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As others have noted, it's Sam Torode's <em>The Manual</em> translation of Epictetus' Enchiridion. I'll add that you can read it for free, alongside three more tradition translations, on this handy page.
Not sure if this is the one they're talking about, but "Killing the Deep State: The Fight to Save President Trump" by Jerome R. Corsi Ph.D. appears to be a bestseller. The reviews tell me that if I love America, I'll love this book. Amazon recommends several other books along the same lines by prominent conservatives.
OP could add God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything for a little light reading as well.
She might get the message that a 5th Bible next year is a wasted effort.
- The God Delusion
- God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything, by Christopher Hitchens
- Why I Am Not a Christian, by Bertrand Russell
“With or without religion, good people can behave well and bad people can do evil; but for good people to do evil - that takes religion.”
― Steven Weinberg
I suggest you give this book a read if you want to learn just how wrong you are on all of this religious denialism you're presenting here:
I can't remember the precise quote, but there's a bit in The Manual where he talks about/translates how when you are in your sphere of power you are in control and at peace.
But, the further you stray from your sphere of power, the more the world will influence you and the more you have to sacrifice of yourself and your control.
So if you seek high offices or political change, know that the price is chaining yourself to the whims of others.
And if you want to maintain your freedom and tranquility, the price is accepting the world as it is.
This isn't a question that can be answered for all stoics at all times, you'll have to let your conscience guide you to what is justly virtuous in each instance.
I'm on the Peterson sub reddit lol.. I'm here for the debate, I enjoy having my ideas challenged and tested because it helps me find flaws in my arguments and ideals and hopefully get closer to the truth...
I don't find many right wingers who have more than a bumper sticker idea of what they believe in and why they believe in it.. I love to debate about Ayn Rand, the founders of this nation and what it was actually founded on, and western civilization, human rights, and liberal democracy, my Father a pot smoking hippy turned radical right wing religious zealot who got arrested protesting vietnam in the 60's and arrested again protesting abortion in the 90's got me interested in debating about these things from an early age about 10 years old when I started reading political and religious books, I'm somewhat knowledgeable in history, theology, anthropology, and psychology, and love to learn and I take advantage the opportunity to test what I believe in, conversation with people who agree with your point view is boring, and often a complete waste of time..
My problem with Peterson's view of "postmodernism" is that while I agree that the death of commonly held truths in a society is dangerous and we should try to get back to some common foundational things to agree on as a basis for truth and values I don't think that that basis should be an ideology that has repeatedly been the driving force behind willful injustice and atrocities but has been the justification for many genocides.. In a reddit post its hard to put it better than Christopher Hitchens did in his book God Is Not Great..
My copy is in a bin in the garage but I got the penguin version and the entire volume on Amazon is 134 pages Ethics (Penguin Classics) https://www.amazon.com/dp/0140435719/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_YFJZXCC97KJ25M9XPE9D
The book is simply not one of the most difficult books in philosophy. Look down the like from Kant you have Schelling and Hegel who are infinitely more difficult, getting a grasp on Husserl, Heidegger, Merleu-Ponty; reading Derrida and Paul de Mann can be more difficult; Spinoza is infinitely more clear than some of his biggest protégés like Deleuze and Guattari; reading stuff like Spivak or Bhaba are more difficult; Aristotle is a more difficult thinker to get a grasp on than Spinoza; going into the analytic tradition Carnap for me is proving far more dense than Spinoza, Wittgenstein at this point in his reading career is probably ten times harder to get into than Spinoza; idk what to do but list on and on. Ethics is not that difficult a book considering it’s serious philosophy. It’s laid out in a very clear and logical manner, if you have a bit of Descartes and Aristotle behind you (who I also recommended) Spinoza provides no more difficulty than any other philosopher, and considering the length of ethics it doesn’t have to be a huge time dump. He’s a very rich philosopher you can and should obviously return to later and you can get a lot out of him but it’s ridiculous to pretend like he’s some notoriously difficult philosopher. If you’ve only read Camus maybe that’s true, in serious philosophy I simply fail to see how he would stand out in terms of difficulty though.
