Right from Wrong: Why Religion Fails and Reason Succeeds
Where does morality come from? Apologists—people who offer a formal defense of their religion—point to God as the answer. By inspiring scriptures that people can read, study, and teach, God supposedly gave humanity a guidebook for how to live.

Award-winning scholar of religion and politics Mark Alan Smith shows the errors in this chain of assumptions. Apologists find themselves forced to accept a book that condemns same-sex love and authorizes slavery, genocide, capital punishment for minor offenses, and many other practices widely recognized today as immoral. Apologists try to protect their worldview by ignoring the offending passages, constructing strained reinterpretations, rationalizing the indefensible, or appealing to God’s mysterious ways.

Is there a non-religious method for discovering the elements of an objective morality? Yes, Smith argues—the worldview of humanism. Humanists apply reason, logic, and, evidence to all subjects. Smith’s humanist approach to morality relies on discussion and debate among diverse participants as the best means to attain a moral code stripped of the biases of each individual, group, and society. The result is a hopeful portrait of how to build on the moral progress humans have achieved since the writing of religious scriptures

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Right from Wrong: Why Religion Fails and Reason Succeeds
Where does morality come from? Apologists—people who offer a formal defense of their religion—point to God as the answer. By inspiring scriptures that people can read, study, and teach, God supposedly gave humanity a guidebook for how to live.

Award-winning scholar of religion and politics Mark Alan Smith shows the errors in this chain of assumptions. Apologists find themselves forced to accept a book that condemns same-sex love and authorizes slavery, genocide, capital punishment for minor offenses, and many other practices widely recognized today as immoral. Apologists try to protect their worldview by ignoring the offending passages, constructing strained reinterpretations, rationalizing the indefensible, or appealing to God’s mysterious ways.

Is there a non-religious method for discovering the elements of an objective morality? Yes, Smith argues—the worldview of humanism. Humanists apply reason, logic, and, evidence to all subjects. Smith’s humanist approach to morality relies on discussion and debate among diverse participants as the best means to attain a moral code stripped of the biases of each individual, group, and society. The result is a hopeful portrait of how to build on the moral progress humans have achieved since the writing of religious scriptures

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Right from Wrong: Why Religion Fails and Reason Succeeds

Right from Wrong: Why Religion Fails and Reason Succeeds

by Mark Alan Smith
Right from Wrong: Why Religion Fails and Reason Succeeds

Right from Wrong: Why Religion Fails and Reason Succeeds

by Mark Alan Smith

Hardcover

$28.95 
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Overview

Where does morality come from? Apologists—people who offer a formal defense of their religion—point to God as the answer. By inspiring scriptures that people can read, study, and teach, God supposedly gave humanity a guidebook for how to live.

Award-winning scholar of religion and politics Mark Alan Smith shows the errors in this chain of assumptions. Apologists find themselves forced to accept a book that condemns same-sex love and authorizes slavery, genocide, capital punishment for minor offenses, and many other practices widely recognized today as immoral. Apologists try to protect their worldview by ignoring the offending passages, constructing strained reinterpretations, rationalizing the indefensible, or appealing to God’s mysterious ways.

Is there a non-religious method for discovering the elements of an objective morality? Yes, Smith argues—the worldview of humanism. Humanists apply reason, logic, and, evidence to all subjects. Smith’s humanist approach to morality relies on discussion and debate among diverse participants as the best means to attain a moral code stripped of the biases of each individual, group, and society. The result is a hopeful portrait of how to build on the moral progress humans have achieved since the writing of religious scriptures


Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781633887640
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.
Publication date: 11/15/2022
Pages: 326
Product dimensions: 6.10(w) x 9.10(h) x 1.20(d)

Table of Contents

Foreword Michael Shermer v

Preface xi

Chapter 1 The Practice of Christian Apologetics 1

Chapter 2 How Christian Apologists Whitewash the Bible 23

Chapter 3 Discovering Morality through Inclusive Deliberation 59

Chapter 4 The Group-Centered Bible and Its God 97

Chapter 5 Intellectual Dishonesty in Christianity 129

Chapter 6 Achieving Moral Progress 169

Chapter 7 Intellectual Dishonesty in Islam 201

Chapter 8 The Alternative to Traditional Monotheist Religions 229

Acknowledgments 235

Notes 237

Bibliography 277

About the Author 311

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