(3) Introduction

"In others of its manifestations, religious faith is neither so kind nor so attractive. History attests to the weight of suffering that religious tyranny and conflict have together generated, from individuals struggling with feelings of sinfulness because of perfectly natural desires, to nations and civilisations engulfed in war and atrocity by interreligious hatreds. Religions have often been cruel in their effects, and remain so today: homosexuals are hanged in Iran, adulterous women are beheaded in Afghanistan and stoned to death in Saudi Arabia, ‘witches’ are murdered in Africa, women and children are subordinated in fundamentalist households in the Bible Belt of the United States and in many parts of the Islamic world. Throughout history the religion-inspired suppression of women has robbed humanity of at least half its potential creativity and genius.
Whereas the consolations of religion are mainly personal, the burdens are social and political as well as personal. This is one argument for greater secularism, a main form of which asks religion to keep itself in the private sphere, and not to obtrude into matters of general public concern." [mijn nadruk] (4)

"But the case against religion goes deeper than an argument for secularism. It is that religion’s claims and beliefs do not stand up to examination. Briefly put, critical examination of religion’s claims places it in the same class as astrology and magic." [mijn nadruk] (6)

"Religious individuals and institutions feel under pressure because of this, and sometimes accuse their critics of militancy. The critics reply that when religion occupied a dominant position in society, it dealt with its critics much more harshly than today’s critics now deal with religion: for one familiar example, by torturing them and burning them at the stake. Today’s critics of religion generally restrict themselves to hurling arguments rather than stones at the religious."(8)

"But one should not only look at fundamentalists, or fundamentalist types of religion. Non-fundamentalist religion, by definition, depends upon cherry-picking the given religion’s doctrines, discarding the uncongenial teachings and reinterpreting the others to make them more comfortable to live with. Think, for example, of the fact that the majority of Roman Catholics use contraception. The word that accurately and simply describes cherry-picking – choosing manageable commitments and ignoring inconvenient ones – is not a comfortable word; it is ‘hypocrisy’. (...) But the concern for religion’s critics is where there are moderates, not far behind there will always be zealots." [mijn nadruk] (12)

(15) Part I - Against Religion

(15) 1 - Clarifications

"To put matters at their simplest, the major reason for the continuance of religious belief in a world which might otherwise have long moved beyond it, is indoctrination of children before they reach the age of reason, together with all or some combination of social pressure to conform, social reinforcement of religious institutions and traditions, emotion, and (it has to be said) ignorance – of science, of psychology, of history in general, and of the history and actual doctrines of religions themselves." [mijn nadruk] (15)

[Alle opvoeding is natuurlijk ergens indoctrinatie. Belangrijk is dan wat wel en wat niet. En ook vind dat dat nooit totaal oncontroleerbare en irrationele opvattingen kunnen zijn of een ideologie van gehoorzaamheid aan autoriteit. Kinderen moeten leren zelf te denken en zelf keuzes te maken. ]

"Whereas there are other sources of individual comfort and inspiration that are far better than religion – they include love and friendship, family life, art, the pursuit of knowledge and, as noted, the outlook and principles of humanism – there are very few sources of conflict and mental enslavement as bad as an ideology which demands self-abnegation by submission to its dogmas and to the self-appointed interpreters of its dogmas. Religion is the paradigm of this." [mijn nadruk] (17)

"The first step is to introduce some clarity into the concepts we are dealing with, and to put them into perspective."(20)

"We have to be similarly firm in distinguishing between outlooks and practices that are properly called ‘religions’ and those that are in fact not religions but philosophies. This is a very important distinction, and one that is widely overlooked. Thus, Buddhism in its original form, and still in the Theravada (Small Vehicle) form, is a philosophy, not a religion. So is Jainism, so most emphatically is Confucianism. The differentiator is that these philosophies are not centred upon belief in, worship of, and obedience to a deity or deities, from whom or from which come the commands that construct the correct form of life and belief for the devotee." [mijn nadruk] (20)

"Another important distinction is that between superstition and religion. All religious people are superstitious, but not all superstitious people are religious."(22)

