“Religious people today, compartmentalize their attitude to the Bible. They pay it lip service as a symbol of morality while getting their actual morality from more modern principles.”

Share & Save

Meaning

This reads as a critique of selective belief, where scripture is honored in public but not allowed to shape everyday ethics. It can be taken to mean that people keep religion as a symbol while drawing their real moral rules from newer ideas. In a discussion about modern secular life, it lands as a sharp challenge to inconsistency between belief and practice.

When It Was Said

Not documented yet.

Who It Was Said To

Not documented yet.

Historical Context

Not documented yet.

Source

Not documented yet.

Original Language & Translation

Originally said in English.

Did They Really Say It?

Not documented yet.

Did You Know?

Not documented yet.

About Steven Pinker

Canadian cognitive psychologist and public intellectual

Steven Arthur Pinker is a Canadian cognitive psychologist, psycholinguist, popular science author, and public intellectual. He is known for his work on the mind, language, and human nature, and for presenting those subjects to a wide general audience. Pinker supports evolutionary psychology and the computational theory of mind. He is the Johnstone Family professor of psychology at Harvard University, and his writing often returns to questions about how people think, speak, and understand the world.

More from Steven Pinker (283 quotes) →

READ THE SOURCE

Books by Steven Pinker

The Language Instinct

2007

VIEW ON AMAZON

The Blank Slate

2002

VIEW ON AMAZON

How the Mind Works

1999

VIEW ON AMAZON

Enlightenment now

2018

VIEW ON AMAZON

Rationality

2021

VIEW ON AMAZON