我后来查了下, 我上面的叙述大概是零零碎碎的从不同的地方看到的...
> 想看那个英国人的日记
那个英国人的日记应该是, Lieutenant Charles Cameron's Opium War Diary , 里面说鸦片战争期间, 有些当地百姓一时和你做生意卖你食物，一时又要和你兵戎相见...
另外的在 <u>China's Last Empire: The Great Qing</u> 中也提到过(173页 -- 我用amazon的连接只是为了准确定位书籍, 你们当地的图书馆可能会有; 网上可能也有免费的枪版), 比如在第一次鸦片战争中, 英军打到了镇江, 结果镇江的满族都督却怀疑有间谍, 根据举报或者猜忌抓捕, 折磨, 甚至处决了一批当地的汉人, 导致当地的汉人对清朝政府很反感...结果英军在攻打旗人部队的时候, 汉人就在一边站着看...
well, i was never very religious to begin with but then i read Christopher Hitchen's "God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything" and that was the absolute end of me and religion
Though it doesn't focus on the transition from the Qing to the Warlord era, I do recommend China's Last Empire: The Great Qing to get a good overview of the Qing, as a lot of the issues of the early Republic (and, arguably, even that of the current PRC) originate from the Qing, and the book does broadly cover what led up to the collapse of the dynasty. The book is part of the History of Imperial China Book Series, which is a great introductory overview to the academic history of Imperial China.
Let's not forget that this has been baked into people's heads since the "Garden of Eden" fable. The founding "document" for the religion says that knowledge comes from possessed snakes and is bad and you get kicked out of paradise if you dare get educated. I'm sure there are kids books with pictures that have it as a bedtime story. As the dearly missed Christopher Hitchens said, "Religion poisons everything".
I met Hitchens several times and I own several books that he personally signed for me.
You might want to actually completely read one of his books before you start claiming to know what he thought and how he felt.
Might I recommend you start with God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything?
Secular ideologies can be just as authoritarian as religious ideologies. re: communist china, the state is their "religion" and it will crush any potential challenger, including atheists. It is not a fair representation of a potential secular society. Secular humanism would be a far more ideal "state philosophy."
I'm not as well versed in Mughals or House of Baghdad. The Renaissance was inspired by humanism and was a break from the theocracy that came before, and further distanced itself with the enlightenment.
God Is Not Great. How Religion Poisons Everything. by Christopher Hitchens.
He said it best.
edit: I sincerely encourage you to read it.
~~It might be a different translation, but it's from Enchiridion 25.~~
It'd be more true time say that it's most likely different from the version of The Enchiridion than some have read. The quote I pulled from is more of a rewording to suit a more modern understanding, from The Manual
>I don’t see any reason to assume studying brain physiology will be the only method
"God did it" is not an honest possibility in the race.
> which is informative for ethics
We know ancient mythology fall short of being beneficial. God is Not Great. How Religion Poisons Everything by Christopher Hitchens is a good read.
> some scientific discovery will show free will doesn’t exist.
It may be that emergent properties like free will and consciousness will never be understood from a biological bases. If this is the case and we never know why we experience these things, it still is not evidence for a god.
> I don’t see any reason to assume talking about free will and consciousness isn’t well defined
This is not an assumption. It's a fact. LOL Just like the word "god".
> But why not instead assume that scientific language is inadequate because it is inappropriate language for the task?
Scientific methodology may be inadequate for explaining some of our human experiences. I think I made this point. Again, god is not an answer for questions we do not have the answers to. Saying "god did it" adds nothing to our understanding. We don't know why lighting occurs, for example. What does "god did it" add to our understanding?
> It assumes without argument scientific language is the one which is actually correct
No, this is your claim and the claim of theists to create a straw man argument, not mine and not that of scientists. Science is the best method we have of understanding the physical/material world.
> Especially when it harms NOONE!
Christopher Hitchens wrote a whole book debunking that sentence.
And then he made an audiobook of it.
