I post the above because it so perfectly addresses some oft-heard tropes, without actually addressing them: if you don't believe in god, you must not be able to love life. If you don't believe in god, you must be an evil person with no moral grounding, no ability to experience transcendent joy, to live softly in this world.
And as long as we're on that subject, Sam Harris has a new book coming out, in which he argues that science has -- and ought to have -- much to say about morality. Here's a paragraph from a brief essay that summarizes his point.
As I argue in my new book, The Moral Landscape, questions about values—about meaning, morality, and life’s larger purpose—are really questions about the well-being of conscious creatures. Throughout the book I make reference to a hypothetical space that I call “the moral landscape”—a space of real and potential outcomes whose peaks correspond to the heights of potential well-being and whose valleys represent the deepest possible suffering. Different ways of thinking and behaving—different cultural practices, ethical codes, modes of government, etc.—will translate into movements across this landscape and, therefore, into different degrees of human flourishing. I’m not suggesting that we will necessarily discover one right answer to every moral question, or a single best way for human beings to live. Some questions may admit of many answers, each more or less equivalent. However, the existence of multiple peaks on the moral landscape does not make them any less real or worthy of discovery. Nor would it make the difference between being on a peak and being stuck deep in a valley any less clear or consequential.
Makes sense to me.