"One of many reasons for pointing this out is that freedom from coercive ideology is both a human right and a fundamental civil liberty, which is why freedom from religion should figure in any codification of human rights alongside the freedom to have a religion. The right to freedom from religion also means freedom from proselytisation or coercive demands to belong to one, or harassment and punishment for not belonging to one, and – very importantly – from the requirement to live according to the tenets or demands of a religion to which one does not subscribe." [mijn nadruk] (23)

[Vrijheid van religie als een grondrecht is inderdaad net zo belangrijk zo niet belangrijker dan die belachelijke vrijheid om een godsdienst te mogen belijden. Ook in dit boek komt steeds terug dat godsdienst geen rol moet of mag spelen in de publieke sfeer en moet worden teruggedrongen naar de privésfeer. Dat je zelf vanuit je geloof bijvoorbeeld geen abortus wilt is één ding, dat je je opvattingen op dat punt via de politiek aan iedereen probeert op te leggen is een heel ander ding. Ik vind de aanpak zoals in Frankrijk - waarbij je op de openbare scholen geen uiterlijke kenmerken van je religie mag dragen erg verdedigbaar. Jammer dat er ook in Frankrijk katholieke scholen en zo zijn die soms op voorwaarden ook nog eens subsidie krijgen van de Staat. Ik vind dat er alleen maar openbare cholen mogen zijn in een samenleving.]

"Everyone possesses many non-religious beliefs, but what distinguishes these from religious beliefs is the grounds on which they are held, and what they are about.(...) By ‘faith’ is meant belief held independently of whether there is testable evidence in its favour, or indeed even in the face of counter-evidence. This latter is regarded as a virtue in most religions ..."(24)

"What centrally constitutes the standard examples of religions – Judaism, Christianity, Islam – is faith in the existence of a supernatural, transcendent, divine being (or beings, if one includes angels, saints, demons or other personae of the given deity), and they further involve espousal of values and practices taken to be required in response to the existence of these beings, including worship and praise of it or them, submission and obedience to the commands taken to emanate from it or them, and so on." [mijn nadruk] (25)

"In sum and in brief, then, a religion is a set of beliefs and practices focused on a god or gods. This is what I shall understand by ‘religion’ in all that follows."(28)

(28) 2 - Naming and Describing a ‘god’

"Yet there is a near-universal assumption that ‘god’ is a word that refers to something other than an idea, that its referent is something one can ‘believe in’ and variously obey, fear, worship, praise, have a relationship with, and invoke to explain a wide variety of things, such as the origin of the universe, the intricacies of nature, the foundation of moral principles, the purpose of life, and more.
Even more significantly for religious people, the word is typically invoked to denote the all-encompassing and unanswerable source of authority governing what people can think, say, eat and wear, in what circumstances and with whom they can have sexual relations, how they must behave on specified days or weeks of the year, and so comprehensively on. The fact that different religions claim that their god or gods have different requirements in these respects should be evidence that religions are man-made and historically conditioned, but religious people think that this insight only applies to other people’s religions, not their own." [mijn nadruk] (29-30)

"If the theologians’ decisions about what is true and what is metaphorical are not a mere matter of convenience, based on what they are willing to believe or can bring themselves to believe, the next question is: what are the principled grounds for saying what is true and what is metaphor in the texts and traditions? The texts on which Christianity rests were until quite recently regarded as literal historical truth in their entirety. Fundamentalists still believe this. And almost all Muslims believe that the Qur’an is literal historical truth. But increasingly, in a more educated and scientific age, the frequent implausibilities and absurdities of these texts have forced theologians into explaining-away and cherry-picking."(39-40)

(43) 3 - The Origins of Religion

"The picture that emerges is that religion stems from the period when stories, myths and supernaturalistic beliefs served as, in effect, mankind’s earliest science and technology."(44)

"Whereas the agencies or powers that made nature work were at first located in nature itself – water nymphs, dryads in trees, river and sea gods, thunder gods like Zeus and Thor – increasing knowledge about nature, and mastery of parts of it, obliged these agencies to relocate themselves first to mountain-tops (Olympus, Sinai), then to the sky – anyway, too far off for ordinary folk to see and interact with them in normal circumstances, though prophets and priests did not have these difficulties. And since then these agencies have moved beyond space and time altogether." [mijn nadruk] (45)

