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Europe today has little desire to reproduce itself, fight for itself or even take its own side in an argument.
“In this way of thinking, the fact that women show a lot of skin or that men curse in public is not a sign of cultural decay. On the contrary, it's a sign that they live in a society that is so civilized that they don't have to fear being harassed or assaulted in response.”
― The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined
― The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined
“The doctrine of the sacredness of the soul sounds vaguely uplifting, but in fact is highly malignant. It discounts life on earth as just a temporary phase that people pass through, indeed, an infinitesimal fraction of their existence…the gradual replacement of lives for souls as the locus of moral value was helped along by the ascendency of skepticism and reason”
― The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined
― The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined
“Like Saturn, the Revolution devours its children.”
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“The theory that religion is a force for peace, often heard among the religious right and its allies today, does not fit the facts of history.”
― The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined
― The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined
“The problem with the religious solution [for mysteries such as consciousness and moral judgments] was stated by Mencken when he wrote, "Theology is the effort to explain the unknowable in terms of the not worth knowing." For anyone with a persistent intellectual curiosity, religious explanations are not worth knowing because they pile equally baffling enigmas on top of the original ones. What gave God a mind, free will, knowledge, certainty about right and wrong? How does he infuse them into a universe that seems to run just fine according to physical laws? How does he get ghostly souls to interact with hard matter? And most perplexing of all, if the world unfolds according to a wise and merciful plan, why does it contain so much suffering? As the Yiddish expression says, If God lived on earth, people would break his window.”
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Morten’s 2025 Year in Books
Take a look at Morten’s Year in Books, including some fun facts about their reading.
2 books
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41 friends
2 books
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7 friends
4 books
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13 friends
1 book
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8 friends
140 books
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42 friends
1 book
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15 friends
0 books
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35 friends
11 books
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12 friends
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