"The meaning of the world is the separation of wish and fact." - KURT GÖDEL
"According to Peirce's doctrine of fallibilism, the conclusions of science are always tentative. The rationality of the scientific method does not depend on the certainty of its conclusions, but on its self-corrective character: by continued application of the method science can detect and correct its own mistakes, and thus eventually lead to the discovery of truth".
A guiding principle for accepting claims of catastrophic global events, miracles, incredible healing, invisible friends, or fill in the blank is:
“extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.” - Carl Sagan
"Faith may be defined briefly as an illogical belief in the occurrence of the improbable." - H. L. Mencken
I would add irrational and highly delusional to the mix when faith requires one to accept magical violations of the well known, well tested or easily demonstrated laws of Nature. - PWL
"Science is Progress and the Future. Faith is regression to the Dark Ages." - PWL
“It pays to keep an open mind, but not so open your brains fall out.” - Carl Sagan
"It is far better to grasp the universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring." - Carl Sagan
"Two important characteristics of maps should be noticed. A map is not the territory it represents, but, if correct, it has a similar structure to the territory, which accounts for its usefulness." - Alfred Korzybski
"Science is a search for basic truths about the Universe, a search which develops statements that appear to describe how the Universe works, but which are subject to correction, revision, adjustment, or even outright rejection, upon the presentation of better or conflicting evidence." - James Randi
"Hypotheses are nets: only he who casts will catch." - Novalis
"Nullius in verba. Take no one's word for it." - Motto of the Royal Society
"I'm trying to find out NOT how Nature could be, but how Nature IS." - Richard Feynman
"The improver of natural knowledge absolutely refuses to acknowledge authority, as such. For him, scepticism is the highest of duties; blind faith the one unpardonable sin." - Thomas Henry Huxley
“A foolish faith in authority is the worst enemy of truth.” Albert Einstein
"Science is empirical. Knowing the answer means nothing. Testing your knowledge means everything." - Lawrence Krauss
"Skepticism is the agent of reason against organized irrationalism - and is therefore one of the keys to human social and civic decency." - Stephen Jay Gould
"Science is best defined as a careful, disciplined, logical search for knowledge about any and all aspects of the universe, obtained by examination of the best available evidence and always subject to correction and improvement upon discovery of better evidence. What's left is magic. And it doesn't work." - James Randi
“I will not respect a book of lies. I will not tolerate intolerance.
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What we are witnessing are efforts by authorities to confer special secular and legal privilege on the intangible aura of sacredness — a figment of the imagination of deluded believers, which they insist all we non-believers must honor.
“It is only those who claim to know things like the mind of god and the origins and destination and intention of the universe, it is they, and only they who owe the explanation, and so far this evening haven’t cared to furnish it.” – Christopher Hitchens.
OK, stop the presses, there is an article about study done by NCAR on the simulation of winds and how that might move water in dramatic ways. That is all fine and good except for the connection to the following religious notions and the fact that US Government Funds were used in this obviously religious study in violation of the strict Separation of Church and State in the USA.
“The parting of the waters described in the book of Exodus that enabled Moses and the Israelites to escape the pharaoh’s army is possible, computer simulations run by researchers at the National Center for Atmospheric Research and the University of Colorado at Boulder show.
To test the theory that the biblical account may have depicted actual events, the researchers studied maps of the region, archaeological records and satellite measurements to find a topographical feature where such an event might have been possible. They settled on an area south of the Mediterranean Sea where some oceanographers say a branch of the Nile River drained into what was called the Lake of Tanis, a coastal lagoon 3,000 years ago. Read the rest of this entry »
“[Pope Joseph] Ratzinger is an enemy of humanity… for baring women from the priesthood as if a penis is an essential tool for pastoral duties!” ~ Richard Dawkins, 18th September 2010, London, England
Hitler was a Roman Catholic Christian as is evident from his own writings and speeches:
“The anti-Semitism of the new movement (Christian Social movement) was based on religious ideas instead of racial knowledge.” – Adolf Hitler, “Mein Kampf”, Vol. 1, Chapter 3
“I believe today that I am acting in the sense of the Almighty Creator. By warding off the Jews I am fighting for the Lord’s work.” – Adolph Hitler, Speech, Reichstag, 1936
‘The poster was printed for the Reichstag election of 12 November 1933, when voters were already being presented with a single list of candidates to be approved or rejected as a group: the “Hitler list”. The poster is titled “Why is a Catholic obliged to vote for the parliamentary list of Adolf Hitler?” It answers this question by enumerating the benefits to the Church of the concordat negotiated by Pius XII, and signed just months before.
