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Sunny Jackson

i want the chance to chat with an atheist : atheism - 0 views

www.reddit.com/...chance_to_chat_with_an_atheist

shared by Sunny Jackson on 26 Jun 13 - No Cached
  • For me it was liberating because finally the Universe made complete sense. There was only matter and energy that followed constant laws...anything 'supernatural' was simply dreamed up by humans. When bad things happened, it was not punishment, just chance. It meant that we could make this world into what we pleased, for good or ill. My choices were on me alone.
  • I'm from the Bible Belt as well. My suspicion is that you actually do know some atheists, but you just don't know it. It's very difficult for atheists to be "out" in the Bible Belt. As to your question, I would first just point out that it's less that I "decided" there was no God, and more that I just "realized" there was no God. And for me at least, it wasn't "liberating" so much as terrifying. I wasn't frightened of God's judgment or anything like that. Having grown up in a fundamentalist Christian household, I was always taught that doubt, in itself, was sinful, so by the time I got to the point of not believing, I had already crossed the line of doubting God (and thus being subject to judgment) long before that. In that sense, when I finally realized there was no God, it actually erased any fear of judgment - there's no God to judge me, thus no fear. Instead, I was terrified of the reaction that I would get from people around me when they found out that I no longer believed in God. My number one concern was my grandparents, whom I am very close with. I knew that it would devastate them, and that was really tough for me. (To this day, I have never really "come out" to them, although my parents told them - something that I honestly think I will always be resentful towards my parents for.) Beyond that, literally everyone around me, friends, family, my whole community really, were Christians, and so there was a deep, deep sense of loneliness when I realized that I had basically become "evil" in all of their minds.
  • It is liberating not to follow any religion because I feel that most of them (the major ones i.e. Judaism, Islam, and Christianity) are oppressive, intolerant and encourage ignorance in one way or another.
  • ...14 more annotations...
  • Being open-minded means being able and willing to question one's own beliefs and consider those of others
  • You don't even have to change your mind, the very fact that you're asking questions and considering the ideas of those with whom you don't necessarily agree means you are open-minded (and is great, if you ask me).
  • It is kind of disheartening to know I have only one life to live and it is relatively short in the scheme of everything, but it makes this life I have more important. Alternately, I think the belief in an afterlife would make life feel cheap. I'm perfectly okay with knowing after I'm dead that will be the complete end of me. All I can hope for is that I "live on" in the memories of those that survive me.
  • The uncertainty of what happens after death is why humans are afraid of it.
  • reality is reality whether I find it unnerving or not. Wanting something to be true has no effect on whether or not it actually is.
  • I would just like you to know that there are places in this world where coming out as gay to one's parents is not viewed as the end of the world.
  • Many people have different "coming-out" experiences with their atheism. If their family is mostly composed of fundamentalist christians or muslims, they're going to have a much harder time than somebody who comes from a less irrational family.
  • There are atheists that are bigots
  • There are bigots in any group you can think of.
  • I think the scale of bigotry is tipped heavily in favor of those that are extremely religious.
  • Christianity has oppressed them, discriminated against them and has caused them all kinds of grief.
  • here is a quote from Steven Weinberg. Christopher Hitchens has also used the same idea in many of his debates: “Religion is an insult to human dignity. With or without it, you'd have good people doing good things and evil people doing bad things, but for good people to do bad things, it takes religion.”
  • I can tell you with almost 100% certainty that people you know personally are atheists.
  • But it comes down to what makes you happy. As an atheist, I believe we only get one shot at this life. I think it is most important that you live a happy and moral life and as long as you do that, believe or disbelieve whatever you want.
Sunny Jackson

