61
" In theory, of course, abstinence is a foolproof method of preventing pregnancies and STDs and STIs (sexually transmitted diseases and sexually transmitted infections—you can have the latter without the former), just as starvation is a foolproof method of preventing obesity. But in reality the desires to love physically and to bond socially are fundamental to who we are as human beings; and the sex drive is so powerful, and the pleasures and psychological rewards so great, that recommending abstinence as a form of contraception and STI prevention is, in fact, to recommend pregnancy and infection by default. "
― Michael Shermer , The Moral Arc: How Science and Reason Lead Humanity toward Truth, Justice, and Freedom
62
" There must be no barriers to freedom of inquiry. There is no place for dogma in science. The scientist is free, and must be free to ask any question, to doubt any assertion, to seek for any evidence, to correct any errors. Our political life is also predicated on openness. We know that the only way to avoid error is to detect it and that the only way to detect it is to be free to inquire. And we know that as long as men are free to ask what they must, free to say what they think, free to think what they will, freedom can never be lost, and science can never regress. —J. ROBERT OPPENHEIMER, 1949 "
― Michael Shermer , The Moral Arc: How Science and Reason Lead Humanity toward Truth, Justice, and Freedom
66
" There is no period in history when it would have been better to be alive than today. People who fantasise about a romantic past imagine themselves living in Pharaoh’s court, Caesar’s palace, Plato’s athenaeum, a medieval knight’s manor, a king’s castle, a queen’s château, an emperor’s citadel, a cardinal’s cathedral. But the cold, hard reality is that 99.99 per cent of all the people who ever lived existed in what we would today consider squalid poverty. "
― Michael Shermer , Heavens on Earth: The Scientific Search for the Afterlife, Immortality, and Utopia
67
" Some religions, such as Catholicism, fully endorsed slavery, as Pope Nicholas V made clear when, in 1452, he issued the radically proslavery document Dum Diversas. This was a papal bull granting Catholic countries such as Spain and Portugal “full and free permission to invade, search out, capture, and subjugate the Saracens and pagans and any other unbelievers and enemies of Christ wherever they may be, as well as their kingdoms, duchies, counties, principalities, and other property … and to reduce their persons into perpetual slavery.”10 These last few words—to reduce their persons into perpetual slavery—sound not just sinister to us, but also psychotic. They make perfect sense, however, in a Christian context, given that the Bible is itself a heedlessly proslavery tome. "
― Michael Shermer , The Moral Arc: How Science and Reason Lead Humanity toward Truth, Justice, and Freedom
73
" In this sense many apparently immoral beliefs are actually factual errors based on incorrect causal theories. Today we hold that it is immoral to burn women as witches, but the reason our European ancestors in the Middle Ages strapped women on a pyre and torched them was because they believed that witches caused crop failures, weather anomalies, diseases, and various other maladies and misfortunes. Now that we have a scientific understanding of agriculture, climate, disease, and other causal vectors—including the role of chance—the witch theory of causality has fallen into disuse; what was a seemingly moral matter was actually a factual mistake. "
― Michael Shermer , The Moral Arc: How Science and Reason Lead Humanity toward Truth, Justice, and Freedom
74
" A prisoner named Denis Martinez, for example, explained what getting an education and learning to read deeply into subjects gave him in terms of perspective: “It’s given me a new set of glasses. Before I wasn’t able to see the things I see now. I was a nineteen-year old knucklehead going around and thinking I knew it all. The more I learned the more I could sense how wrong I was and how many things I didn’t know.” Inspired by his reading of René Descartes, Martinez reflected, “There are two ways to be in prison—physically and/or mentally. Being in prison mentally is to live in ignorance, closed-mindedness, and pessimism. You can confine me for as long as you want, but my mind will always be free.” The title of a painting this prisoner made is revealing: Cogito Ergo Sum Liber—I Think Therefore I Am Free. (Now, there’s a bumper sticker/T-shirt slogan for the modern Enlightenment thinker.) "
― Michael Shermer , The Moral Arc: How Science and Reason Lead Humanity toward Truth, Justice, and Freedom
78
" It is from these cold, hard facts that Truman’s advisers estimated that between 250,000 and 1 million American lives would be lost in an invasion of Japan.59 General Douglas MacArthur estimated that there could be a 22:1 ratio of Japanese to American deaths, which translates to a minimum death toll of 5.5 million Japanese.60 By comparison (cold though it may sound), the body count from both atomic bombs—about 200,000 to 300,000 total (Hiroshima: 90,000 to 166,000 deaths, Nagasaki: 60,000 to 80,000 deaths61)—was a bargain. "
― Michael Shermer , The Moral Arc: How Science and Reason Lead Humanity toward Truth, Justice, and Freedom
80
" But make no mistake about it, the moral arguments that undermined slavery were not enough to bring about the abolition of it; many people and countries had to be dragged kicking and screaming up the moral ladder, as evidenced by the fact that after it outlawed slavery in 1807, the British Royal Navy had to patrol the African coast in search of illegal slave trade for more than sixty years, until 1870, seizing nearly 1,600 ships and liberating more than 150,000 slaves in the process.32 And, as previously noted, in the United States it took the deaths of more than 650,000 Americans in the Civil War to finally bring about slavery’s end there. "
― Michael Shermer , The Moral Arc: How Science and Reason Lead Humanity toward Truth, Justice, and Freedom