Morality with and without a god.

The most common arguments that are often presented to make the claim that you can’t be truly good without a religious belief are as follows: Divine Command: Belief has absolute, god given rules. If you reject god, then you are simply making up your own ethical standard and so your morality would be relative and … Read more

“secularisation” … an evil word for some

Do you speak Carey? When hearing Carey or some other foreign language, does it require some translation to render it into plain English? Oh wait, perhaps you are not familiar with Carey, well it is a rather specialized dialect of English that is only spoken by one … specifically Lord Carey, the former archbishop of … Read more

The rise of secular Islam – Muslims who identify as non-religious

Damian Thompson, Editor of Telegraph Blogs, raises the issue of a rather worrying development, and points out that radical Islamism appear to be fanning the flames of intolerance… More than half the Jews in Iraq have been driven out of the country; those that remain are forced to pay a fine or leave their homes. … Read more

Top 5 Non-Religious Books on Living a Good Life

There is a prevailing, and fairly common belief, that we need religion to live a truly ethical and moral life, and that a life without a god (pick any, they all claim it), leads you down the road to immorality. It is pure nonsense of course, and tempting as it might be to explain why, my immediate motivation for this post is not to go there, but rather to highlight a rather interesting list of secular books on the topic of living a good, and yet completely godless, life.

Well-known British philosophy professor, A.C. Grayling, has had a lifetime ambition to distill into one volume the very best secular thoughts, and so after many decades of work, he finally completed it, (if curious, you can click here for more details on his new publication “The Good Book”). Anyway, my point is not to point you at that specific book, but since I’m on the topic, do check it out. Instead I want to make the observation that he spent a heck of a long time  plodding through thousands of texts to complete his book, so he has now got specific recommendations – a Top-5 list of books “on how to live a satisfying and morally good life.” …

I was quite surprised at a couple of them.

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UK, an evolving post-christian secular nation

Social researchers have been looking into the attitudes of the growing numbers of non-religious young Britons. Its an important question to ask because if the recent polls are correct, then the majority of the population in the UK are not religious. Let me spell that out for you … if you take every possible form of religious belief, Christian, Jew, Muslim, Hindu and lots more, add up all the followers in the population, you find that together they are a minority.

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UK: All religions combined = a minority

Its official … the majority of the UK population is non religious and secular. If you take the folks who have any religious belief and combine then up … you still have a minority of the population … there is an article in the Guardian today about this … apparently in 1985 (only 25 years … Read more