Karl Popper - Wikiquote - 0 views

en.wikiquote.org/Karl_Popper

Wiki Quote Book

shared by Sunny Jackson on 03 Jul 13 - Cached
  • The genuine rationalist does not think that he or anyone else is in possession of the truth
  • When I speak of reason or rationalism, all I mean is the conviction that we can learn through criticism of our mistakes and errors, especially through criticism by others, and eventually also through self-criticism.
  • A rationalist is simply someone for whom it is more important to learn than to be proved right; someone who is willing to learn from others — not by simply taking over another's opinions, but by gladly allowing others to criticize his ideas and by gladly criticizing the ideas of others. The emphasis here is on the idea of criticism or, to be more precise, critical discussion.
  • ...35 more annotations...
  • The genuine rationalist does not think that he or anyone else is in possession of the truth; nor does he think that mere criticism as such helps us achieve new ideas. But he does think that, in the sphere of ideas, only critical discussion can help us sort the wheat from the chaff. He is well aware that acceptance or rejection of an idea is never a purely rational matter; but he thinks that only critical discussion can give us the maturity to see an idea from more and more sides and to make a correct judgement of it.
  • True ignorance is not the absence of knowledge, but the refusal to acquire it.
  • The game of science is, in principle, without end.
  • if our civilization is to survive, we must break with the habit of deference to great men. Great men may make great mistakes
  • The open society is one in which men have learned to be to some extent critical of taboos, and to base decisions on the authority of their own intelligence.
  • paradox of freedom is the argument that freedom in the sense of absence of any constraining control must lead to very great restraint, since it makes the bully free to enslave the meek.
  • paradox of tolerance: Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them.
  • counter them by rational argument and keep them in check by public opinion
  • We should therefore claim, in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant.
  • No rational argument will have a rational effect on a man who does not want to adopt a rational attitude.
  • It is our duty to help those who need help; but it cannot be our duty to make others happy
  • There is no history of mankind, there is only an indefinite number of histories of all kinds of aspects of human life.
  • A rationalist, as I use the word, is a man who attempts to reach decisions by argument and perhaps, in certain cases, by compromise, rather than by violence. He is a man who would rather be unsuccessful in convincing another man by argument than successful in crushing him by force
  • Only if we give up our authoritarian attitude in the realm of opinion, only if we establish the attitude of give and take, of readiness to learn from other people, can we hope to control acts of violence inspired by piety and duty.
  • it always takes two to make a discussion reasonable. Each of the parties must be ready to learn from the other. You cannot have a rational discussion with a man who prefers shooting you to being convinced by you.
  • Do not allow your dreams of a beautiful world to lure you away from the claims of men who suffer here and now. Our fellow men have a claim to our help; no generation must be sacrificed for the sake of future generations, for the sake of an ideal of happiness that may never be realised.
  • If we choose freedom, then we must be prepared to perish along with it.
  • we do not choose political freedom because it promises us this or that. We choose it because it makes possible the only dignified form of human coexistence, the only form in which we can be fully responsible for ourselves. Whether we realize its possibilities depends on all kinds of things — and above all on ourselves.
  • The more we learn about the world, and the deeper our learning, the more conscious, specific, and articulate will be our knowledge of what we do not know, our knowledge of our ignorance. For this, indeed, is the main source of our ignorance — the fact that our knowledge can be only finite, while our ignorance must necessarily be infinite.
  • The more we learn about the world, and the deeper our learning, the more conscious, clear, and well-defined will be our knowledge of what we do not know, our knowledge of our ignorance. The main source of our ignorance lies in the fact that our knowledge can only be finite, while our ignorance must necessarily be infinite.
  • I believe it is worthwhile trying to discover more about the world, even if this only teaches us how little we know.
  • What we should do, I suggest, is to give up the idea of ultimate sources of knowledge, and admit that all knowledge is human; that it is mixed with our errors, our prejudices, our dreams, and our hopes; that all we can do is to grope for truth even though it be beyond our reach. We may admit that our groping is often inspired, but we must be on our guard against the belief, however deeply felt, that our inspiration carries any authority, divine or otherwise. If we thus admit that there is no authority beyond the reach of criticism to be found within the whole province of our knowledge, however far it may have penetrated into the unknown, then we can retain, without danger, the idea that truth is beyond human authority. And we must retain it. For without this idea there can be no objective standards of inquiry; no criticism of our conjectures; no groping for the unknown; no quest for knowledge.
  • Science must begin with myths, and with the criticism of myths.
  • I believe it is worthwhile trying to discover more about the world, even if this only teaches us how little we know. It might do us good to remember from time to time that, while differing widely in the various little bits we know, in our infinite ignorance we are all equal.
  • If we thus admit that there is no authority beyond the reach of criticism to be found within the whole province of our knowledge, however far we may have penetrated into the unknown, then we can retain, without risk of dogmatism, the idea that truth itself is beyond all human authority. Indeed, we are not only able to retain this idea, we must retain it. For without it there can be no objective standards of scientific inquiry, no criticism of our conjectured solutions, no groping for the unknown, and no quest for knowledge.
  • Science must begin with myths, and with the criticism of myths.
  • The history of science, like the history of all human ideas, is a history of irresponsible dreams, of obstinacy, and of error. But science is one of the very few human activities — perhaps the only one — in which errors are systematically criticized and fairly often, in time, corrected. This is why we can say that, in science, we often learn from our mistakes, and why we can speak clearly and sensibly about making progress there.
  • There are all kinds of sources of our knowledge; but none has authority
  • more people are killed out of righteous stupidity than out of wickedness.
  • There are all kinds of sources of our knowledge; but none has authority ... The fundamental mistake made by the philosophical theory of the ultimate sources of our knowledge is that it does not distinguish clearly enough between questions of origin and questions of validity.
  • Always remember that it is impossible to speak in such a way that you cannot be misunderstood: there will always be some who misunderstand you.
  • All things living are in search of a better world.
  • Our aim as scientists is objective truth; more truth, more interesting truth, more intelligible truth. We cannot reasonably aim at certainty. Once we realize that human knowledge is fallible, we realize also that we can never be completely certain that we have not made a mistake.
  • There are uncertain truths — even true statements that we may take to be false — but there are no uncertain certainties. Since we can never know anything for sure, it is simply not worth searching for certainty; but it is well worth searching for truth; and we do this chiefly by searching for mistakes, so that we have to correct them.
  • Good tests kill flawed theories; we remain alive to guess again.
Sunny Jackson

10 Questions Every Intelligent Atheist Must Answer « An Exercise in Futility - 0 views

emach.wordpress.com/...ntelligent-atheist-must-answer

Atheists

shared by Sunny Jackson on 22 May 13 - No Cached
  • Are you a moral relativist, or do you believe in absolute morality? 
  • do you believe that cultures, or even individuals, can define their own rules on what is moral and what is not, or do you believe that every action has one unique, absolute, and true moral assessment?
  • the morality as defined by the Old Testament is different than the morality defined by the New Testament
  • ...39 more annotations...
  • who or what determines which actions are moral and which are not? 
  • I do not trust any human being, no matter how smart they are, including myself, to prescribe to me what is moral and what is not
  • Always minimize both actual and potential suffering; always maximize both actual and potential happiness.
  • how and why morality can be universal
  • where it comes from
  • Is your trust in science based on faith or based on science?
  • observed and interpreted the evidence yourself and drew your own conclusions
  • Science has the ability to self correct.
  • Is absence of proof the proof of absence?
  • What does the atheist position offer people?  How has it improved your life?  Why will it improve others’ lives?
  • When you attempt to use logic to conclude facts about religion, are you starting at the conclusion (God is not real), or are you starting at true premises? 
  • If you are starting at true premises, then what are they?  And how are they true? 
  • If all Christians believed that the Bible was entirely allegorical, what would you argue in support of your position?
  • Why is it important to you that everyone is an atheist?
  • Do you believe in extra-terrestrials?
  • I don’t want to hear about how religious people are more “moral” when their god slaughters all the first born male children of egypt.
  • Where does language, art, music, and religion come from?
  • always check your sources
  • if a new piece of evidence arises
  • The human brain. All our mental capacity for reason and creativity come from it.
  • damage to the brain’s structure affects the mind
  • I don’t know, but I do know that it was not the invisible man in the sky, because the invisible man in the sky is not an explanation.
  • Your mind does NOT survive your death.
  • damaged brain, damaged mind
  • Destroyed brain, destroyed mind.
  • The b**** says VERY SPECIFIC things about your god, things that are impossible.
  • I can now see reality from a clear perspective
  • there is no original sin
  • as a society I do think we need less god and less religion
  • you argue that god is real because of X. I take a look at X and it does not conclusively prove that god is real, so I go on being an atheist.
  • all the “proofs” provided by theists have already been refuted
  • I was a religious person when I was younger and I believed it
  • After I read all the arguments against it, I could not believe it anymore.
  • I would still be an atheist.
  • Other people’s beliefs do not affect my beliefs.
  • I can’t speak for every atheist.
  • Keep it to yourself and away from the government and small children.
  • the distances between planets are ENORMOUS
  • YOUR god is supposed to be EVERYWHERE
Sunny Jackson

