"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
“It is reported that the Government is considering bestowing a peerage on Cardinal Cormac Murphy O’Connor, the Archbishop of Westminster and head of the Roman Catholic Church in England. In light of the ‘paedophile priest’ scandals in his Church’s recent past and his appalling leadership failures in dealing with these matters, Murphy O’Connor has demonstrated himself to be unfit to take any place in Parliament and should NOT be given such a reward.”
If you’re a human being, you’re a human being… I don’t get why you’d think otherwise… being agnostic just means that you have yet to figure out the facts of life… you’re hoping for immortality that won’t ever come… the objective reality of Nature is full of joyous wonder as well as stark horrors. Mortality and the permanent death with utter obliteration and NO chance of a second life in a magical hell or heaven is one of those horrors. Get over it or not, figure it out or not, when death comes to life that’s the end in all ways.
fixman88 said
I’m an Agnostic, does that make me half human? Just wondering.
pwl said
If you’re a human being, you’re a human being… I don’t get why you’d think otherwise… being agnostic just means that you have yet to figure out the facts of life… you’re hoping for immortality that won’t ever come… the objective reality of Nature is full of joyous wonder as well as stark horrors. Mortality and the permanent death with utter obliteration and NO chance of a second life in a magical hell or heaven is one of those horrors. Get over it or not, figure it out or not, when death comes to life that’s the end in all ways.