If it were that simple then we would not have moral debates. However, the fact that we do have moral debates does not mean that morality is subjective, as we also have debate and disagreement in fields that are generally considered to be objective, such as the sciences.
If you are interested in an attempted proof for the objective nature of morality, then this is a good example of one (as a starting point).
As others have said, reading the books themselves is the ultimate illuminator. Seeing first-hand the insanity, dissonance, and hostility evident in the original documents is invaluable.
I recently finished Sam Harris's <em>The End of Faith</em>, and while somewhat meandering at times (and confusing in his usage of the word "spirituality" to mean "sense of wonder" or "self-consciousness" or even a sort of "high"), he focuses on rationality vs religiosity, often going very in-depth into those holy books of the Abrahamic religions (remember that Christianity, Judaism, Mormonism, and even Islam claim to rever the same character, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob).
Another book that I just added to my wishlist is Asimov's <em>Guide to the Bible</em>... apparently it's pretty "understanding" of religion, but he's a brilliant author and a staunch atheist, so I'm very interested in what he had to say about the historicity of the Bible.
Second Treatise of Government - John Locke
I'll let an Amazon reviewer sum it up for me as to why;
> In his book, Second Treatise of Government, John Locke (1632 - 1704) writes that all humans are born equal with the same ability to reason for themselves, and because of this, government should have limitations to ensure that people are free from the arbitrary will of another person, according to the laws of nature. Government, in Locke's view, is a social contract between the people in control, and the people who submit to it.
Religious belief is the belief in the reality of the mythological, supernatural, or spiritual aspects of a religion. All religious beliefs are evil. This sounds blunt, but I am not alone or extreme in believing this is the case.
Equality and the golden rule aren't religious beliefs. Those are simply good practices that a religion has suggested its followers live by (i.e. religious practices). There are plenty of good life tips that are passed down as part of a religion (e.g. meditation, mindfulness, etc.). But all of those can be followed with zero religious influence. To the extent that they are advised to be followed because a past holy person or deity advised it... well, that becomes a dangerous path. But a practice that is based on ethics or science (not deities or spirituality) is not inherently religious.
If you will read only one book read The End of Faith by Sam Harris.
This is the best critique of faith that really explains why believing on bad evidence is itself a problem, but also why omnipotent, intelligent being would not demand it from other sentient, intelligent beings.
That's a mildly-defensible logical position, but once you realize that you are smart enough to say "there's no such thing as a flying spaghetti monster" and that no one has to prove 100% that it doesn't exist for you to use your brain and make the "bold statement" that a magical flying invisible being made of spaghetti doesn't exist .... you will realize why you are an atheist and not an agnostic. Just give it a few years of listening to ridiculous explanations for why there might be a God. "Who can really know?!" Umm, you can. I bet that you find it more than "not very plausible". You know it's bullshit. So instead of dancing around with philosophical possibilities and definitions of the word "know", just be honest with yourself. For all intents and purposes, to the extent that anything is a fact (e.g. how can you prove anything at all?!?!), it's a fact: there is no God and all spiritual aspects of all religions are lies. Just because there are some good life tips mixed in does not make the spirituality of any religion any more sane.
As for religion being evil, I would start by suggesting that you read a book by Christopher Hitchens, such as God is Not Great: Why Religion Poisons Everything. You may come to agree that saying God doesn't exist is more than my right; it's important for humanity and no more arrogant than saying that China is a real place on the other side of the planet.
Its in his book "God is not Great, How religion Poisons everything" in the chapter "A Short Digression on the Pig".
Page 40 in this version: http://www.amazon.com/God-Not-Great-Religion-Everything/dp/0446697966/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1264538928&sr=8-1
I would still include terrorism in your "bad". Here's an interesting poll that shows there's still substantial support for the use of terror in the muslim world. (I first saw this poll in Sam Harris's book The End of Faith, and the numbers are definitely lower, which is great news, but they're still way too high.) I would also discuss the role of honor killings as another example of the evils of Islam.
And not to be labeled a bigot, I think Christianity, Judiasm, and just about every other major religion should be indicted as well. But keep up the good work with Islam.