Hopeful☀Heathens - 0 views

hopefulheathens.tumblr.com

Atheists

shared by Sunny Jackson on 22 May 13 - No Cached
  • When you’re religious, you see the world through a lens. You have an entirely different mindset.
  • You become condescending and feel as though yourself as an entity is worth more than whoever you’re talking to.
  • Every accomplishment of yours is not technically yours
  • ...20 more annotations...
  • You’re not an individual
  • Nothing matters because you’ll be going to heaven eventually, which causes you to miss out on many of the joys in life that you’ll never get back. 
  • When I finally decided that I didn’t believe in God anymore, it freed my mind. It freed me of living in constant guilt
  • It made me appreciate and marvel at nature so much more because there was nothing to attribute its beauty to other than the scientific processes that resulted in it.
  • I had a much more open mind
  • I stopped judging people
  • I am now an individual with my own morals and ethics and philosophy and achievements that I have accomplished through my own means.
  • I’m really happy to be an atheist, and I don’t plan on changing that any time soon.
  •  We adapted in such a way that we can thrive in the world around us.  In such a way that we can observe it and make decisions about what we like about it.  And I think that is part of the reason why beauty even exists.
  • in order to be genuinely happy, you have to find happiness in yourself
  •  If a doctor is telling you a treatment plan, you should probably listen.
  • I know your brain is telling you that there is no hope, but you cannot listen to yourself.
  • there are plenty of things to be hopeful about
  • you need to live in the moment
  • worrying about the future ruins the moment, and the moment is what the future is built on
  •  If you’re not living for happiness in the moment, your future is going to be spent wondering where you went wrong
  • if you are depressed, you cannot listen to your brain
  •  You have to train yourself to be happy, and that can be the biggest challenge there is.
  • I am always here to listen if you are having a rough time, because I know how hard it can be, and I would have given anything to have a shoulder to cry on
  • if I can be that shoulder for you now, I will gladly assume the role.
Sunny Jackson

Religion: What are some great anti-religion quotes? - Quora - 0 views

www.quora.com/...ome-great-anti-religion-quotes

Quora Questions Learning

shared by Sunny Jackson on 07 Jun 13 - No Cached
  • I contend that we are both atheists. I just believe in one fewer god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours.
  • Creationists make it sound like a ‘theory’ is something you dreamt up after being drunk all night
  • Faith means not wanting to know what is true.
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  • The fact that a believer is happier than a skeptic is no more to the point than the fact that a drunken man is happier than a sober one.
  • Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by the rulers as useful.
  • The hands that help are better far than lips that pray.
  • Eskimo:"If I did not know about God and sin, would I go to hell?" Priest: "No, not if you did not know." Eskimo: "Then why did you tell me?"
  • Without religion, we'd have good people doing good things, and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion.
  • To sit alone with my conscience will be judgment enough for me.
  • Religions are all alike - founded upon fables and mythologies.
  • "I don't see any god up here" - Yuri Gagarin - first man in space, while in space.
  • I distrust those people who know so well what God wants them to do because I notice it always coincides with their own desires.
  • Since no one really knows anything about God, those who think they do are just troublemakers.
  • The invisible and the non-existent look very much alike.
  • Religion is excellent stuff for keeping common people quiet
  • Men never do evil so completely and cheerfullly as when they do it from a religious conviction
  • Name me an ethical statement made or an action performed by a believer that could not have been made or performed by a non-believer.
  • What can be asserted without proof can be dismissed without proof.
  • The only position that leaves me with no cognitive dissonance is atheism.
  • Death is certain, replacing both the siren-song of Paradise and the dread of Hell. Life on this earth, with all its mystery and beauty and pain, is then to be lived far more intensely: we stumble and get up, we are sad, confident, insecure, feel loneliness and joy and love. There is nothing more; but I want nothing more.
  • Human decency is not derived from religion. It precedes it.
  • Religion is man-made. Even the men who made it cannot agree on what their prophets or redeemers or gurus actually said or did.
  • If we believe absurdities, we shall commit atrocities.
  • My own view is that this planet is used as a penal colony, lunatic asylum and dumping ground by a superior civilisation, to get rid of the undesirable and unfit. I can’t prove it, but you can’t disprove it either.
  • Among theologians, heretics are those who are not backed with a sufficient array of battalions to render them orthodox.
  • Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day; teach a man to fish and he will eat for a lifetime; give a man religion and he will die praying for a fish.
  • One of the great tragedies of mankind is that morality has been hijacked by religion.
  • A theologian is like a blind man in a dark room searching for a black cat which isn't there - and finding it!
  • Religion is an insult to human dignity.
  • All religions are founded on the fear of the many and the cleverness of the few.
  • Faith, if it is ever right about anything, is right by accident
  • The president of the United States has claimed, on more than one occasion, to be in dialogue with God. If he said that he was talking to God through his hairdryer, this would precipitate a national emergency. I fail to see how the addition of a hairdryer makes the claim more ridiculous or offensive.
  • If there is any kind of supreme being, I told myself, it is up to all of us to become his moral superior.
Sunny Jackson

