(August 15, 2016 at 7:39 am)chimp3 Wrote: I recently read Michel Onfray's book :"The Atheist Manifesto". It is a great book and one idea really sticks with me. Onfray asserts that much of secular thought is simply christian without reference to God. He calls for a fresh look at the human condition devoid of all past ties to the theist world view. Morality, philosophy , pleasure divested of the baggage of the tyrant gods.
So , I ask you to pretend we are freshly new without knowledge of monotheism , the Golden Rule , life after death, woman as a lesser creature. What sort of fun , pleasurable , joyful life can we conceive of? What matters to you?
Gastronomy, wine and social gatherings based on these two.
Sex for pleasure with full awareness of the risks attached.
Politics for individual liberty with a concern for the common good.
Social mores such as marriage open to creativity as long as no one gets hurt.
You might want to check into John Rawls' (moral and political philosopher) concept of the "Veil of Ignorance".
The concept, or thought experiment, is to design a society without knowing what your status, abilities, sex, race, tastes etc, will be in the society. So, when selecting the principles for distribution of rights, positions, and resources in the society in which they will live, the veil of ignorance prevents them from knowing who will receive a given distribution of rights, positions, and resources in that society.
If you decide to design a society where some % of the population is held in slavery, not knowing what position you will have in the society, you may will end up as one of he slaves. Obviously, it would make you rethink the idea of having slavery in the society.
Another way of looking at is, having the person who is cutting the cake, choose their piece last. So as not cut yourself the biggest slice.
I am unable to think of a better method to have a fair and equitable society. It seems to me to lead to a moral and just society, by default.
You'd believe if you just opened your heart" is a terrible argument for religion. It's basically saying, "If you bias yourself enough, you can convince yourself that this is true." If religion were true, people wouldn't need faith to believe it -- it would be supported by good evidence.
