Status Updates From The Righteous Mind: Why Goo...

“The ethic of divinity is sometimes incompatible with compassion, egalitarianism, and basic human rights. But at the same time, it offers a valuable perspective from which we can understand and critique some of the ugly parts of secular societies. For example, why are many of us bothered by rampant materialism?”

“I could see beauty in a moral code that emphasized self-control, resistance to temptation, cultivation of one's higher, nobler self, and negation of the self's desires. I could see the dark side of this ethic too: once you allow visceral feelings of disgust to guide your conception of what God wants, then minorities who trigger even a hint of disgust in the majority…can be ostracized and treated cruelly.”

“A dictum of cultural psychology is that "culture and psyche make each other up." In other words, you can't study the mind while ignoring culture… because minds function only once they've been filled out by a particular culture. And you can't study culture while ignoring psychology…because social practices and institutions…are shaped by concepts and desires rooted deep within the human mind…”

“I concluded by warning that the worship of reason…sometimes found in philosophical and scientific circles, is a delusion. It is an example of faith in something that does not exist. I urged instead a more intuitionist approach to morality and moral education, one that is more humble about the abilities of individuals, and more attuned to the contexts and social systems that enable people to think and act well.”