Quotes on Religion - Carl Sagan - 0 views

atheism.about.com/...bl_q_CSagan.htm

shared by Sunny Jackson on 26 Jun 13 - Cached
  • Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
  • In science it often happens that scientists say, 'You know that's a really good argument; my position is mistaken,' and then they actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn't happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time something like that happened in politics or religion.
  • You can't convince a believer of anything; for their belief is not based on evidence, it's based on a deep seated need to believe.
  • ...10 more annotations...
  • I'm not any more skeptical about your religious beliefs than I am about every new scientific idea I hear about. But in my line of work, they're called hypotheses, not inspiration and not revelation.
  • God for you is where you sweep away all the mysteries of the world, all the challenges to our intelligence. You simply turn your mind off and say God did it.
  • The question [Do you believe in God?] has a peculiar structure. If I say no, do I mean I'm convinced God doesn't exist, or do I mean I'm not convinced he does exist? Those are two very different questions.
  • I would love to believe that when I die I will live again, that some thinking, feeling, remembering part of me will continue. But much as I want to believe that, and despite the ancient and worldwide cultural traditions that assert an afterlife, I know of nothing to suggest that it is more than wishful thinking. The world is so exquisite with so much love and moral depth, that there is no reason to deceive ourselves with pretty stories for which there's little good evidence. Far better it seems to me, in our vulnerability, is to look death in the eye and to be grateful every day for the brief but magnificent opportunity that life provides.
  • Thomas Aquinas claimed to prove that God cannot make another God, or commit suicide, or make a man without a soul, or even make a triangle whose interior angles do not equal 180 degrees. But Bolyai and Lobachevsky were able to accomplish this last feat (on a curved surface) in the nineteenth century, and they were not even approximately gods.
  • We should be teaching our children the scientific method and the reasons for a Bill of Rights. With it comes a certain decency, humility and community spirit.
  • religions are tough. Either they make no contentions which are subject to disproof or they quickly redesign doctrine after disproof. The fact that religions can be so shamelessly dishonest, so contemptuous of the intelligence of their adherents, and still flourish does not speak very well for the tough- mindedness of the believers. But it does indicate, if a demonstration was needed, that near the core of the religious experience is something remarkably resistant to rational inquiry.
  • There are many hypotheses in science which are wrong. That's perfectly all right; they're the aperture to finding out what's right. Science is a self-correcting process. To be accepted, new ideas must survive the most rigorous standards of evidence and scrutiny.
  • If we long to believe that the stars rise and set for us, that we are the reason there is a Universe, does science do us a disservice in deflating our conceits?....For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.
  • Avoidable human misery is more often caused not so much by stupidity as by ignorance, particularly our own ignorance about ourselves.
Sunny Jackson

Bundlr - Humanism 101 - 0 views

bundlr.com/humanism

shared by Sunny Jackson on 24 Jun 13 - No Cached
  • alternative to traditional religion and to authoritarian and other oppressive social attitudes
  • rights of religious and philosophical dissenters
  • Humanism is a life stance
  • ...85 more annotations...
  • Humanism aims at the fullest possible development of every human being
  • Humanism supports democracy and human rights
  • Human Rights Commission
  • Declaration on the Elimination of all Forms of Intolerance and Discrimination Based on Religion or Belief
  • achieved only with the strength of humanity's own moral and intellectual resources
  • rights to individual self-determination, human rights and freedom of belief
  • Humanists are committed to tolerant pluralism and human rights
  • Humanism provides a way of understanding our universe in naturalistic rather than in supernatural terms
  • a life stance rooted in rational thinking
  • Humanism insists that personal liberty must be combined with social responsibility
  • The similarities between the beliefs and values of the different groups - even ‘secular’ and ‘religious’ Humanists - is more fundamental and more important than the different groups
  • humanism Humanism is a democratic and ethical life stance, which affirms that human beings have the right and responsibility to give meaning and shape to their own lives. It stands for the building of a more humane society through an ethic based on human and other natural values in the spirit of reason and free inquiry through human capabilities. It is not theistic, and it does not accept supernatural views of reality. See also the Amsterdam Declaration.
  • Humanism is undogmatic, imposing no creed upon its adherents. It is thus committed to education free from indoctrination.
    • Sunny Jackson
      Sunny Jackson on 24 Jun 13
       
      This means that is subject to change
  • fundamental principles of modern Humanism
  • British Ethical Union
  • Guided by the spirit of human solidarity
  • an alternative to dogmatic religion
  • Humanists promote free inquiry which is the basis of the scientific spirit
  • Humanism ventures to build a world on the idea of the free person responsible to society, and recognises our dependence on and responsibility for the natural world
  • seeks to use science creatively
  • Humanism is rational
  • Amsterdam Declaration
  • Coalition for Freedom of Religion or Belief
  • where people do feel that their beliefs are ‘Humanist’ they should use the word
  • Humanism is also a philosophy of human freedom
  • as a living philosophy, Humanism constantly enriches itself with the progress of knowledge
  • defends human rights and promotes humanist values world-wide
  • UN Human Rights Council
  • humanist A person who adheres to or advocates humanism, a democratic and ethical life stance, which affirms that human beings have the right and responsibility to give meaning and shape to their own lives.
  • Humanism is ethical. It affirms the worth, dignity and autonomy of the individual and the right of every human being to the greatest possible freedom compatible with the rights of others.
  • Human Rights Council
  • Humanists believe that the solutions to the world's problems lie in human thought and action
  • Humanism recognises that reliable knowledge of the world and ourselves arises through a continuing process. of observation, evaluation and revision.
  • ethics grounded in human values
  • Humanists aim for a social order in which individual freedom and dignity, social justice, fundamental rights and the rule of civilised law are protected
  • the outcome of a long tradition of free thought
  • human beings have the right and responsibility to give meaning and shape to their own lives
  • Humanism is a democratic and ethical life stance
  • Humanism advocates the application of the methods of science and free inquiry to the problems of human welfare
  • The Humanist movement has its symbol, the happy human, introduced by the BHA in 1965, and widely adopted both nationally and internationally
  • the official defining statement of World Humanism
  • human rights Universal rights to which every person is entitled
  • Commission on Human Rights
  • rationalist
  • humanist
  • rationalism The view that knowledge is aquired through reason, without the aid of the senses. Perhaps the best example of such knowledge would be mathematical knowledge, but rationalists typically argue that many other important truths can also be grasped by reason.
  • atheist
  • Humanists have a duty of care to all of humanity including future generations.
  • fundamentals of modern Humanism
  • Humanists reject absolute authorities and revealed wisdoms
  • freethought An intellectual and cultural movement. A freethinker is a religious unbeliever who forms his or her judgments about religion using reason rather than relying on tradition, authority, faith, or established belief.
  • freethinking
  • rationalist
  • justified by a moral standard that stands above the laws of any individual nation
  • European Humanist Federation
  • secularism A neutral attitude, especially of the State, local government and public services, in matters relating to religion; non-religious rather than anti-religious.
  • Humanists continuously explore ways of extending responsible freedom and happiness in our increasingly complex world
  • secularist
  • skeptic
  • laique
  • ethical cultural
  • freethought
  • rationalist
  • Humanists believe that morality is an intrinsic part of human nature based on understanding and a concern for others, needing no external sanction.
  • Humanists consider human experience to be the only source of knowledge and ethics
  • It stands for the building of a more humane society through an ethic based on human and other natural values in the spirit of reason and free inquiry through human capabilities
  • the application of science and technology must be tempered by human values
  • International Humanist Award
  • Humanism values artistic creativity and imagination and recognises the transforming power of art. Humanism affirms the importance of literature, music, and the visual and performing arts for personal development and fulfilment.
  • Humanists believe in intellectual integrity, and do not allow custom to replace conscience
  • Science gives us the means but human values must propose the ends
  • mandated to promote and protect the enjoyment and full realization, by all people, of all rights
  • Universal Declaration of Human Rights
  • skeptic A philosophical position in which people choose to critically examine whether the knowledge and perceptions that they have are actually true, and whether or not one can ever be said to have absolutely true knowledge
  • rationalist Rationalists believe that reason alone is sufficient to gain knowledge of the world.
  • Rationalists started with Plato, and include Descartes, Leibniz and Spinoza.
  • The mandate includes preventing human rights violations, securing respect for all human rights and promoting international cooperation to protect human rights.
  • Humanism is a lifestance aiming at the maximum possible fulfilment through the cultivation of ethical and creative living and offers an ethical and rational means of addressing the challenges of our times
  • buddhiwadi
  • rationalism
  • Humanism can be a way of life for everyone everywhere
  • utilising free inquiry, the power of science and creative imagination for the furtherance of peace and in the service of compassion
  • we have the means to solve the problems that confront us all
  • We have a world to change. We need your help to change it!
  • World Congress of Humanists
Sunny Jackson

