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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.
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Original Language & Translation
Originally said in English.
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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.
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READ THE SOURCE
Books by Steven Pinker
The Language Instinct
2007
The Blank Slate
2002
How the Mind Works
1999
Enlightenment now
2018
Rationality
2021