In The Post-enlightenment Europe Of The 19th

Religion Creates Community, Community Creates Altruism And Altruism Turns Us Away From Self And Towards The Common Good... There Is Something About The Tenor Of Relationships Within A Religious Community That Makes It The Best Tutorial In Citizenship And Good Neighborliness.

No Great Achiever - Even Those Who Made It Seem Easy - Ever Succeeded Without Hard Work.

When Everything That Matters Can Be Bought And Sold, When Commitments Can Be Broken Because They Are No Longer To Our Advantage, When Shopping Becomes Salvation And Advertising Slogans Become Our Litany, When Our Worth Is Measured By How Much We Earn And Spend, Then The Market Is Destroying The Very Virtues On Which In The Long Run It Depends.

Isis Is A Terrorist Entity Whose Barbarities Have Been Condemned By All Those Who Value Our Common Humanity. In The Current Political Climate, When Hate Crimes Are Rising And Political Rhetoric Is Increasingly Divisive, This Is All The More Shocking.

We Are Biological Creatures. We Are Born, We Live, We Die. There Is No Transcendent Purpose To Existence. At Best We Are Creatures Of Reason, And By Using Reason We Can Cure Ourselves Of Emotional Excess. Purged Of Both Hope And Fear, We Find Courage In The Face Of Helplessness, Insignificance And Uncertainty.