Scrapbook 'Freethinking'

Scrapbook: "Freethinking"

My point is: if you want to derive ethics and morals from reality, from human solidarity, from actual knowledge of where we stand in relation to the universe, it may not be too depressing to realize that we are, in fact, alone in this. We can't pray for supernatural aid. We can't invoke what we don't know. We're arrogant and vain when we do it. It tempts us into saying we're better than people of other faiths or other religions. And if we understood that we are all stranded on a rather difficult shore, born into a losing struggle with every day of our lives being more and more subtracted from less and less, the stoicism of that conclusion might make us turn towards each other in a more interested and definite way, would demonstrate more integrity, and would free us from the great retardant of human civilization: the realm of illusion.

-Christopher Hitchens

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