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Translation
Why is a Catholic obliged to vote for the parliamentary list of Adolf Hitler? Because in the National Socialist state intrinsically and through the Reichskonkordat
1. the Faith is protected,
2. peace with the Church is assured,
3. public morality is preserved,
4. Sunday is hallowed,
5. Catholic schools are maintained,
6. the Catholic conscience is no longer burdened,
7. a Catholic has equal rights before the law and in the life of the nation,
8. Catholic organisations and associations, insofar as they exclusively serve religious, charitable and cultural purposes, can operate freely. Therefore a Catholic is obliged on 12 November [1933] to vote thus:
Referendum: yes
Parliamentary election: Adolf Hitler
“I have followed [the Church in giving our party program the character of unalterable finality, like the Creed. The Church has never allowed the Creed to be interfered with. It is fifteen hundred years since it was formulated, but every suggestion for its amendment, every logical criticism, or attack on it, has been rejected. The Church has realized that anything and everything can be built up on a document of that sort, no matter how contradictory or irreconcilable with it. The faithful will swallow it whole, so long as logical reasoning is never allowed to be brought to bear on it.” – Adolf Hitler, from Rauschning, The Voice of Destruction, pp. 239-40
Richard Dawkins gives an epic speech on the topic of Pope Joeseph Ratzinger’s anti-atheist statements.
“When the Lord your God brings you into the land you are to entering to possess, and drives out before you many nations, and you have defeated them, then you must destroy them totally. Make no treaty with them and show them no mercy. Do not all any of them to live. This is what you are to do to them: break down their altars, smash their sacred stones, cut down their trees and burn them in the fire. For you are a people chosen by the Lord over all others on the face of the Earth.” – From the Old Testament of the Bible, Deuteronomy 7: 1-2, 5-6.
When God is on our side we can commit any crime. We are absolved individually from that crime by believing that we have a higher sanction and that is the danger of religion in that it allows people to do that, it allows them to kill without a shred of conscience. ” – Kevin Annett, former minister
Kevin Annett was expelled from the United Church for bring this matter of their crimes to their attention. Finally a priest with some actual ethics and morals who wouldn’t take it up the ass from his church hierarchy. Read the rest of this entry »
Professor James Duane and Officer George Bruch talk about why you should never talk to the police.
James Duane is a Regent University School of Law professor and Fifth Amendment expert.[1] He has come under fire for his suggestion to never talk to police under any circumstances.[2][3] His reasoning is that police sometimes lie to criminal suspects; police may have substantial evidence against even innocent witnesses; and individuals convinced of their own innocence may have unknowingly committed some crime.[4] This is along the lines of Justice Robert Jackson’s reasoning in Watts v. Indiana. [*1]
“Everything he [Professor James Duane] said was true, and it was right and it was correct.” – Officer George Bruch
“Though the videos are reflective of American law, the principles are largely applicable here in Canada. Though we do not have a 5th Amendment, Canadians have long had a right to silence which is now constitutionally entrenched in s. 7 of the Charter (see R. v. Singh, 2007 SCC 48 for a discussion).” – [*2]
Let’s explore this by way of two very interesting conversations, one from philosopher and physicist Paul Davies and the other from Stephen Wolfram.
Philosopher and physicist Paul Davies give a fascinating and thought-provoking talk on the possibility of an ultimate explanation for our universe. Dismissing the multiverse and God, he outlines an idea for finding an explanation for the universe and physical laws within the universe itself.