Defending The Faith, And Morality, Of NonBelievers : NPR - 0 views

www.npr.org/...transcript.php

Humanism

shared by Sunny Jackson on 01 Jun 13 - Cached
  • December 23, 2009
  • Greg Epstein
  • the Humanist community as a place for family, memory, ethical values and the uplifting of the human spirit can come together with intellectual honesty and without a god
  • ...16 more annotations...
  • a Humanist holiday called Human Light
  • Humanism means taking charge of the often lousy world around us and working to shape it into a better place
  • a sense of meaning in life that is not bound by or determined by a belief in a higher power that assigns us. We acknowledge as Humanists that there is no one single overarching purpose or meaning to our lives that's given to us, that's handed to us by the universe.
  • we therefore have not just the freedom but also the responsibility to choose a meaning for our own lives and to struggle to pursue it.
  • what is the meaning of our life? What is the purpose of our life if not, you know, avoiding divine punishment or achieving divine reward? And he called it dignity.
  • we build our lives and the meaning of our lives based on the relationships, the connections that we have with other people in the here and now.
  • check in with ourselves and say - how are we doing, how am I doing, how am I living, how am I handling my relationships with the people that I care most about, how am I handling my relationship with this Earth that I live on that I can't do without?
  • we can do better than simply rely only on the traditional sources that have this message that we no longer believe in
  • why do we need to use the word God when we have the perfectly good word love or the universe
  • what I was really wanting was not, you know, the presence of a mystery but the presence of people to love me and care for me
  • there is no justification for the tragedies that happen
  • There's nothing that one could say that would say, oh, this makes it better.
  • the only thing that we can say is that we care, we love, we acknowledge.
  • Death is real. It's final. It takes tremendous, tremendous courage to cope with. And we have to love one another because that's what we get. We get this world, this one shot.
  • I don't think there's anything wrong with celebrating the fact that we have this culture and this history in common as Americans and as people of the world. The question is what do we believe about it and how do we believe, you know, we should go about trying to be good people. And that's the discretion that we have to have, but I think we can celebrate in many ways together.
  • Good Without God
Sunny Jackson

