Epicurus lives!

Religion of love and hatred

Why all Holy Books are dangerous?

How would "The Big Book of Humanity" look like in the ideal world?
Social interaction is the word of today and in my vision "The Big Book of Humanity" is a quite interactive place. In my vision every single "idea" (which can be a quotation, a verse of poem or a brief description of a scientific idea) has its own page that has a voting application. This voting by readers and users then decides the place and value of the idea in the subsection or heading under which it it resides. I see the whole thing divided to several subsections, such as "Heritage", "Family", "School, "Society", "Politics", "Workplace" and so on. These names are just rudimentary basic ideas and the subsections could

Did Epicurus and Marcus Aurelius have a recipe for a good life?
I have talked in my latest posts about the idea for a guidebook for human beings that would gather the central humanistic and secular thinking about how to live a good and just life. This "Big Book of Humanity" may became a reality sooner or later, but there is still well time to discuss who to include in it and who not. I'd like to take the occasion to start my own list with a couple of my all-time favorites among humanistic thinkers. Number one on my list is early Greek philosopher Epicurus, He did create a comprehensiv

If we have no religion, who will guide us into being just and moral people?
I talked in my last post about the need for a "Big Book of Humanity". The basic idea was that it would gather together the best ideas of thinkers, writers, poets, philosophers and scientists of the past to form a comprehensive guidebook on how to be a good human inhabitant of this little blue planet. I must at this point thank Adelaide Dupont, who with her comment to my previous blog-posting got me into realizing that the "Big Book of Humanity" that I envisioned simply must be a result of collaborative effort. Most of all it must be freely available and accessible to all and sundry in the Internet. The more I think about it, the more I love this idea of creating "BBoH" w

Do we need a "Big Book of Humanity"?
There are a lot of different and equally great recipes for a lot of dishes, and there are a lot of good recipes for life also. Why should we pick just one, if we can freely combine the best parts of all of them and learn from all of them? I for example think that the ancient school of Stoicism has a lot to offer, and I have studied it intensively recently, but of course it is not the only and final interpretation for the good life. I have familiarized myself quite well with Epicureanism also and I already think that Epicureanism and Stoicism can form together a much broader platform to build a recipe for life on than Stoicism never can offer alone, if the best parts and

Can knowledge replace dogma?
"I mean by intellectual integrity the habit of deciding vexed questions in accordance with the evidence, or of leaving them undecided where the evidence is inconclusive. This virtue, though it is underestimated by almost all adherents of any system of dogma, is to my mind of the very greatest social importance and far more likely to benefit the world than Christianity or any other system of organized beliefs." - Bertrand Russell in "Can Religion Cure Our Troubles?" (1954) The very basic point in this quote is of course if decisions should be based on dogmatic beliefs or on available evidence. Instantly reacting basing the decision on an old kno