodus 21: 20 And if a man smite his slave, with a rod, and he die under his hand; he shall be surely punished. 21 But if he live for a day or two, he shall not be punished, for he is his money.
ReplyDeleteGotta be careful when you smite them slaves!
B.R.