mills

Contrariwise, Again (Or: Silly Obama!)

romeojulietsierra:

mills:

I can’t wait, although I often wonder and am rarely answered: on what is your non-religious morality based? 

 EMPATHY.

Empathy is a sensation, not a reason; I feel it, and am a happy atheist; you feel it, and we could be neighbors in a lovely secular country. But what about people who don’t feel it?  Not sociopaths, mind you: the many people whose ‘circle of empathy’ (to borrow Carl Sagan’s wonderful phrase) is narrow?

I can’t stay someone’s hand before violence by advising, “Feel empathy, damn you!” I believe in neither damnation nor coercion of feeling. This is the reality of the world; we are not all empathetic.