A. C. Grayling Quotes

Four kinds of answer are standardly given to the question why religion exists. One is that it provides explanations—of the origin of the universe, of the way it works, of the apparently inexplicable things that happen in it, and of why it includes evil and suffering. Another is that religion provides comfort, giving hope of life after death, providing reassurance in a hostile world, and a means (by supplication, propitiation, and the practice of one or another form of prescribed behaviour) to get a better deal in it. A third is that it makes for social order, in promoting morality and social cohesion. And a fourth is that it rests on the natural ignorance, stupidity, superstitiousness and gullibility of mankind.

People not only live by symbols, but die by them, as wars of religion and nationalism attest.

Worst of all, symbols sometimes live on in their own right when what they symbolise has long been forgotten.

Symbols have the unfortunate power to acquire the importance of what they symbolise.

The claim is that educating moral sensibility through imagination has a general tendency, not a universal effect.

Emancipation is always at risk from the usual sources—demagogues, civil and international war, the tenure that superstitions have over the human imagination—so there are no guarantees that progress will continue.

New and challenging moral dilemmas are always likely to arise, so we need to try to make ourselves the kind of people who can respond thoughtfully.

Moral panics occur because the increased availability of information about what happens in our society is not matched by a public capacity to reflect upon and make sense of it. Western societies might be advanced in many ways, but if the standard of debates set by the popular media is anything to go by, their populations are woefully bad at engaging sensibly with new and evolving moral demands.
This last remark is not meant to imply that there are, say, too few religious education lessons in schools. Far from it: religion is part of the problem, not the solution. And moral education is not best done by haranguing people, especially the young. On both counts standard views about moral education need rethinking.
Religion is worse than an irrelevant as regards the inculcation of morality, for the following reasons: in an individualistic society, where personal wealth is the chief if not the sole measure of achievement, a morality that enjoins you to give your all to the poor that says it is easier for a camel to go through a needle’s eye than for the rich to enter heaven, and preaches selflessness towards one’s neighbor and complete obedience to a deity—such a morality, wholly opposed to the norms and practices not just accepted but extolled in our society, has little to offer. Most people ignore the contrast between such views and the universal instruction to go forth and multiply one’s income and possessions; and obey the latter.
And when religious fundamentalists add a preparedness to incarcerate women, mutilate genitals, amputate hands, murder, bomb, and terrorise—all in the name of faith—then religious morality becomes not just irrelevant but dangerous. With such examples and contrasts, it has less than nothing to offer proper moral debate.

The media no longer hesitate to whip up lurid anxieties in order to increase sales, in the process undermining social confidence and multiplying fears.

Folly tends to predominate over wisdom because it is usually easier to understand and more convenient (or exciting) to believe; but a little reflection usually sifts one from the other.

A civilized society is one which never ceases having a discussion with itself about what human life should best be.

Of all the questions we can ask ourselves the most important is: how is one best to live?