"But as the agencies premised in these beliefs and practices moved further outward, retreating beyond the horizon of scientific knowledge as it advanced, their usefulness to temporal powers – kings and chieftains – often in the form of a pragmatic relationship between rulers and priests, ensured that the belief systems not merely survived but flourished. History shows just how much utility there was in this symbiosis, because religious belief can be a powerful instrument of social control, and was very much used as such. The institutionalisation of religion is a matter of record, and is one of the principal reasons that religion has survived so long." [mijn nadruk] (47)

(51) 4 - An Axe to the Root

"Often, religious apologists claim that critics of religion are ignorant of the finer points of theology and doctrine, accusing them of failing to read theology in formulating objections; but they thereby entirely miss the point that when one rejects the premises of a set of views, it is a waste of one’s time to address what is built on those premises." [mijn nadruk] (51)

[Prachtig geformuleerd. Waarom zou je in discussie willen gaan met mensen die al uitgaan van het bestaan van een god en die daar heilig in (blijven) geloven, wat je er ook aan argumenten tegen inbrengt?]

(60) 5 - Knowledge, Belief and Rationality

"If I were to succeed in making only one contribution to this debate, it would be to establish the point that what is at stake in it, as indeed with every debate about any subject matter other than logic and mathematics, is not knowledge but rationality, and that ‘proof’ outside formal systems of logic and mathematics means ‘test’; so that the only propositions we are entitled to accept as premises for action and further thought are those that it is rational to accept because they have passed the test of reason or observation or both." [mijn nadruk] (61)

"This is exactly why it is rational to believe the deliverances of common sense, practicality and science, and irrational to believe religious claims. The former are based on evidence gathered and vastly confirmed by experience, whereas the beliefs of the various religions are untestable, inconsistent with each other, internally contradictory, and in conflict with the deliverances of common sense and science."(69)

"Religious claims are, accordingly, irrefutable because untestable; and by this criterion are therefore meaningless." [mijn nadruk] (71)

(71) 6 - Agnosticism, Atheism and Proof

"But agnosticism, as the position that entertains the possibility that there might be or could be one or more supernatural agencies of some sort, is an irrational position, for precisely the same reason as holding that there might be or could be fairies or goblins or the Olympian deities or the Norse gods."(78)

(79) 7 - Theistic Arguments

"In this and the following chapters I examine ‘arguments for the existence of God’, as the standard phrase has it. I do it in detail, and in the context of other considerations that arise in discussion of these arguments – semantic, psychological and polemical considerations chief among them – something that is too rarely done, although doing it brings a great deal of light to bear on the arguments themselves."(79)

"It is rational to discuss the fact that lots of people believe that astrology reveals character and destiny, but it is not rational to discuss whether people born under the sign of Aries are typically more rash than those born under the sign of Gemini. Theological discourse is of this latter type – ‘Is the Son of one substance with the Father?’ and ‘Does the Holy Ghost proceed from the Father and the Son, or from the Father alone?’ are utterances that have caused wars, persecutions, schisms and burnings at the stake; and they are exactly of the same category as ‘Are Aries people more rash than Gemini people?’ – that is, they are part of the internal discourse of the belief system, and they only make sense to anyone who has accepted the premises and parameters of the belief system already." [mijn nadruk] (80)

[Precies. En als je die uitgangspunten niet accepteert is het allemaal geklets. En óf je ze accepteert hangt af van hoe aannemelijk die uitgangspunten gemaakt kunnen worden, van hoe goed ze beargumenteerd en onderbouwd kunnen worden. Wat nu volgt is al goed samengevat door Grayling zelf in zijn korte boekje Against all gods.]

"‘Faith’ is not a respectable or admirable thing; having been so long paraded as a virtue and worthy of respect, the truth is otherwise: its critics have no compunction in saying that it is irresponsible, lazy and too often dangerous."(85)

(90) 8 - Arguing by Design

(102) 9 - Arguing by Definition

"The various versions of the ontological argument come down to saying in effect that deity exists by definition. It is an a priori deductive argument, that is, an argument by reason alone, and it turns on analysis of the concept of deity. This, therefore, is where the problems with defining the word ‘god’ really bite."(102)

[Het is simpelweg misleiding.]

