Below follows a quote from a book I've been reading lately; Michael Shermer's "Why People Believe Weird Things: Pseudoscience, Superstition and Other Confusions of Our Time". The quote comes from the end of a section on Ayn Rand and her philosophy of Objectivism, but is relevant in a much wider sense...Shermer is a thorough and thoughtful writer, and he does an excellent job of avoiding the nay-saying crank stereotype that many associate with skepticism. At any rate, this quote resonated with me, and as such I thought I would share it.
"Morality is relative to the moral frame of reference. As long as it is understood that morality is a human construction influenced by human cultures, one can be more tolerant of other human belief systems, and thus other humans. But as soon as a group sets itself up as the final moral arbiter of other people's actions, especially when its members believe they have discovered absolute standards of right and wrong, it marks the beginning of the end of tolerance, and thus reason and rationality. It is this characteristic more than any other that makes a cult, religion, a nation, or any other group dangerous to individual freedom."
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