Epicurus lives!

Religion of love and hatred

Why all Holy Books are dangerous?

Marcus Aurelius and Epicurus on foundations of good life
And now something completely different. I have compiled in one posting some of the most important guidelines for good life (for me at least, that is) from two of the best sources I know on this issue; namely philosophers Epicurus and Marcus Aurelius. Marcus Aurelius on misfortune "Here is the rule to remember in the

How the message of love can be forwarded in a chamber of torture?
All discussions about religions are made much more difficult by the simple fact that religions work on two quite different and often quite unconnected levels. The other level is the level of pure ideology. In this level the aims and missions of most religions are often extremely easy to accept. This message is oozing with love and caring for thy neighbor. The other level are the real world actions of the practical organizations of the religion. The basic tenets of for example Christianity are full of loving ones neighbors, but in the real world actions of the religious organizations these ideas are very often hard to spot or it is even extremely to hard verify if they

Is Jihadism a deranged ideology?
The recent incident where a Muslim serviceman staged a bloody massacre in a American military base did bring up a very important issue. The real issue here is differentiating between the role of a deranged mind and a deranged ideology that is changing that mind in a case like this. How can you tell the difference if both things can lead to the very same end result; that is a person killing other people because in his deranged mind it is the right and justified thing to do at that very moment? We know with great certainty from hundreds cases of empirical evidence that a deranged ideology can alter the mind of a individual in dramatic ways, as to make them kill other people

What will a honest man do?
"But honest men do not pretend to know; they are candid and sincere; they love the truth; they admit their ignorance, and they say, "We do not know." - Robert G. Ingersoll in "Superstition" (1898) I had this great quote by a great man as my Facebook-status for a while and a American Facebook-friend of mine quipped that she did not not know anybody who would fill this description of the honest man.

Was the Protestant Reformation the big turning point of our history?
A.C. Grayling's fine book "Towards The Light" is a reminder of how short the history of liberties and freedoms we now take for granted really is. He reminds how these ideas born in the Greece of antiquity surfaced again in only the 16th and 17th centuries and how they came to blossom very slowly towards our own time. I understand that this book has been intended as a history of modern western liberal thinking, but knowing this I was a bit disappointed by the fact that A.C Grayling did not go to the Greek roots of the ideas of democracy and freedom at all in this book. He tells about the ideas of Renaissance and how the men of Renaissance often saw themselves not as creato