(117) 10 - Causes, Wagers and Morals

"The cosmological argument, in its various forms, infers the existence of deity from observations about the contingency of the world. It is similar to the teleological argument in being empirically based, but it differs in that, instead of focusing on the appearance of design in the world, it concentrates on the facts that the world came into existence, that it could have been different (this is what is meant by the world being ‘contingent’), and that everything is governed by causation – everything is the effect or outcome of preceding conditions and circumstances that caused it."(117)

Graylings conclusie over moraal:

"Behind the thought that there needs to be a god to give and enforce moral principles is the further thought that such principles require the backing of authority, for otherwise there is no answer to the moral sceptic who asks, ‘Why should I be moral? Why should I not lie or kill or steal?’ because there is no ultimate sanction for his failure to live morally. To thinkers of this persuasion, morality is empty unless it can be enforced.
The examples of the good atheist and the classical philosopher also rebut this view. There are many sound reasons why we should seek to live responsibly, with generosity and sympathy towards others, with care and affection for them, and with continence, sound judgement and decency in our own lives. We can see the value of these things in themselves, and from the point of the benefits they bring society and its individual members, including ourselves. A thoughtful person could decide not to be the sort of person who steals even if he would never be found out or punished, precisely because he does not want to be such a person, and because at least one person knows what he would be doing if he did such things – namely, himself; and if he has standards, he might well choose to live up to them.
In short, there is no need for an external enforcer to make us the kind of people who take such thoughts seriously; and we might all prefer to live in a world where people seek to be morally worthy because they see the point of it, not because they are being watched and will be rewarded or punished according to the degree to which they abide by the rules. In the latter sort of world one cannot tell the difference between those who are acting out of principle and those who are acting out of prudence, and perhaps wishing they could do otherwise – doing it inauthentically, as the point is sometimes put. How much better is a world for being a world of volunteers, not slaves!"(133-134)

[Zo denk ik er ook over.]

(134) 11 - Creationism and ‘Intelligent Design’

"For a long time – from the fifth century of the common era (c.e.) when the church closed the Schools of Athens for teaching philosophy (which included science) right up to the seventeenth century – religion took the view that it was right and science was wrong, and anyone who disagreed might be killed (for example, Giordano Bruno) or obliged to recant under threat of death (for example, Galileo). Educated opinion now has matters the other way round: religion is wrong, science is right (more accurately, that scientific method and ideas are increasingly giving us a better and more practical understanding of the world and ourselves). This is regarded as an arrogant thing for science to say, or for anyone to say on behalf of science; perhaps a sense of fairness has it that religion and science should each be allowed to have a bit of being-right. This kind thought is however not to the point: ultimately the debate is about which way of thinking and justifying beliefs is the one that will take us towards the truth." [mijn nadruk] (135)

"Nevertheless the money, organisation, propaganda effort and persistence of the religious lobby is remarkable. A notable example of one of the bodies set up to promote the agenda is the Discovery Institute in Seattle, which describes itself in its promotional literature as ‘a nonpartisan public policy think tank conducting research on technology, science and culture, economics and foreign affairs’. The apparent neutrality of this description is belied by the fact that its major if not sole endeavour is to promote ID theory and to get it taught in schools, at the very least alongside standard (which means, evolutionary) biology, although doubtless the eventual aim is to displace standard biology."(138)

"Darwinism demonstrates the redundancy of the idea of a creator-designer agent in biology. More, it shows that such an idea is inconsistent with the observable facts of nature in general, as clearly as the geological evidence shows that ‘Young Earth’ Creationism is false. This is the key point: for if Darwinism is not compatible with religious belief as such then it is not compatible with any particular version of religious belief such as Christianity."(148)

