mills

My name is Mills Baker; I write about love, culture, art, religion, mental illness, philosophy, memory, politics and the rather random.

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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. 

Notes
  1. adamg reblogged this from jgh
  2. rabsteen reblogged this from mills and added:
    Those are two different problems. The first is your question, why be (non-religiously) moral? RJS answered but did not...
  3. sarahchristine reblogged this from atheistramblings and added:
    original post was just that: Nathan does...through politics
  4. atheistramblings reblogged this from mills
  5. mills reblogged this from romeojulietsierra and added:
    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...
  6. romeojulietsierra reblogged this from mills
  7. mills reblogged this from sarahchristine and added:
    It’s too bad all the uneducated and insane believers of the world, like CS Lewis and Malcom Muggeridge and Mohandas...
  8. sarahchristine posted this