“if there is no free will, the only logical (and ethical) conclusion is that there is no room for blame, punishment, praise or reward as virtues in and of themselves, and that entitlement is never earned”
“a behavior is the end-product of everything from the neurobiology of one second before it occurs to the evolutionary forces of millions of years”
“Readiness Potential, a waveform that occurs when a subject first commits to moving their finger, came about 300 ms before there was conscious intent to do so.” neural processes leading to an action begin unconsciously and only later enter conscious awareness
“Nevertheless, no matter how hard you might try, you cannot successfully intend to do something other than what the person you have become intends.” because intention depends on consciousness, which is faster than your unconscious
“people who have thought long and hard concerning their atheism are as equally (and highly) ethical as are people who have thought long and hard about their theism”
“a child whose nose cold will get the other kindergarteners sick can be kept safely at home without righteously taking away their toys as punishment”
“It may seem dehumanizing to view some of us as machines whose brakes do not work, but this seems immeasurably preferable to demonizing them with sermons, secular or otherwise.”
“the power of moral embarrassment, shame, and guilt to generate desperate desire to change is not the same as generating an actual ability to do so.”
“rather than choosing to change, we are changed by circumstance and in ways dependent upon the sort of person that chance had made us.”
“As such, we can become the sort of person who understands how we became that sort of person.” this is the special thing that humans can do.
“The power of the non-material influences of knowledge, including self-knowledge, is central to the material self that we will be determined to become.”