Just what we need another puritannical Christian "moralist".

Human beings are intrinsically driven to obtain/achieve pleasure. Indeed everything we do is motivated by that urge, even the seemingly most ordinary day to day repetitive habits, to say nothing of the most bizarre even self-destructive habits and actions.

But unbridled utilitarianism has always been the dominant "ethic" exercised by Christians and dramatized by them on to the world stage. As pictured and described in these references.

http://www.dartmouth.edu/~spanmod/mural/panel21.html
http://www.jesusneverexisted.com/cruelty.html
Also Google
Columbus and Other Cannibals by Jack Forbes
The American Holocaust by David Stannard
God Is Red & Custer Died For Your Sins by Vive Deloria Jnr.
Then of course there was/is what is described here - the politics of cruelty 101
http://www.logosjournal.com/hammer_kellner
http://www.vaticancrimes.us

Plus every cultural and tribal group has always used a range of intoxicants and mind-altering substances - such is an indelible aspect of the human condition. It is a well known principle of the human psyche that when there is wide-spread repression of the pleasure-principle either individually or collectively then what is repressed will "return" in aberrated forms, including at the collective level wars of conquest and cruelty.

On the face of it you seem to begrudge the results of 2000 years of Christianity shaping western society... or do you not believe it has?

And how is this:

"It is, for instance, very hard to measure or predict the outcomes of an action and sometimes we simply get such calculations wrong. We are not always very good at judging the potential results of our own choices and their impact on others."

any different to anything anyone has ever done because of religious conviction?

You don't even seem pleased that those intellectuals "remained interested in what constitutes a good life."

But I sympathize...

As you say, "We all resonate with the desire for more happiness and less suffering." and it is obviously difficult for anyone to believe that God has the most unlimited power to produce less suffering and doesn't.

Oh, the irony, that someone with such a stunted understanding of Utilitarianism should share the name of one of its most renowned proponents.

I might add that I have my own reservations regarding Utilitarianism, but the author's representation is of a par with describing the Bible as 'about, y'know, Jesus and stuff'.

Fascinating, the labels some people use.

>>It was Utilitarian thinking that energised and enabled the era of post 9-11 "enhanced interrogation" techniques-"Whatever it takes" being the explicit mantra of the Bush administration.<<

But was it Utilitarian thinking that created 9/11 in the first place? Or was it perhaps the result of over-identification with a particular set of religious beliefs?

Indeed, so many conflicts throughout the ages have germinated from religious "differences" - even between those who profess to believe in the same God.

Nope. Utilitarianism can go free, the evidence is inadmissible m'lud