We face two deep and fundamental threats to psychological and social stability: religious fundamentalism (on the right, essentially) and moral relativism/nihilism (on the left). To buttress ourselves in a somewhat permanent manner against those threats, we require the development of value system grounded in something non-arbitrary—something real.

The domain of real is the factual domain: factual as defined by science. We can begin with the most basic and necessary of facts. Lives differ in their quality. Some lives are self-evidently bad. Such lives are composed primarily of privation and subjugation to tyranny. They are nasty, brutal and short (to paraphrase the philosopher Hobbes). Other lives are comparatively good. The people living them are not materially deprived in any vital sense, and have a range of opportunities for living meaningful and productive lives in front of them. We can all agree that the bad life is bad and the good life is good.

We can foster well-being (Harris’s term for the primary aspect of the good life) and help people flourish. We can and should inform the idea of well-being and flourishing with empirical data.

This does not mean, however, that all spiritual ideas are without grounding. But we need to dispense with the dogma within which they are ensconced, as it tends toward a counterproductive fundamentalism.