Carl Sagan - Wikiquote - 0 views

en.wikiquote.org/Carl_Sagan

Wiki Quote Book

shared by Sunny Jackson on 03 Jul 13 - Cached
  • Imagination will often carry us to worlds that never were. But without it we go nowhere.
  • If you are only skeptical, then no new ideas make it through to you … On the other hand, if you are open to the point of gullibility and have not an ounce of skeptical sense in you, then you cannot distinguish the useful ideas from the worthless ones.
  • The truth may be puzzling. It may take some work to grapple with. It may be counterintuitive. It may contradict deeply held prejudices. It may not be consonant with what we desperately want to be true. But our preferences do not determine what's true. We have a method, and that method helps us to reach not absolute truth, only asymptotic approaches to the truth — never there, just closer and closer, always finding vast new oceans of undiscovered possibilities. Cleverly designed experiments are the key.
  • ...49 more annotations...
  • We live in a society absolutely dependent on science and technology and yet have cleverly arranged things so that almost no one understands science and technology. That's a clear prescription for disaster.
  • I would love to believe that when I die I will live again, that some thinking, feeling, remembering part of me will continue. But much as I want to believe that, and despite the ancient and worldwide cultural traditions that assert an afterlife, I know of nothing to suggest that it is more than wishful thinking. The world is so exquisite with so much love and moral depth, that there is no reason to deceive ourselves with pretty stories for which there's little good evidence. Far better it seems to me, in our vulnerability, is to look death in the eye and to be grateful every day for the brief but magnificent opportunity that life provides.
  • If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe.
  • Who is more humble? The scientist who looks at the universe with an open mind and accepts whatever it has to teach us, or somebody who says everything in this book must be considered the literal truth and never mind the fallibility of all the human beings involved?
  • In science it often happens that scientists say, "You know that's a really good argument; my position is mistaken," and then they would actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn't happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time something like that happened in politics or religion.
  • Imagination will often carry us to worlds that never were. But without it we go nowhere.
  • We are like butterflies who flutter for a day and think it's forever.
  • It is all a matter of time scale. An event that would be unthinkable in a hundred years may be inevitable in a hundred million.
  • The suppression of uncomfortable ideas may be common in religion and politics, but it is not the path to knowledge; it has no place in the endeavor of science.
  • With insufficient data it is easy to go wrong.
  • Human beings have a demonstrated talent for self-deception when their emotions are stirred.
  • For a long time the human instinct to understand was thwarted by facile religious explanations.
  • They (i. e., the Pythagoreans) did not advocate the free confrontation of conflicting points of view. Instead, like all orthodox religions, they practised a rigidity that prevented them from correcting their errors.
  • If we long for our planet to be important, there is something we can do about it. We make our world significant by the courage of our questions and by the depth of our answers.
  • We embarked on our journey to the stars with a question first framed in the childhood of our species and in each generation asked anew with undiminished wonder: What are the stars? Exploration is in our nature. We began as wanderers, and we are wanderers still. We have lingered long enough on the shores of the cosmic ocean. We are ready at last to set sail for the stars.
  • If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe.
  • A googolplex is precisely as far from infinity as is the number 1... no matter what number you have in mind, infinity is larger still.
  • The universe seems neither benign nor hostile, merely indifferent to the concerns of such puny creatures as we are.
  • The library connects us with the insights and knowledge, painfully extracted from Nature, of the greatest minds that ever were, with the best teachers, drawn from the entire planet and from all of our history, to instruct us without tiring, and to inspire us to make our own contribution to the collective knowledge of the human species.
  • Books permit us to voyage through time, to tap the wisdom of our ancestors.
  • I think the health of our civilization, the depth of our awareness about the underpinnings of our culture and our concern for the future can all be tested by how well we support our libraries.
  • Other things being equal, it is better to be smart than to be stupid.
  • As the ancient myth makers knew, we are children equally of the earth and the sky.
  • History is full of people who out of fear or ignorance or the lust for power have destroyed treasures of immeasurable value which truly belong to all of us. We must not let it happen again
  • Those afraid of the universe as it really is, those who pretend to nonexistent knowledge and envision a Cosmos centered on human beings will prefer the fleeting comforts of superstition. They avoid rather than confront the world. But those with the courage to explore the weave and structure of the Cosmos, even where it differs profoundly from their wishes and prejudices, will penetrate its deepest mysteries.
  • there are no sacred truths; all assumptions must be critically examined
  • We must understand the Cosmos as it is and not confuse how it is with how we wish it to be.
  • whatever is inconsistent with the facts must be discarded or revised.
  • Human history can be viewed as a slowly dawning awareness that we are members of a larger group. Initially our loyalties were to ourselves and our immediate family, next, to bands of wandering hunter-gatherers, then to tribes, small settlements, city-states, nations. We have broadened the circle of those we love. We have now organized what are modestly described as super-powers, which include groups of people from divergent ethnic and cultural backgrounds working in some sense together — surely a humanizing and character building experience. If we are to survive, our loyalties must be broadened further, to include the whole human community, the entire planet Earth.
  • Human history can be viewed as a slowly dawning awareness that we are members of a larger group.
  • the choice, as H. G. Wells once said in a different context, is clearly the universe or nothing.
  • Every one of us is, in the cosmic perspective, precious. If a human disagrees with you, let him live. In a hundred billion galaxies, you will not find another.
  • it is undesirable to believe a proposition when there is no ground whatever for supposing it true.
  • For small creatures such as we the vastness is bearable only through love.
  • Do we, holding that the gods exist, deceive ourselves with insubstantial dreams and lies, while random careless chance and change alone control the world?
  • God for you is where you sweep away all the mysteries of the world, all the challenges to our intelligence. You simply turn your mind off and say God did it.
  • Humans are very good at dreaming
  • For small creatures such as we the vastness is bearable only through love.
  • You can’t convince a believer of anything; for their belief is not based on evidence, it’s based on a deep seated need to believe.
  • We wish to pursue the truth no matter where it leads. But to find the truth, we need imagination and skepticism both.
  • We're made of star-stuff.
  • The cosmos is full beyond measure of elegant truths; of exquisite interrelationships; of the awesome machinery of nature.
  • We wish to pursue the truth no matter where it leads. But to find the truth, we need imagination and skepticism both. We will not be afraid to speculate, but we will be careful to distinguish speculation from fact. The cosmos is full beyond measure of elegant truths; of exquisite interrelationships; of the awesome machinery of nature.
  • We on Earth have just awakened to the great oceans of space and time from which we have emerged. We are the legacy of 15 billion years of cosmic evolution. We have a choice: We can enhance life and come to know the universe that made us, or we can squander our 15 billion-year heritage in meaningless self-destruction. What happens in the first second of the next cosmic year depends on what we do, here and now, with our intelligence and our knowledge of the cosmos.
  • The sky calls to us. If we do not destroy ourselves, we will one day venture to the stars.
  • War is murder writ large.
  • By exploring other worlds we safeguard this one. By itself, I think this fact more than justifies the money our species has spent in sending ships to other worlds. It is our fate to live during one of the most perilous and, at the same time, one of the most hopeful chapters in human history.
  • Exactly the same technology can be used for good and for evil.
  • You can use your technology to destroy yourselves or to carry you to the planets and the stars. It's up to you.
Sunny Jackson

Why blame God for Godlessness? by *Verixas92 on deviantART - 0 views

verixas92.deviantart.com/...-God-for-Godlessness-345371926

Reason(s) and Belief Dislike

shared by Sunny Jackson on 01 Jun 13 - No Cached
  • why try to blame God when evil occurs?
  • If God didn't help because people "reject" him, then how come terrible things happen to people who don't?
  • I didn't know that God was so petty.
  • ...20 more annotations...
  • if I'm to believe that God has a plan for all of us, as I've been told several times in the past, especially in times of strife, then technically it's still God. [If God exists]
  • Instead of punishing, a loving god might have chosen to... reveal himself a little more?
  • Or maybe he might have made it so that evil didn't exist in the first place?
  • If God was all-loving, all-knowing, and all-powerful, surely he could have found a way to prevent that tragedy, if only to avoid the suffering
  • if such an 'imperfect' being as a human can think of some way to avoid those things from happening, surely God would be able to find a much better way.
  • Instead, we're left with this petty creature that supposedly cares so much about us that he's willing to let slide the brutal murders of dozens of children, just to teach us a lesson about faith.
  • Science adjusts its views based on what's observed. Faith is the denial of observation so that belief can be preserved
  • It kinda makes God sound like a petulant child.
  • I'm fine with God not helping, considering he's sort of... not there. Or at the very least, malevolent enough to stand by even while people feverishly pray and go unanswered, who lets horrible things happen and does nothing. If he's really so petty to abandon suffering people because people won't worship him, then I would rather not have him here.
  • We aren't trying to stomp out Christianity, we're asking for evidence. Until we get that, there is no reason to believe in your claim.
  • widespread delusion is pretty hard to get going with people already past the age of reason
  • So we have an omnipotent, omniscient and omnibenevolent god willing to kill people to get them to listen, but he can't just reveal himself to prove his own existence? What does that say about him?
  • faith [belief without evidence, not without seeing] is not a virtue
  • Trust and other such things can be considered such things; piety is trust in something that may or may not exist.
  • There is an enormous difference between a video game and real life: you can leave a video game. You can choose not to play a video game.
  • Does God go against our free will by forcing us into a world like this?
  • Morality doesn't originate from any one religion, no more than it comes from a belief in benevolent fairies.
  • I have yet to hear an moral action or deed that a believer can commit that cannot be matched or even surpassed by a non-believer.
  • There isn't much of a difference between starving someone to death and letting someone starve to death. Either way, you must take responsibility for your action, and you end up with the same result.
  • If God has power over the death of people, he is accountable for that-no all-loving deity would allow them to die.
Sunny Jackson

