The more we try to make sure that no single guilty person goes free, the more we risk convicting innocent people in error. A difficult balance to strike. More at suchanek.name/texts/atheis...

The strength of the rule of law in the world. More at suchanek.name/texts/atheis... Nota bene: data from before the 2024 election in the US. #law #ruleoflaw

The good news: It's us humans who are in charge of making our own rules. The bad news: We still need to figure out how to get this right. Full list and references at suchanek.name/texts/atheis... #law

The world's #law systems. Blue: Civil law, based on Roman Law, Napoleon's Code, and German Civil Law. Green: Common Law, created by judges and precedents rather than by scholars. Developed in the UK and its ex-colonies. Red: mixed. Black: Islamic law. More at suchanek.name/texts/atheis...

Liberty and equality before the law are fundamental principles of Western law. But they are not enough: We also have to take care of those who face obstacles in their quest to live out their liberty. This is the reason for the “fraternité” in the French motto. More at suchanek.name/texts/atheis...

Goes for both the national and international level. More at suchanek.name/texts/atheis... #law #peace

The Code of Hammurabi was a Mesopotamian law, engraved on this stone, dating to 1772 BCE. It regulated criminal law, family law, property law, and commercial law -- already 1000 years before the Ten Commandments were written. CC-BY-SA Fritz Grögel, more at suchanek.name/texts/atheis...

Bertrand Russell's quote hints at a radically different way of dealing with evildoers: Rather than punishing them, we should find out what made them act the way they did, and try to remove that cause. A difficult but promising endeavor. More at suchanek.name/texts/atheis... #law #humanism

Ever noticed that, of the Ten Commandments, three are about God? Here is a secular alternative, which focuses on people instead. It prohibits killing, injury, theft, false testimony, and disturbance. Oh, and also slavery, and privacy and copyright violations. More at suchanek.name/texts/atheis...

The Enlightenment gave us brilliant words about universal human rights -- but fell short of its ideals (many societies owned slaves at that time). Today, we're still falling short of these ideals, but we know at least what to aspire to. More at suchanek.name/texts/atheis... #freedom #humanrights

Moral norms have shifted dramatically across cultures and centuries. That's not a bug - it's proof that we humans are the authors of our ethics. The power to define right and wrong has always been ours. Let us use it wisely. More at suchanek.name/texts/atheis... #philosophy #ethics #atheism

Rousseau suggested that society works best when we build it together by consent -- not by inherited tradition, divine authority, or, for that matter, a king or president who acts like one. We’re freest when we agree to play by the same rules. More at suchanek.name/texts/atheis... pic in #uruguay

Spotted in a university library: “Photocopy instead of cutting” - a simple rule: Don’t cause harm. Worth remembering, even outside the library! More at suchanek.name/texts/atheis...

Wise words that still carry truth from Eleanor Roosevelt, the driving force of the UN Declaration of Human Rights. More at suchanek.name/texts/atheis... #iran

When your beliefs, words, and actions are aligned, life gets a lot easier - for you and for those around you. Not everyone can live that alignment openly - which makes it all the more important for those who can. More at suchanek.name/texts/atheis... #psychology #freedom

Clubs of non-aggression form spontaneously among fishers, plane crash survivors, and even soldiers of opposing parties and Mafia members. People who are on equal terms realize they fare best when they don’t harm each other. Not a commandment, just common sense. More at suchanek.name/texts/atheis...

These two monkeys figured it out quite nicely: One scratches the other’s back, and then the roles reverse. They did not need a holy book to find this out. Neither do we: When we help each other, we’re all better off. More at suchanek.name/texts/atheis... , picture taken in Bali, Indonesia

Empathy and altruism are ancient, evolved traits. They exist not just in humans, but also in humpback whales, dolphins, and apes. Turns out, compassion doesn't need a holy book -- it just needs a heartbeat. More at suchanek.name/texts/atheis..., pic taken in Lagos, Portugal #atheism #evolution

People push a train to free a commuter whose leg slipped into the space between the train and the platform. Empathy is an innate trait -- let us use it more often. More at suchanek.name/texts/atheis... picture by a CCTV camera via abc.net

The 1991 video game "Lemmings" lied to us 🐾 In reality, animals don't throw themselves off cliffs. Most animals have a pretty strong instinct to stay alive. It's easy to see what happened to those that did not... SVG+CSS, more at suchanek.name/texts/atheis... #evolution

What do we know about the origin of the Universe? How did life come into existence? How did humans evolve? Why are snowflakes so beautiful? Fascinating questions (and the answers religion never gave you) in Chapter 4 of the Atheist Bible: suchanek.name/texts/atheis... (also as a free audio-book)

The egg came first because Evolution happens mainly between generations, not within them. Sometimes the best answers to ancient riddles come from science. More at suchanek.name/texts/atheis... #science #philosophy #evolution

Two men, two legacies: One reportedly healed a few people, and inspired billions to believe; the other invented vaccination and quietly saved the world. Sometimes, true heroes don’t need a crowd - just science and compassion. More at suchanek.name/texts/atheis... #science #vaccination #atheism

Science isn't about absolute answers; it is about asking the right questions and exploring the wonders of the Universe together. More at suchanek.name/texts/atheis... #science #philosophy

Science doesn't know everything. But what it knows is at least validated and often useful. Oh, and it steadily becomes more. More at suchanek.name/texts/atheis... #science #universe #astronomy

If our brain is just atoms, do we have free will? Probably not in the sense that we can do what is not determined by the workings of these atoms in our brain. But probably yes in the sense that this working is largely unpredictable for the outside world... More at suchanek.name/texts/atheis...

