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The modern believer is not suspicious enough, which is perhaps why when they try to construct arguments in their defence, the convictions are left doing all the work and reason, debilitated by neglect, weakly fails to prop them up.

Julian Baggini

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Julian Baggini
Age: 56
Born: 1968
Born: September 9
Author
Philosopher
Writer
Enough
Believer
Construct
Trying
Conviction
Convictions
Work
Argument
Constructs
Failing
Defence
Perhaps
Suspicious
Modern
Arguments
Weakly
Left
Fails
Prop
Reason
Neglect
Props

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Justice can only be dispensed when you have all the facts in front of you.
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Any celebration meal to which guests are invited, be they family or friends, should be an occasion for generous hospitality.
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If we now find ourselves looking down on the cheap and convenient, it is only because we now have better things which are affordable.
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Morality is more than possible without God, it is entirely independent of him.
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I don't think anyone who genuinely embraced sincerity, charity and modesty could be intolerant or divisive.
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You don't choose what you believe moment to moment, but choices you have made do shape what you come to believe.
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Atheists have to live with the knowledge that there is no salvation, no redemption, no second chances. Lives can go terribly wrong in ways that can never be put right.
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Being virtuous is wonderful thing, but feeling virtuous is a shortcut to vice.
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The capacity to make free choices is not something we either have entirely or not at all. Rather, choices become freer the more they are the result of our own capacity to reflect on and assess facts and arguments.
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Daily life is better when it involves interactions with real people who have a personal investment in their labour, like shopkeepers, than it is with someone 'just doing my job' or the infernal self-checkout machine.
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If philosophy is to be a valuable part of life, we have to appreciate it for its own sake, and not just for what it's done for us lately.
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No one who has understood even a fraction of what science has told us about the universe can fail to be in awe of both the cosmos and of science.
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Being able and willing to complain is what makes us rational and moral animals, capable of seeing and articulating the difference between how things are and how they should be.
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I maintain the importance of an absolute prohibition against torture, while acknowledging that even absolute prohibitions can sometimes be broken. If that is a contradiction, it is a contradiction that ethics has to embrace, or else it becomes like glass: hard, clear, but fatally inflexible.
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No one has ever understood anything better by assuming that there is no reason for why it is the way it is.
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The optimist underestimates how difficult it is to achieve real change, believing that anything is possible and it's possible now. Only by confronting head-on the reality that all progress is going to be obstructed by vested interests and corrupted by human venality can we create realistic programmes that actually have a chance of success.
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The truly humble feel the ground beneath their feet every day and do not only become aware of it when held aloft or pushed down to their knees.
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If I hammer my own thumb while doing some DIY, it's not nice, but it's not the end of the world. To care obsessively about similar levels of discomfort in animals seems to be a case of mistaken moral priorities.
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When you try to cool down hot emotions, what tends to happen is that you end up either repressing them or losing them altogether. Neither is desirable. Without emotion, much social interaction loses its meaning, or changes for the worse.
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People do care where their food, or other goods, comes from, not merely if the price is right. And that means no business can afford to ignore the impacts their buying practices have on producers and on the perceptions and choices of consumers.
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