Atheism, Reason, Happiness
David Quinn has published a blog post on the Iona Institute website
It is a response to my post titled How do atheists and Christians justify morality, which was a response to his earlier post titled The naïve morality of many atheists.
It’s just over two weeks until Dublin Vegfest, on the weekend of 28th and 29th September, in Griffith College on the South Circular Road. For me, the most important aspect of my veganism is animal rights, and that cause is always well represented at VegFest.
I believe one of the greatest injustices in our world is how we treat nonhuman animals. Every year we kill over 50 billion farmed animals, and up to a trillion fish. These sentient beings suffer unjustly for our convenience, and our slaughter of them is an ongoing moral atrocity.
On the morning of 9/11 my late wife Anne was working in Leinster House as a parliamentary personal assistant. She rang me to tell me to turn on the television. She had an intern from New York working with her. As the Twin Towers collapsed on global television, the intern was devastated, not knowing whether any of her family or friends were among the 3,000 people murdered. Many of the mourning families will never see the bodies of their loved ones.
Listen above to my discussion yesterday on the Niall Boylan Show, on Classic Hits FM, about whether religion should be taken out of schools. The discussion was in the context of the Islamic Foundation of Ireland applying to be patron of a new secondary school.
Listen above: As the Islamic Foundation of Ireland is seeking the patronage of a new post-primary school, I made the case for a system of secular schools that everybody can attend without religious discrimination, on Newstalk Radio’s breakfast show this morning.
Listen above to my discussion on BBC Radio Ulster’s Sunday Sequence, on Sunday 8 September, about the idea of “almost believers.” Unitarian Minister Reverend Chris Hudson coined the phrase to describe people who might be on the verge of attending church services.
Saturday 7th of September 2019 was the seventh anniversary of Atheist Ireland’s monthly information tables outside the GPO in Dublin. We hold them on the first Saturday of every month.
We also hold information tables in Cork and Galway, and last month we had our first Teach Don’t Preach information table on secular education.
Continue reading “7 years of Atheist Ireland information tables”
Why do people believe that living in California would make them feel happier than people who do live in California actually are? And why do people, who are afraid of being rejected, want more drugs than people who have actually been rejected?
David Quinn of the Iona Institute has written a blog post taking issue with my statement that: “I believe we should treat every individual person with the same respect and dignity and love.” David agrees with this, but says that as an atheist I cannot justify believing it.
David says that some atheists say that we should treat each other with respect because we are a social species, and our ancestors evolved to survive through cooperation.
Continue reading “How do atheists and Christians justify morality?”
Thank you for the responses to my recent post on biological sex and socially-constructed gender. If you haven’t already read it, you can read it here.
There was a mix of positive responses describing it as a balanced article, some critical questions which I will respond to in my next few posts, and the usual minority of personally abusive posts.