ZeV > Recent Status Updates

"If you want your religion, ideology, or worldview to lead the world, my first question to you is: "What was the biggest mistake your religion, ideology, or worldview committed? What did it get wrong?" If you cannot come up with something serious, I for one would not trust you."

"Every religion, ideology, and creed has its shadow, and no matter which creed you follow you should acknowledge your shadow and avoid the naive reassurance that "it cannot happen to us." Secular science has at least one big advantage over most traditional religions--namely, that it is not inherently terrified of its shadow, and it is in principle willing to admit its mistakes and blind spots."

"not all dogmas are equally harmful. ... This is particularly true of the doctrine of human rights. ... Though it isn't true that humans have a natural right to life or liberty, belief in this story ... contributed to the happiness and welfare of humanity probably more than any other doctrine in history."

"not all dogmas are equally harmful. ... This is particularly true of the doctrine of human rights. ... Though it isn't true that humans have a natural right to life or liberty, belief in this story ... contributed to the happiness and welfare of humanity probably more than any other doctrine in history."

"When confronted by the mess of brutal dictatorships and failed states, liberals often put their unquestioning faith in the awesome ritual of general elections. ... If you try to question the alleged wisdom of general elections, you won't be sent to the gulag, but you are likely to get a very cold shower of dogmatic abuse."

"Since it is difficult to send soldiers into battle or impose radical economic reforms in the name of doubtful conjectures, secular movements repeatedly mutate into dogmatic creeds."

"the main problem with secularism is ... (that) it probably sets the ethical bar too high. Most people just cannot live up to such a demanding code, and large societies cannot be run on the basis of the open-ended quest for truth and compassion."

"modern history has demonstrated that a society of courageous people willing to admit ignorance and raise difficult questions is usually not just more prosperous but also more peaceful than societies in which everyone must unquestioningly accept a single answer."

"The other chief commitment of secular people is to compassion. Secular ethics relies not on obeying the edicts of this or that god, but rather on a deep appreciation of suffering."

"secularists do not sanctify any group, person, or book as if it and it alone has sole custody of the truth. Instead, secular people sanctify the truth wherever it may reveal itself"

(secular ideal) "The most important secular commitment is to the truth, which is based on observation and evidence rather than on mere faith. Secularists strive not to confuse truth with belief. If you have a very strong belief in some story, that may tell us a lot of interesting things about your psychology, about your childhood, and about your brain structure--but it does not prove that the story is true."

"though gods can inspire us to act compassionately, religious faith is not a necessary condition for moral behavior. The idea that we need a supernatural being to make us act morally assumes that there is something unnatural about morality. But why? Morality of some kind is natural. All social mammals from chimpanzees to rats have ethical codes that limit behavior like theft and murder."

"Many religions praise the value of humility but then imagine themselves to be the most important thing in the universe. They mix calls for personal meekness with blatant collective arrogance. Humans of all creeds would do well to take humility more seriously."

"Monotheism did little to improve the moral standards of humans. ... What monotheism undoubtedly did was to make many people far more intolerant than before, thereby contributing to the spread of religious persecutions and holy wars."

"And we must again emphasize that despite the enormous impact of Christianity, this was definitely not the first time a human preached a universal ethic. The Bible is far from being the exclusive font of human morality (and luckily so, given the many racist, misogynist, and homophobic attitudes it contains)."

"It was only the Christians who selected some choice morsels of the Jewish moral code, turned them into universal commandments, and spread them throughout the world. Indeed, Christianity split from Judaism precisely on this account."

(Oscar in Ivory Coast) "We can only speculate what drove the gruff old leader to take care of the orphaned toddler, but apparently ape leaders developed the tendency to help the poor, the needy, and the fatherless millions of years before the Bible instructed ..."

"Scientists nowadays point out that morality in fact has deep evolutionary roots predating the appearance of humankind by millions of years. All social mammals, such as wolves, dophins, and monkeys, have ethical codes, adapted by evolution to promote group cooperation."

"it is exceedingly dangerous to assume that a new world war is inevitable. That would be a self-fulfilling prophecy. Once countries assume that war is inevitable, they beef up their armies, embark on spiraling arms races, refuse to compromise in any conflict, and suspect that goodwill gestures are just traps. That guarantees the eruption of war."

"Human stupidity is one of the most important forces in history, yet we often trend to discount it. Politicians, generals, and scholars treat the world as a great chess game, where every move follows careful rational calculation. This is correct up to a point. ... The problem is that the world is far more complicated than a chessboard, and human rationality is not up to the task of really understanding it."

"In the great age of conquerors warfare was a low-damage, high-profit affair. ... Nuclear weapons and cyberwarfare, by contrast, are high-damage, low-profit technologies.

"Today the main economic assets consist of technical and institutional knowledge rather than wheat fields, gold mines, or even oil fields, and you just cannot conquer knowledge through war.

"Why is it so difficult for major powers to wage successful wars in the twenty-first century? One reason is the change in the nature of the economy. In the past, economic assets were mostly material; therefore, it was relatively straightforward to enrich yourself by conquest. ... Yet in the twenty-first century only puny profits can be made that way."

"there are several key differences between 2018 and 1914. In particular, in 1914 war had great appeal to elites across the world because they had many concrete examples of how successful wars contributed to economic prosperity and political power. In contrast in 2018 successful wars seem to be an endangered species."

"while present-day terrorism is mostly theater, future nuclear terrorism, cyberterrorism, or bioterrorism would pose a much more serious threat and would demand a far more drastic reaction from government. Precisely because of this, we should be very careful to differentiate such hypothetical future scenarios from the actual terrorist attacks we have so far witnessed."

"A successful counterterrorism struggle should be conducted on three fronts. First, governments should focus on clandestine actions against the terrorist networks. Second, the media should keep things in perspective and avoid hysteria. ... The third front is the imagination of each and every one of us. Terrorists hold our imagination captive and use that against us."