Toy Stories for Humanists

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Toy Stories for Humanists--the Toy Story movies' powerful humanist messages:

"...human beings have worth and meaning even if they are 'nothing but' material objects."

"...toys are meant to be played with, even broken, because that's the price you pay for the privilege of being alive and loved." (Hi, gramina!)

Comments

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That was mind-blowing, and inspiring. Thank you.

I have a long-standing hesitation at lumping all supernatural beliefs as delusional, not because I have any myself at the moment, but because I am militantly agnostic. Because of this, and because of a general sensitivity about what I perceive as a mean-spirited undertone, I often have trouble reading humanist arguments, even when I agree with them.

I had a couple of twinges in the analysis of Buzz, because, well, he is a zealot, as were the little Claw machine men, so any analysis is going to be ideologically charged. But as the overwhelming point of the article was not "Zealots R dumb and delusional," but "There can be meaning without supernatural forces," this made me very happy.

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Cool, glad you found it interesting & thought-provoking.

You might well be interested in reading _The God Delusion_ (by Richard Dawkins), which I bought yesterday and am about 2/3 through. A substantial portion of it is devoted to where we get ethics if not from God.

[gement]

Thanks for the recommendation. I'm afraid that's one of the books that really set off my "confrontational atheism" buttons, which is too bad, because it looks like it has some good stuff in it about the bits of the human mind that Believe things

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I'm actually finding this book very sensible, and confrontational only in the "hey, you're not supposed to question that!" sense. Many years ago in an online forum, someone said to me, "You shouldn't judge people for their beliefs," and I said, "Yes you should! Beliefs and actions are the only justifiable basis to judge anyone on!"