"The point about advances in biological science reminds one why it matters that people should be encouraged to inform themselves as much as possible about the developments which are likely to affect their own and their descendants’ lives, so that they can participate in decisions about how those changes are managed – or even whether they should be allowed. Public debate about these matters is too often vitiated by ignorance and the tendentious effect of religion-influenced views. These latter do not advance the cause of an intelligent assessment of what we know and how to use it; rather, they hinder that process, making matters worse."(160)

(163) Conclusion to Part I

(164) Part II - For Humanism

(164) 12 - The Three Debates

"The three separable debates are as follows. There is a theism-atheism debate, which is about metaphysics, that is, what does or does not exist. There is a secularism debate, which is about the place and volume of the religious voice in the public square. And there is a debate about the source and content of our moralities: does morality come from a transcendent source such as divine command, or does it arise from our own reflection on human realities and relationships? This is where humanism enters the picture, as a deep and powerful alternative to religious morality."(165)

"The standard secularist position is this: that religions and religious attitudes (however much one disagrees with them and thinks them mistaken, retrogressive, oppressive and sometimes downright dangerous) are entitled to exist and be expressed in the public square, but with no greater privilege than any other voice in the public square. This means that religious organisations should see themselves for what they are, namely, civil society organisations of the interest-group variety, existing to put their point of view and trying to persuade others to accept it. Political parties and trade unions and other NGOs are in the business of doing this, and religious bodies are the same kind of thing as these organisations. They should therefore take their turn in the queue alongside them, and like them rely on the actual support they can muster from individuals and their donations. But they try – and for historical and institutional reasons very often succeed in this effort – to get to the front of the queue by claiming special privileges such as charitable status, state funding, traditional seats at the high table of society and state, and the ‘respect due to faith’ (this is a claim of very dubious respectability, since it asks us to admire views that disdain the rigorous tests of verifiability or falsifiability that we ask of claims in every other domain of enquiry). In some countries religious organisations have official state sanction for their privileging above other NGOs. This is what secularists oppose, and now that religion is reasserting itself as a problem in the world, some oppose it vigorously. Hence ‘militant secularism’."(170)

"As Voltaire noted, religious liberty depends on religious pluralism, and by extension the liberties of an open society depend on an even more general pluralism which is neutral with respect to any view other than the liberal view itself. But by its own nature, the liberal view is in principle tolerant and inclusive. Its only dangers are that it might inadvertently tolerate the intolerant too far; and that it allows its own beneficiaries to be lazy about protecting the liberties accorded them." [mijn nadruk] (175)

"In a truly secular world, one where religion has withered to the relative insignificance of astrology, tarot card divination, health-promotion based on crystals and magnets, and other marginal superstition-involving outlooks, an ethical outlook which can serve everyone everywhere, and can bring the world together into a single moral community, will at last be possible. That outlook is humanism." [mijn nadruk] (175)

(175) 13 - Humanism: The Ethics of Humanity

"In essence, humanism is the ethical outlook that says each individual is responsible for choosing his or her values and goals and working towards the latter in the light of the former, and is equally responsible for living considerately towards others, with a special view to establishing good relationships at the heart of life, because all good lives are premised on such. Humanism recognises the commonalities and, at the same time, wide differences that exist in human nature and capacities, and therefore respects the rights that the former tells us all must have, and the need for space and tolerance that the latter tells us each must have.
Humanism is above all about living thoughtfully and intelligently, about rising to the demand to be informed, alert and responsive, about being able to make a sound case for a choice of values and goals, and about integrity in living according to the former and determination in seeking to achieve the latter."(176)

