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“Good grief. Here is an eighteenth-century, middle class Scottish professor [Adam Smith] saying that morality is an accidental by-product of the way human beings adjust their behavior towards each other as they grow up; saying that morality is an emergent phenomenon that arises spontaneously among human beings in a relatively peaceful society; saying that goodness does not need to be taught, let alone associated with the superstitious belief that it would not exist but for the divine origin of an ancient Palestinian carpenter.” — Matt Ridley
Good grief. Here is an eighteenth-century, middle class Scottish professor [Adam Smith] saying that morality is an accidental by-product of the way human beings adjust their behavior towards each other as they grow up; saying that morality is an emergent phenomenon that arises spontaneously among human beings in a relatively peaceful society; saying that goodness does not need to be taught, let alone associated with the superstitious belief that it would not exist but for the divine origin of an ancient Palestinian carpenter.