A brief overview of homosexuality and bisexuality - 0 views

www.religioustolerance.org/hom_intro.htm

shared by Sunny Jackson on 22 May 13 - No Cached
  • "Because families are defined by love not gender. Because hatred is not a family value. Because equal rights are not special rights."
  • "Homosexuality is assuredly no advantage, but it is nothing to be ashamed of, no vice, no degradation, it cannot be classified as an illness." Sigmund Freud (1935)
  • "The fact is that more people have been slaughtered in the name of religion than for any other single reason. That, THAT my friends, is true perversion."   Harvey Milk
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  • "Whatever religious people may say about their love of God or the mandates of their religion, when their behavior toward others is violent and destructive, when it causes suffering among their neighbors, you can be sure the religion has been corrupted and reform is desperately needed." Charles Kimball
  • "When religion sanctifies hatred, it lends to that hatred a special ferocity. Normal moral inhibitors are erased." Johannes Cardinal Wildebrands
  • "You can safely assume that you've created God in your own image, when it  turns out that God hates all the same people you do." Anne Lamott
  • homosexuality is morally neutral, is determined by some combination of genetics and environmental factors before school age, is a sexual orientation, is defined by ones sexual attraction to persons of the same sex, and is very rarely if ever changeable during adulthood
  • "It always seemed to me a bit pointless to disapprove of homosexuality. It's like disapproving of rain."  Francis Maude
  • Abigail Van Buren
  • the same equal rights and protections enjoyed by other groups
  • equal treatment and protections
  • others consider homosexual orientation to be a morally neutral trait, like left handedness. It is normal, natural, and unchosen
  • Homosexuality is measurable and thus is a legitimate area for human sexuality researchers to study. They have generally concluded that adult human sexuality comes in three natural, normal, unchosen, and almost always unchangeable orientations: Heterosexuality: Most people are sexually attracted only to members of the opposite gender. Homosexuality: A small minority of adults are attracted only to members of the same gender. Bisexuality: A smaller minority are attracted to both men and women, but not necessarily to the same degree.
  • justice, love and acceptance
  • If the individual decided to restrict his/her sexual relationship(s) with persons of the opposite sex, they would be considered an ex-gay by most conservatives and a bisexual by most liberals.
  • It is action of oppression and discrimination which harm people.
Sunny Jackson

Censorship - Wikiquote - 0 views

en.wikiquote.org/Censorship

Wiki Quote Book

shared by Sunny Jackson on 03 Jul 13 - No Cached
  • Let children read whatever they want and then talk about it with them. If parents and kids can talk together, we won't have as much censorship because we won't have as much fear. Judy Blume
  • It's not just the books under fire now that worry me. It is the books that will never be written. The books that will never be read. And all due to the fear of censorship. As always, young readers will be the real losers. Judy Blume
  • Only six weeks ago, I discovered that, over the years, some cubby-hole editors at Ballantine Books, fearful of contaminating the young, had, bit by bit, censored some 75 separate sections from the novel. Students, reading the novel which, after all, deals with the censorship and book-burning in the future, wrote to tell me of this exquisite irony. Judy-Lynn Del Rey, one of the new Ballantine editors, is having the entire book reset and republished this summer with all the damns and hells back in place. Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451, Coda (1979 edition)
  • ...13 more annotations...
  • Don't join the book burners. Don't think you are going to conceal thoughts by concealing evidence that they ever existed. Dwight D. Eisenhower
  • It is this very conflict of spiritual and moral ideas which gives the free countries a great part of their strength. You see these dictators on their pedestals, surrounded by the bayonets of their soldiers and the truncheons of their police. On all sides they are guarded by masses of armed men, cannons, aeroplanes, fortifications, and the like — they boast and vaunt themselves before the world, yet in their hearts there is unspoken fear. They are afraid of words and thoughts; words spoken abroad, thoughts stirring at home — all the more powerful because forbidden — terrify them. A little mouse of thought appears in the room, and even the mightiest potentates are thrown into panic. They make frantic efforts to bar our thoughts and words; they are afraid of the workings of the human mind. Cannons, airplanes, they can manufacture in large quantities; but how are they to quell the natural promptings of human nature, which after all these centuries of trial and progress has inherited a whole armoury of potent and indestructible knowledge? Winston Churchill
  • If we don't believe in freedom of expression for people we despise, we don't believe in it at all. Noam Chomsky
  • Where they have burned books, they will end in burning human beings. Heinrich Heine
  • Books won't stay banned. They won't burn. Ideas won't go to jail. In the long run of history, the censor and the inquisitor have always lost. The only sure way against bad ideas is better ideas. The source of better ideas is freedom. The surest path to wisdom is liberal education. Alfred Whitney Griswold
  • The Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it. John Gilmore
  • Our liberty depends on the freedom of the press, and that cannot be limited without being lost. Thomas Jefferson
  • Assassination is the extreme form of censorship. George Bernard Shaw
  • All censorships exist to prevent anyone from challenging current conceptions and existing institutions. All progress is initiated by challenging current conceptions, and executed by supplanting existing institutions. Consequently the first condition of progress is the removal of censorship. George Bernard Shaw
  • Censorship reflects a society's lack of confidence in itself. It is a hallmark of an authoritarian regime. Long ago those who wrote our First Amendment charted a different course. They believed a society can be truly strong only when it is truly free. In the realm of expression they put their faith, for better or for worse, in the enlightened choice of the people, free from the interference of a policeman's intrusive thumb or a judge's heavy hand. So it is that the Constitution protects coarse expression as well as refined, and vulgarity no less than elegance. Potter Stewart
  • There is no such thing as a moral book or an immoral book. Books are well written or badly written. That is all. Oscar Wilde
  • The books that the world calls immoral are the books that show the world its own shame. Oscar Wilde
  • An idea that is not dangerous is unworthy of being called an idea at all. Oscar Wilde
Sunny Jackson