"Ideas of a distinctively humanist stamp are however not restricted to the Western tradition. Equally ancient in their roots, they are central to Confucianism and the tradition of non-theistic ethical schools of India. One interesting way to indicate the richness of humanistic thought is to nominate the authors who would figure essentially in a reading list for a study of humanism: they include Confucius, Mencius, Thucydides, Epicurus, Cicero, Seneca, Pliny the Elder and Pliny the Younger, Plutarch, Lucretius, Epictetus, Aurelius, Ibn Rushd, Averroes, Montaigne, Bruno, Spinoza, Voltaire, Meselier, Hume, Diderot, D’Holbach, Adam Smith, Gibbon, Paine, Condorcet, Bentham, Godwin, Shelley, Heine, Comte, Marx, Schopenhauer, Mill, Darwin, Huxley, Leslie Stephen, Spencer, Renan, Andrew Dickson White, Moncure Conway, Charles Bradlaugh, Robert Ingersoll, Mark Twain, Samuel Butler, W. E. H. Lecky, John Morley, Nietzsche, W. K. Clifford, G. W. Foote, Freud, Dewey, J. B. Bury, Bertrand Russell, Gilbert Murray, Chapman Cohen, G. E. Moore, Einstein, E. M. Forster, H. L. Mencken, Sir Julian Huxley, M. N. Roy, Barbara Wootton, Sydney Hook, H. J. Blackham, Jean-Paul Sartre, A. J. Ayer, Peter Medawar, Jacob Bronowski, Bernard Williams, Daniel Dennett, Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris, Victor Stenger, Richard Dawkins – to name only a few.
Almost all these figures – and most of them explicitly – share a commitment to a fundamental premise: that the human good is for human responsibility to discern and enact, without reliance upon, or invocation of, any of the many religions which claim a transcendental source of authority, and posthumous rewards or punishments for obeying or failing to obey it.
As a broad ethical outlook, humanism involves no sectarian divisions or strife, no supernaturalism, no taboos, no food and dress codes, no restrictive sexual morality other than what is implicit in the demand to treat others with respect, consideration and kindness. It is a strikingly positive outlook, and one that would go far, if universally adopted, to solve the problems of today’s world because it insists on the central importance of good relations between individuals in respect of their humanity, not in respect of what identities might overlay their humanity – the political, ethnic, religious, cultural, gender identities that so often trump the possibility of a straightforward human-to-human friendship that would cross all boundaries. This is the obverse of the coin whose reverse is the principle that individuals should be autonomous, free to think for themselves, and fully possessed of rights as well responsibilities."(185-186)

"So, humanists can be humanists but disagree on aspects of politics, and the complexity of applied moral problems can suggest different humanist strategies for dealing with them. But such differences do not affect humanism’s two fundamental premises.
The first premise is that there are no supernatural agencies in the universe, and the second, connected, premise is that our ethics must be drawn from, and responsive to, the nature and circumstances of human experience."(187)

(193) 14 - Humanism and the Good Life

"But no one these days would consistently subscribe to the ideas of just one ethical outlook, given that the Enlightenment has both taught and urged us to see that our duty is not to submit to the teachings of a system, but to learn from the best such teachings for our own individual use. That is what is meant by living autonomously – taking responsibility, thinking things through." [mijn nadruk] (194)

[Volgt een overzicht van allerlei ethische opvattingen door de eeuwen heen.]

"This assumes that there is an answer to the profoundly difficult metaphysical question about freedom of the will. Is there such a thing as genuine moral agency, or does everything – including human action – occur as the necessitated outcome of causal chains of events? The answer assumed by ethical debate is that free will exists. Without that assumption the entire edifice of moral discourse collapses. Of course it accepts that upbringing, the constraints imposed by society, and the finite nature of any individual’s physical and mental powers, jointly make people contingently unfree in obvious ways. But the key assumption is that people are not metaphysically unfree – that is the essential point for moral theory."(223)

(229) 15 - Putting the World to Rights

"Since then it is the developed countries that complain most about human rights violations in the developing countries, and as Muslim majority countries have grown more assertive so they are seeking to resile from the Declaration, wishing to assert their own Islamic version of rights in which (for example) women have fewer and lesser rights than men. More orthodox Muslims are not alone among religious groupings in finding the idea of universal rights a nuisance with respect to how they would most like to arrange their affairs, and they find a strong champion in China, which does not like the idea of universality either."(234)

[Tja, hoe universeel is die Universele Verklaring inderdaad? Lijkt me geen simpele kwestie.]

"A major reason for talking about human rights is that they offer humankind its best chance of a genuinely global ethics to which almost anyone can subscribe, from almost any tradition, creed or ethnicity.(...) today China claims that the idea of human rights is a Western imposition on the rest of the world, implying that human rights are not universal and that different traditions, such as China’s own, are entitled to apply their own different standards."(237)

[Ik weet er niet genoeg van, maar Grayling lijkt me hier toch wat gemakkelijk over allerlei problemen heenstappen. Alsof het Westen zich zo aan die 'universele normen' houdt.]