If we knew the exact state of every atom and object -- would we then be able to “compute” what the future brings? Most likely yes. However, this computation would be so complex that it would not run faster than nature. So the best way to predict is... to wait. More at suchanek.name/texts/atheis...

Conway's Game of Life. Looks complex? Look again: Every single checkerboard cell changes its color based only on its 8 neighbors, without any global coordination. Just in case someone tells you that complexity cannot arise from simplicity... SVG+Javascript. More at suchanek.name/texts/atheis...

Why are snowflakes so beautiful? Because they grow by switching between uniform growth and 6-fold branching, depending on the temperature they fly through. Since this temperature is the same around the flake, the growth is symmetric. Image CC-BY-SA A. Kljatov, more at suchanek.name/texts/atheis...

Around 100,000 years ago, homo sapiens emigrated from Africa to the rest of the world. They replaced the Neanderthals they encountered -- but also mated with them. Sometimes reality is weirder than the writers of the scripture imagined... suchanek.name/texts/atheis... #evolution #biology #atheism

Homo heidelbergensis, our 700,000 year old ancestor, controlled fire and was the first human-like species we know who built simple shelters, constructed spears, and hunted in groups. Reconstruction in the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, more at suchanek.name/texts/atheis...

Evolution reminds us that we’re all connected -- from the ocean to the office. More at suchanek.name/texts/atheis... #evolution #atheism

Meet Sahelanthropus tchadensis, possibly the last common ancestor of humans and chimpanzees, 6 million years ago. Turns out our origin story is written in fossils, not scripture... Reconstruction Smithsonian Museum of Nat. History, more at suchanek.name/texts/atheis... #evolution #biology #atheism

On our own behalf: We’ve started a conversation on Reddit about the Atheist Bible - feel free to share your thoughts! www.reddit.com/user/TheCand... #atheism #reddit

This diagram shows the evolution of humans and other humanoid species - a messy design process with countless prototypes, several discontinued models, and one species that somehow made it to mass production and eliminated the others… More at suchanek.name/texts/atheis... #science #atheism

“If humans evolved from apes”, the saying goes, “why are there still apes?” Here is a reply to that. More at suchanek.name/texts/atheis... #evolution #atheism

Humans and chimpanzees split paths only about 6 million years ago. Which explains a lot :-) More at suchanek.name/texts/atheis... #atheism #evolution #biology

The blind mole rat lives underground. It has eyes, but these are completely covered by fur. Thus, it is blind. For some, this is evidence of intelligent design; for others, of evolution. More at suchanek.name/texts/atheis... Image CC0 Gustav Mützel via Wiki Commons #biology #atheism

Meet this microscopic marvel: A bacterium can sense chemicals, swim toward food, and make copies of itself using nothing but chemical processes. If life needs a “spark of the divine”, someone forgot to tell the bacteria. More at suchanek.name/texts/atheis... #biology #atheism

The ancestors of whales once walked on land. Over millions of years, they evolved into the ocean giants we know today. More (and full picture) at suchanek.name/texts/atheis... #evolution #atheism #biology

According to the scientific consensus, life evolved from simple cells to today's beings. If Earth’s history were compressed into a 24-hour day, humans would have appeared in the last few seconds before midnight. More at suchanek.name/texts/atheis... #biology #evolution #science

More at suchanek.name/texts/atheis... #atheism #universe

When fatty acids are thrown into water, their heads turn towards the water and their tails turn away from it. They form the basis of a cell -- without any divine intervention. More at suchanek.name/texts/atheis... Image CC0 LadyOfHats #biology #atheism #life

Every story for the origin of the Universe, religious or otherwise, runs into the same puzzle: What came before the beginning? Read here what science knows and does not know: suchanek.name/texts/atheis... #science #atheism #astronomy

When you realize the universe is more than 93 billion light-years across, it starts feeling a bit pretentious to think it was made just for us. More at suchanek.name/texts/atheis... #science #astronomy #atheism

Yes, the Earth is at the center of the observable universe! Not by divine design, though, but simply because we can see equally far in every direction. We don't know what is beyond what we can see. More at suchanek.name/texts/atheis... #space #astronomy #science

The Universe is so large that it takes the light of the farthest stars we see billions of years to reach us. Thus, the stars we see are those that existed billions of years ago. More at suchanek.name/texts/atheis... #science #poetry #Romania #astronomy

Mars traces a loop in the sky. Here is why: The Earth (blue) overtakes Mars (red) while both turn around the Sun. In this process, Mars seems first left, then right, then left again, and then right. More at suchanek.name/texts/atheis... #space #universe #planet #earth #science #svg

The Earth revolves around the Sun. Or does it? How do we actually know? Find out at suchanek.name/texts/atheis... #space #universe #earth

The Atheist Bible -- finally a bible that tells you that the Earth is round. More at suchanek.name/texts/atheis... #universe #science #earth #airport #funfact