Sign in with Facebook
“While religious tolerance is surely better than religious war, tolerance is not without its problems. Our fear of provoking religious hatred has rendered us unwilling to criticize ideas that are increasingly maladaptive and patently ridiculous.”
― Letter to a Christian Nation
― Letter to a Christian Nation
“If it is true that we cannot possess knowledge of what is good in any absolute sense, it is equally true that we have an ethical duty to decide between what is better and what is worse.”
― Poetics of Imagining: Modern and Post-modern
― Poetics of Imagining: Modern and Post-modern
“A wasteland of embarrassment and social upheaval can be neatly avoided by following a single precept in life: Do not lie.”
― Lying
― Lying
“Whether particular people with the capacity to take an objective point of view actually do take this objective viewpoint into account when they act will depend on the strength of their desire to avoid inconsistency between the way they reason publicly and the way they act.”
― The Expanding Circle: Ethics, Evolution, and Moral Progress
― The Expanding Circle: Ethics, Evolution, and Moral Progress
“I’ve often wondered how the term “'New Atheism”' gained such currency. It is a misnomer. There is nothing new about nonbelief. All of us, without exception, are born knowing nothing of God or gods, and acquire notions of religion solely through interaction with others – or, most often, indoctrination by others, an indoctrination usually commencing well before we can reason. Our primal state is, thus, one of nonbelief. The New Atheists (most prominently Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris and the late Christopher Hitchens) have, in essence, done nothing more than try to bring us back to our senses, to return us to a pure and innate mental clarity.”
―
―
Lesley’s 2025 Year in Books
Take a look at Lesley’s Year in Books, including some fun facts about their reading.
Polls voted on by Lesley
Lists liked by Lesley
