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Quote by Julian Baggini

“Prayer provides an opportunity to remind oneself of how one should be living, our responsibilities to others, our own failings, and our relative good fortune, should we have it. This is, I think, a pretty worthwhile practice and it is not something you can only do if you believe you are talking to an unseen creator.”

Quote by Julian Baggini

Author

Julian Baggini is a British author and philosopher born in 1968. He is known for his popularization and in-depth exploration of philosophy, with a focus on making philosophy more accessible to the general public. more

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“Progress is more of a challenge for the cynic but also more important and urgent, since for the optimist things aren't that bad and are bound to get better anyway.”

Important Challenges Progress Bounds Get Better Optimist Urgent Cynic

Author:Julian Baggini

“Rules matter, and to be rules they need to be universal in form: always do this, never do that. But it is foolish to rule out in advance the possibility that an occasion might arise when normal rules just don't apply. Rules are not there to be broken, but sometimes break them we must.”

Needs Sometimes Matter Might Form Break Possibility Broken Normal Universal Foolish Arise Occasions

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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.”

Facts Choices Results Capacity Argument Free Choice

Author:Julian Baggini

“The reason to be an atheist is not that it makes us feel better or gives us a more rewarding life. The reason to be an atheist is simply that there is no God and we would prefer to live in full recognition of that, accepting the consequences, even if it makes us less happy.”

Ifs Giving Feels Reason Accepting Consequence Atheist Recognition Feel Better There Is No God

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“The simplest and clearest motivation for taking animal welfare seriously is the recognition that pain is in and of itself a bad thing, and that to inflict significant amounts of it unnecessarily is wrong.”

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“The supposed revelations of God to humanity through Christ, or the word of God to Mohammed through the angel Gabriel, had the power they did because they indicated new truths, new directions for followers.”

Humanity Christ Angel Revelations Followers Word Of God Gabriel New Directions

Author:Julian Baggini

“Traditional arguments for the existence of God and contemporary attempts to use fine-tuning and cosmology to back up the case for his existence always strike me as kinds of games, since hardly anyone believes on the basis of these arguments at all.”

Believe Kind Use Games Existence Cases Fine Argument Bases Strikes Contemporary Traditional Cosmology Existence Of God Tuning Fine Tuning

Author:Julian Baggini

“True virtue would never liken its rewards to points on a loyalty card, not because it is its own reward, but because it is not something we should practice to accrue future benefits.”

Should Practice Virtue Benefits Rewards Loyalty Cards

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“We can take suffering to be an opportunity to learn and to grow. But if we are honest, we should remember that this is making the best of a bad job, and that minimising suffering takes priority over optimising its outcome.”

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“Whatever your religious persuasion, if you believe that the universe is governed by benign forces, at some point you have to explain why there is so much suffering, misfortune and misery in the world.”

Ifs World Believe Suffering Universe Force Religious Misery Misfortunes Persuasion If You Believe Benign

Author:Julian Baggini