New BHA President AC Grayling on his secular “Good Book”
Concerned primarily with questions of ethics and the good live, learned, “extravagantly erudite”, dog-loving and not at all vain. The philosopher AC Grayling, announced this morning as new President of the British Humanist Association, speaks to the Guardian about this new book, The Good Book : A Secular Bible. Is it his own God Delusion or God is Not Great, the Guardian asks?
“No, because it’s not against religion. There’s not one occurrence of the word God, or afterlife, or anything like that. It doesn’t attack religion, it’s a positive book, there’s nothing negative in it. People may think it’s against religion – but it isn’t.” But then he says, with a mischievous twinkle: “Of course, what would really help the book a lot in America is if somebody tries to shoot me.”
With any luck it shouldn’t come to that, but Grayling is almost certainly going to upset a lot of Christians, for what he has written is a secular bible. The Good Book mirrors the Bible in both form and language, and is, as its author says, “ambitious and hubristic – a distillation of the best that has been thought and said by people who’ve really experienced life, and thought about it”. Drawing on classical secular texts from east and west, Grayling has “done just what the Bible makers did with the sacred texts”, reworking them into a “great treasury of insight and consolation and inspiration and uplift and understanding in the great non-religious traditions of the world”. He has been working on his opus for several decades, and the result is an extravagantly erudite manifesto for rational thought.
In fact everything about Grayling is extravagantly erudite. We meet at his south London home, where he sits surrounded by teetering piles of books, great leaning towers of learning, and the conversation frequently detours into donnish tutorial mode. Spotting me glance at one of the volumes, which bears the title Epiphenomenalism, he launches at once into a detailed explanation of the concept – but then breaks off in delight as his dog trots in and rolls at his feet.
Full article: http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/apr/03/grayling-good-book-atheism-philosophy
New BHA President AC Grayling on his secular “Good Book”,
Finally! A breakthrough book that, hopefully, illustrates that humanity can achieve a level of philosophhically-based loving behavior based solely on its deep biological sense of community and cooperation. I have always tried to seek answers from within and from without religious texts and done at patchy job at best due to my fundamental lack of education and amount of time spent making a living. I hope this book does not disappoint! The next big chore for someone to tackle is in-group/out-group bias.
See the chapter “The Big Lie of God’s Existence” in the new book, “Rational Thinking, Government Policies, Science, and Living”. Rational thinking starts with clearly stated principles, continues with logical deductions, and then examines empirical evidence to possibly modify the principles.
I doubt if Sanford Aronoff’s book “Rational Thinking” will enlighten humanists
if this is an example of his thinking:
http://www.helium.com/items/2109056-freedom-of-speech-homosexuality-bible-choice
Quote: ” The member of the Kansas Westboro Baptist Church has the right to denounce military men who are homosexuals. Yes, they deserve honor and praise for their service in defending our country. However, they deserve harsh criticism for their choice of actions that weaken our country by moving America towards a collapse.”