Ben’s Reviews > Letter to a Christian Nation > Status Update
Ben
is starting
Harris says that the historical roots of Nazism and the holocaust were Christian and therefore that religion is at least partly to blame for the holocaust (although it was also rooted in social Darwinist ideas). If this mode of argument is legitimate, how does he respond to Christians who say that modern secular ethics grew, and could only have grown, from the fertile soil of Christian civilisation? What's his point?
— 7 hours, 33 min ago
Like flag
Ben’s Previous Updates
Ben
is starting
Or what about virtue ethics, which since the time of Aristotle has been one of the main ethical strands running through all secular thought? Pain and pleasure matter to virtue ethicists, but they're not the only nor even the most important concerns. Sam's view--Benthamite utilitarianism--didn't become popular among atheists until fairly recently. What's obvious to Sam isn't obvious even to his fellow atheists!
— 7 hours, 46 min ago
Ben
is starting
Sam is a terrible moral philosopher. For an ethicist who's made it his life's work to preach the good news of secular moral realism, he does an absolutely terrible job defending and explaining it. Instead of arguments, he makes assertions signposted with words and phrases like 'clearly' and 'need only be'. He says that secular ethics necessarily concerns itself with pain and pleasure--but what then of deep ecology?
— 7 hours, 52 min ago
