Tag: Morality

The Queen of England, head of the Church of England, spoke to her bishops and acknowledged that atheists possess virtue and contribute to the life of the nation.

Frans de Waal examines how the behavior of primates sheds light on the origins of the sense of right and wrong in human beings.

Marc Hauser, a Harvard academic who gained prominence with the publication of a book on the biological origin of morality, has gone on leave after an investigation by the university into problems with his research.

Through cleverly designed experiments, psychologists tease out the innate sense of morality possessed by babies.

Ingersoll describes in detail why he does not find the Bible to be a moral guide.  He illustrates his point with examples from various books and teachings within the Old and New Testaments.

A recent Pew Research study of people 18 to 29 years old found, among other things, that they “are slightly more supportive than their elders of government efforts to protect morality, as well as somewhat more comfortable with involvement in politics by churches and other houses of worship.”

There has been a swathe of dubious reports recently about the supposed benefits of religion – how it makes you healthier, happier, less anti-social and ensures that you grow better tomatoes.  Now we are seeing the opposite claims beginning to emerge. A new study published in Trends in Cognitive Science finds that religion may have evolved as a by-product of non-religious, cognitive processes, dispelling a competing theory that religion served as an adaptation to help unrelated individuals cooperate.  The findings, published on Monday, suggests that people’s gut instinct for what is right and wrong operates independently of religious upbringing.

There has been a swathe of dubious reports recently about the supposed benefits of religion; how it makes you healthier, happier, less anti-social and ensures that you grow better tomatoes.

Psychologist Valerie Tarico challenges the moral standing of the Catholic bishops and discusses her abortion.  She asserts that moral decision making is a right and responsibility for each person, independent of religious authorities.

For evolutionary scientists there is no such thing as “Darwinism”. Instead we have a scientific theory that, in combination with Mendel’s work, provides the modern or neo-Darwinian synthesis, which explains the development of life on Earth. Although this is a rather succinct definition it effectively sets the limits of the usefulness of Darwin’s theory. However, in the last 150 years, there have been many attempts to take Darwin’s idea and apply it outside of the context for which it was developed, hence the influence of social “Darwinism” on concepts such as eugenics and a more recent Darwinian nihilism that absolves the individual of any moral or social responsibility.

The only Indonesian province with Sharia, or Islamic law, has a 1,500-member force whose job is to go after women not properly covered and couples engaging in public displays of affection.

After a nearly two-decade truce, Portuguese Nobel literature laureate José Saramago has returned to the charge against the Catholic Church. This time his target is the Bible itself, which he describes as “a manual of bad morals,” and a “catalogue of cruelties and of the worst of human nature.”

Penn Jillete discusses the lack of evidence for God and the richness of life based on reality rather than the supernatural.

A short explanation on why morality does not derive from scriptures and a comic pictoral montage.

A mother who used a steak knife to repeatedly stab, mutilate and decapitate her 4-week old baby says “the Devil” told her to do it.

This is a satirical piece which utilizes author Phil Zuckerman’s research found in his book “Society without God,” to demonstrate the superiority of irreligious democracies.  If your a fan of Stephen Colbert, you’ll like this editorial.

That religious leaders have joined forces on euthanasia is not surprising – favouring dogma over kindness is standard fare

There are Democratic sex scandals to be sure, but Democrats didn’t build a franchise on holier-than-thou moral rectitude. The Republicans did. They used sexual morality as a weapon and now it’s shooting them in the foot.

In this writing, the British Philosopher Mill recounts his childhood education at the hands of his father James Mill, also a philosopher and historian.

The love of money has caused politicians to “fall from grace”, according to the head of the Roman Catholic church in Scotland.

Cardinal Keith O’Brien also warned that society has become “amoral” because those in power refuse to tell the public how to behave.