(238) 16 - Shared Humanity, Human Diversity

"By now it is clear that a humanist is someone who starts from the premise that morality is a matter for discussion and decision in a society, not a divine imposition from beyond the stars. That immediately requires three comments in clarification."(238)

"Ethics, therefore, as a far broader matter than the moral considerations it includes within it, is about the achievement of intelligent human well-being and well-doing. Ethical reflection concerns what sort of people we should be. This has implications for questions about what sort of society we should build – so that the best we can be ethically as individuals can have the best communal environment in which to flourish. Ethics and politics, as Aristotle saw, are continuous.
Understanding the distinction between ethics and morality is important because it helps us to understand both. Morality is about what is permissible and forbidden in particular realms of behaviour; ethics is about one’s character. Because of this we can see that the groundwork of ethics is not rules, codes and sanctions, as is generally the case in morality, but a cultivation of character, with the aim of living a good life – which means: good to live, good in its impact on others. It might be utopian to think so, but in a community of people concerned to be ethical the likelihood is surely that the society will be a good one."(240-241)

"It is both true and inevitable that there will be differences in customs and moral emphases between societies, but as the comments above about human rights – and in particular the universality claimed for them – immediately entail, relativism is not what follows from those harmless facts. For there are objective facts about human needs and interests that constrain any possible morality. Very few people like to be cold, hungry, afraid, lonely, threatened, in danger, in physical pain, subjected to psychological suffering, deprived of basic physical and psychological amenities, and the like. We know, just in virtue of being human, what the least is that we require in these respects. And as these basic interests are satisfied, so we know what the next layers of human needs and interests are, and in the systems of law, morality and rights that we construct to address them, conceive of them as entitlements which entail obligations on others to respect them: fairness in all things, equality of consideration by the state, access to education and health care." [mijn nadruk] (242)

[Kijk naar dat laatste. Geldt dat bijvoorbeeld in de VS? Dacht het niet.]

(244) 17 - The Ethical and the Moral

"The shared basis of the human condition gives us the objective parameters for moral thought. The opposite fact of human diversity and difference gives us our motivation to think carefully and with an eye to nuance about how we engage with others."(245)

"The principal subject matter of morality is, overwhelmingly, human relationships. As an aside, though, it should be noted that there are good arguments for including the animal and more generally the natural world in the sphere of moral concern. One source of this thought is an important distinction that is almost always overlooked both in informal and in philosophical discussions of morality. This is the distinction between moral agents and moral patients."(251)

(253) 18 - A Humanist on Love, Sex and Drugs

[Over verliefdheid, romantische liefde, etc. Ik denk dat Grayling hier erg zijn eigen tradtionele waarden en normen inbrengt.]

"To judge by the attention it receives in literature, song and cinema, romantic love has to be one of the most dramatic and important things in life. Yet conventional morality seems to require that apart from a few experiments in early adulthood, its reality should only be experienced once, with one person, and lifelong bonding should be the appropriate outcome. Anyone who claims to fall in love frequently is thought irresponsible, and with some justification: for it is such a transforming, time-consuming, exhausting, ecstatic, painful business that it takes a long time to recover from it – in some cases, whole lifetimes." [mijn nadruk] (254)

"But plenty of people who have looked at both sides can report that the chances of loving and being loved more fulfillingly than ever before improve with experience.
Thus might the voice of experience speak. But in many relationships, early or late, the phenomenon that appears to have most disruptive and even destructive power is sex. Since the dawn of history societies have festooned sex with prohibitions, taboos, rules and restrictions. One of the major effects is to subordinate women, confine them, deny them the same scope for life as men, and thus deprive history of half its potential. The taboos and restrictions have magnified the importance and power of sex even further, and small amounts of it can, as a result, have massive consequences for marriages, political careers and churches." [mijn nadruk] (260)

