For centuries, the battle of morality was fought between those who

claimed that your life belongs to God and those who claimed that it belongs

to your neighbors—between those who preached that the good is selfsacrifice

for the sake of ghosts in heaven and those who preached that the

good is self-sacrifice for the sake of incompetents on earth. And no one

came to say that your life belongs to you and that the good is to live it.

“Both sides agreed that morality demands the surrender of your selfinterest

and of your mind, that the moral and the practical are opposites, that

morality is not the province of reason, but the province of faith and force.

Both sides agreed that no rational morality is possible, that there is no right

or wrong in reason—that in reason there’s no reason to be moral.