Will the Great Corrupters Please Rise | The Humanist - 0 views

thehumanist.org/...e-great-corrupters-please-rise

Humanism

shared by Sunny Jackson on 22 May 13 - No Cached
  • In every human society people hold beliefs and perform actions. So they must come by these beliefs in some way, and they must have some way of deciding how to act.
  • Why should I do that?
  • What do you mean by that term?
  • ...7 more annotations...
  • Why should I believe this?
  • Where is your evidence?
  • What is your argument?
  • such questions are always in order.
  • The Socratic philosopher embodies the critical spirit, and that is one way he or she corrupts the youth: by teaching them to think for themselves.
  • By demanding that we justify our claims, it forces us to become self-conscious about our own framework of beliefs and values in the act of subjecting these to criticism.
  • these change over time
Sunny Jackson

Aristotle - Wikiquote - 0 views

en.wikiquote.org/Aristotle

Wiki Quote Book

shared by Sunny Jackson on 03 Jul 13 - Cached
  • He who has overcome his fears will truly be free.
  • Misfortune shows those who are not really friends.
  • Time crumbles things; everything grows old under the power of Time and is forgotten through the lapse of Time.
  • ...25 more annotations...
  • Even when laws have been written down, they ought not always to remain unaltered.
  • A tyrant must put on the appearance of uncommon devotion to religion. Subjects are less apprehensive of illegal treatment from a ruler whom they consider god-fearing and pious. On the other hand, they do less easily move against him, believing that he has the gods on his side.
  • The basis of a democratic state is liberty.
  • Happiness, whether consisting in pleasure or virtue, or both, is more often found with those who are highly cultivated in their minds and in their character, and have only a moderate share of external goods, than among those who possess external goods to a useless extent but are deficient in higher qualities.
  • All men by nature desire to know.
  • All men by nature desire knowledge.
  • The truly good and wise man will bear all kinds of fortune in a seemly way, and will always act in the noblest manner that the circumstances allow.
  • May not we then confidently pronounce that man happy who realizes complete goodness in action, and is adequately furnished with external goods?
  • For the things we have to learn before we can do, we learn by doing.
  • I have gained this by philosophy: that I do without being commanded what others do only from fear of the law.
  • Without friends no one would choose to live, though he had all other goods.
  • It is well said, then, that it is by doing just acts that the just man is produced
  • To be conscious that we are perceiving or thinking is to be conscious of our own existence.
  • With regard to excellence, it is not enough to know, but we must try to have and use it.
  • Poetry is finer and more philosophical than history; for poetry expresses the universal, and history only the particular.
  • Poetry demands a man with a special gift for it, or else one with a touch of madness in him.
  • Homer has taught all other poets the art of telling lies skillfully.
  • a convincing impossibility is preferable to an unconvincing possibility.
  • Education is the best provision for old age.
  • Hope is a waking dream.
  • Life in the true sense is perceiving or thinking.
  • Liars when they speak the truth are not believed.
  • Friendship is a single soul dwelling in two bodies.
  • Love is composed of a single soul inhabiting two bodies.
  • What is life without love? Love is like the sun; without light, there's no life
Sunny Jackson

Clarkesworld Magazine - Science Fiction and Fantasy : Another Word: Reading and Writing... - 0 views

clarkesworldmagazine.com/another_word_02_13

Fiction Stories Clarkesworld Magazine

shared by Sunny Jackson on 09 Jan 14 - No Cached
  • We learn about some of the most important things in our lives vicariously through fiction.
  • I’ve known a lot of people for whom books have been profoundly important
  • Fiction isn’t powerless. And if the author just ignores the politics of their work, that doesn’t mean the book becomes apolitical. It just means they wrote their own defaults.
  • ...12 more annotations...
  • Think Black people are lazy and violent, but your work isn’t about that? I’ll bet you dollars to donuts it’s in there.
  • Reading is the same way.
  • He’s trying to be a better man and to create (in a small way) a better world by the way he chooses what he reads.
  • And it was a moral statement, even if it was mostly a private one.
  • How we read and how we write will always have moral and political implications. The only choice we’ve got is whether they’re unconscious or considered.
  • beautiful and damning distinction
  • best self
  • authentic self
  • Wanting to live in a better world is great. Working for a better world is great. It only becomes a vice when it keeps us from loving the world we’re in—warts and all. My experience is that life is full of strong women and weak ones. Venal ones. Active ones. Passive ones. Complicated ones. Unhealthy ones. Men are just as varied and complicated and screwed-up. Their lives aren’t our societal best self, but they’re who we are
  • Treating moral issues as if they were craft is asking for a literature of beautiful sermons.
  • reading projects that pull you out into different kinds of authors and stories are wonderful so long as the moral aspects of your reading list don’t become more important than the joy you take in reading
  • I would never argue that the power of story—and it’s a real power—comes without responsibility. But I would say that responsibility is both to the better world to which we aspire and also the broken, compromised one we live in now.
Sunny Jackson

Should I Raise My Kids As Atheists? Atheism and Children - 0 views

atheism.about.com/...kids_raise.htm

shared by Sunny Jackson on 26 Jun 13 - No Cached
  • If you raise your children to be skeptical as a general rule, it won't be necessary to go out of your way to have them treat religious claims skeptically — they should end up doing that on their own anyway.
  • Skepticism and critical thinking are attitudes which must be cultivated across a broad range of topics
  • are you more interested in your children simply not being theists or religious, or are you more interested in your children not being the sort who accept claims and beliefs uncritically or who don't think for themselves?
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