"Sober reflection suggests that if sex were allowed a more natural place in human life it would take up far less time and make far less trouble than it currently does. Even in the more relaxed and mature societies of the world attitudes to sex and sexuality consume too much social oxygen, with the result that unnecessary harm is caused.
Nature has made sex pleasurable not just to ensure reproduction but, in some of the higher mammals at least, to create bonds. The narrow views of the ancient Jews and the modern Catholics, that sex must always have pregnancy as a possible outcome, miss a very important point here." [mijn nadruk] (262)

"People are much more interested in sex than knowledgeable about it, which is part of the reason for the problems it can cause. Ignorance about it is the result of prudery, prudery is the result of demonisation of it by religious moralists, and alas they have the support of some philosophers too ..." [mijn nadruk] (265)

"Everywhere in the world elaborate legal and social barriers control how, when and with whom sex is permissible. Sex is policed by society as if it were an explosive form of terrorism."(267)

(279) 19 - Humanism, Death and the Ends of Life

"In short, euthanasia – which we should understand as ‘a good dying’ – should be available to all of us, and not least to the ill and old if they desire it (not if someone else desires it for them). The arguments in support of this view follow below."(280)

"There is an interesting pair of alignments implicit here. Conservative moralists oppose euthanasia and abortion, but can consistently be in favour of, or at least untroubled by, the killing necessitated by war and capital punishment. Liberal moralists are for euthanasia and abortion, but tend to be against war and judicial execution. What explains these contrasting orientations?"(281)

"It would be extraordinary – I would say unthinkable – for someone else, let alone a stranger, to dictate to the individual in question that he or she cannot choose to intervene in that circumstance. But that is what religious moralists do in trying to end the right to abortion, and in standing in the way of legalising physician-assisted suicide. This is an egregious example of the ‘I don’t like it therefore you are not allowed to do it’ mentality which is what makes moralism of that kind so profoundly objectionable." [mijn nadruk] (283)

"Pain is not the only enemy of an easeful death. The feeling of not being able to breathe, being incontinent and in need of the ministrations of carers to be cleaned, feeling a terrifying helplessness, indignity and utter dependence that is only going to be relieved by death itself, being drugged and unable to relate properly to family and carers from beneath its muffling effect, all this can be profoundly upsetting to the sufferer, who might therefore wish for a neat, painless conclusion rather than being dragged on and on in the midst of the futile struggle that nature puts up against extinction."(284)

"Nevertheless many of the dying are condemned to suffering by the main anti-euthanasia argument, which is that legalised euthanasia might be abused."(286)

[Weer veel eindeloze uitweidingen in dit hoofdstuk.]

(308) 20 - Religion Revisited

"But religion is a bad source of moral insight. This is not least because it is in fact either irrelevant to questions of morality, or it is positively immoral. This claim undoubtedly seems contradictory or merely polemical at first, but reflection shows otherwise."(309)

"The immorality claim comes hard on its heels. When fundamentalists of one or another religious tradition deny rights to gays, deny education and health care to women, practise genital mutilation, amputate limbs as a punishment, stone adulterers to death, use murder against those they oppose, extol suicide bombing and acts of terrorism in the name of their faiths, religion becomes positively immoral."(310)

"For the humanist it matters to ask this: if interest in and concern for one’s fellows is a reason for being moral, what relevance does the existence of a deity have? Why cannot we accept that we are prompted to the ethical life by these natural human feelings? The existence of a god adds nothing, other than as an invisible policeman who sees what we do always and everywhere, even when alone in the dark, and who rewards and punishes accordingly. Such an addition to ethical thought is hardly an enrichment ..." [mijn nadruk] (315)

(322) 21 - Humanism and the Ethical Dimension

(330) 22 - The Better Alternative

"The fact is persistently overlooked that those who are not religious have available to them a rich ethical outlook, all the richer indeed for being the result of reflection as opposed to conditioning or tradition. Its roots lie in rational consideration of what humankind’s cumulative experience teaches; and that is a great harvest of insight."(330)

"Having the intellectual courage to live with open-endedness and uncertainty, trusting to reason and experiment to gain us increments of understanding, having the integrity to base one’s views on rigorous and testable foundations, and being committed to changing one’s mind when shown to be wrong, are the marks of honest minds."(334)