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Sense and Goodness Without God

Posted by Theresa on July 25th, 2006 filed in Book Review, Believe It or Not, Sense and Goodness

I finished this book not too long ago and I went crazy underlining meaningful things. Following are just some of the quotes from the book Sense and Goodness Without God by Richard Carrier that made me think:

Who Is Correct?

“Though belief on faith alone may be comforting, it is wholly arbitrary and thus does nothing to ensure that you are more correct than anyone else.”

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Thinking Like a Genius

“This is a little known secret of thinking like a genius: it doesn’t matter where your ideas come from, or how many turned out to be harebrained, so long as you only trust the ones that are soundly proved.”

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Philosophy Versus Religion

“Philosophy is fundamental to our lives. It should be our first if not only religion wherein worship is replaced with curiosity, devotion with diligence, holiness with sincerity, ritual with study, and scripture with the whole world and the whole of human learning.

The philosopher regards it as tantamount to a religious duty to question all things, and to ground her faith in what is well-investigated and well-proved, rather than what is merely well-asserted or well-liked. Instead of keeping her nose ever in one book, she reads widely and constantly. Instead of aligning herself with this or that view and keeping only like-minded company, she mingles and discusses all views with everyone. And above all she commits herself to the constant study and application of language, logic, and method, and seeks always to perfect, by testing and correcting, her total view of all things.”

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The Meaning of Life

“So when we die, we cease to exist. Does this mean life is meaningless because it is only temporary? Not really. Most valuable and meaningful things are only temporary. We do not regard a joyous occasion as pointless because it only lasts a day. Yet our very lives are a joyous occasion. By existing, and making of ourselves something good, we give ourselves and each other value, we create purpose and meaning. Neither existing by accident nor existing only a short while changes anything about the value of existing, the value of getting to be, to behold and know the universe, to create something.

Nor do we need to be some superbeing’s creation for our lives to have value. After all, believers seem comfortable with the fact that God was not created and yet his life has value.

Meaning can be found in our own existence, the here and now, but also in the hopes and dreams of the future, and not just our future, but the future of others.”

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Commonality of Religion

“The one thing all religions seem to have in common is a belief that love has something to do with the meaning of life. On virtually everything else they disagree - so virtually everything else is probably false.”

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Spiritual Experiences

“Since any telltale sign of a spiritual experience can also be found in hallucinations and other mundane phenomena, the are useless by themselves for indicating whether an experience can rightly be regarded as granting access to a profound religious truth.

It is vain to appeal to how a spiritual experience transforms someone’s life as a ‘proof’ that religion is true. Life transformation results whenever anyone pays more attention to an ideal than they do to the details of life, it happens whenever anyone has a natural emotional experience - be it Taoist, Buddhist, Kamikaze pilots, Islamic suicide bombers, or Born Again Christians or Kabbalah Jews.

Thus, the transformational power of religion is no indication of its truth, but rather of a universal human longing for a loving society where we can experience happiness and purpose.”