One of the great tragedies of mankind is that morality has been hijacked by religion. So now people assume that religion and morality have a necessary connection. But the basis of morality is really very simple and doesn't require religion at all.
Interpretation
The quote suggests that morality should not be exclusively tied to religion, as it can exist independently of it.
Arthur C. Clarke's quote highlights a significant issue in society where morality is often conflated with religious beliefs. He argues that this perception is misguided, as moral principles can be grounded in secular understanding and reasoning, rather than being solely reliant on religious doctrine. This distinction is important because it allows for a broader, more inclusive interpretation of morality that can apply to all individuals, regardless of their religious affiliations.
In practice
During a debate on ethics, this quote could be used to emphasize the importance of secular morality.
Nowhere in space will we rest our eyes upon the familiar shapes of trees and plants, or any of the animals that share our world. Whatsoever life we meet will be as strange and alien as the nightmare creatures of the ocean abyss, or of the insect empire whose horrors are normally hidden from us by their microscopic scale.
As our own species is in the process of proving, one cannot have superior science and inferior morals. The combination is unstable and self-destroying.
It has yet to be proven that intelligence has any survival value.
The best measure of a man's honesty isn't his income tax return. It's the zero adjust on his bathroom scale.
It was the mark of a barbarian to destroy something one could not understand.
My favorite definition of an intellectual: 'Someone who has been educated beyond his/her intelligence'.
We are the mirror as well as the face in it. _x000D_ We are tasting the taste this minute of eternity. _x000D_ We are pain and what cures pain both. _x000D_ We are the sweet cold water and the jar that pours.
It is a curious feature of our existance that we come from a planet that is very good at promoting life but even better at extinguishing it.
We are here among you as seekers of refuge from our present-your future-a time of worldwide famine, exhausted fuel supplies, terminal poverty-the end of the capitalistic experiment. Once we came to understand the simpl...truth that earth's resources were limited, in fact soon to run out, the whole capitalistic illusion fell to pieces. Those of us who spoke this truth were denounced as heretics, as enemies of the prevailing economic faith. Like religious Dissenters of an earlier day.
It hurts when God has to PRY things out of our hand!
Balm of the summer night, balm of the ordinary, imperial joy and sorrow of human existence, the dreamed as well as the lived— what could be dearer than this, given the closeness of death?
We keep passing unseen through little moments of other people's lives.
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