Quotes About Philosophy

There is more than just grandeur in this view of life, bleak and cold though it can seem from under the security blanket of ignorance. There is deep refreshment to be had from standing up and facing straight into the strong keen wind of understanding: Yeats's 'Winds that blow through the starry ways'.

Indeed, to claim a supernatural explanation of something is not to explain it at all and, even worse, to rule out any possibility of its ever being explained.

But if science cannot answer some ultimate question, what makes anybody think that religion can?

And some scientists and other intellectuals are convinced—too eagerly in my view—that the question of God's existence belongs in the forever inaccessible PAP category. From this, as we shall see, they often make the illogical deduction that the hypothesis of God's existence, and the hypothesis of his non-existence, have exactly equal probability of being right.

That scientifically savvy philosopher Daniel Dennett pointed out that evolution counters one of the oldest ideas we have: 'the idea that it takes a big fancy smart thing to make a lesser thing. I call that the trickle-down theory of creation.

An atheist in this sense of philosophical naturalist is somebody who believes there is nothing beyond the natural, physical world, no supernatural creative intelligence lurking behind the observable universe, no soul that outlasts the body and no miracles—except in the sense of natural phenomena that we don't yet understand. If

Philosophy and the subjects known as 'humanities' are still taught almost as if Darwin had never lived.

I will not utter falsehoods but I have no objection to making meaningless statements.

Goodness is no part of the definition of the God Hypothesis, merely a desirable add-on.

Pascal's Wager could only ever be an argument for feigning belief in God. And the God that you claim to believe in had better not be of the omniscient kind or he'd see through the deception.

Mark Twain's dismissal of the fear of death is another: 'I do not fear death. I had been dead for billions and billions of years before I was born, and had not suffered the slightest inconvenience from it.

some people, educationally over-endowed with the tools of philosophy, cannot resist poking in their scholarly apparatus where it isn't helpful. I am reminded of P. B. Medawar's remark about the attractions of 'philosophy-fiction' to 'a large population of people, often with well-developed literary and scholarly tastes, who have been educated far beyond their capacity to undertake analytical thought'.

Panteizim uyar?lm?? ateizmdir. Deizm suland?r?lm?? teizmdir.

We can give up belief in God while not losing touch with a treasured heritage.

how unordered atoms could group themselves into ever more complex patterns until they ended up manufacturing people.

If we are going to allow ourselves the luxury of postulating organized complexity without offering an explanation, we might as well make a job of it and simply postulate the existence of life as we know it!

Perhaps Islam is analogous to a carnivorous gene complex, Buddhism to a herbivorous one.

I am saying how things have evolved. I am not saying how we humans morally ought to behave. I stress this, because I know I am in danger of being misunderstood by those people, all too numerous, who cannot distinguish a statement of belief in what is the case from an advocacy of what ought to be the case.

Smolin's idea, expounded in The Life of the Cosmos, hinges

What kind of ethical philosophy is it that condemns every child, even before it is born, to inherit the sin of a remote ancestor? Augustine

As many atheists have said better than me, the knowledge that we have only one life should make it all the more precious.

These beliefs contradict each other, so they can't be all right

Bertrand Russell was asked what he would say if he died and found himself confronted by God, demanding to know why Russell had not believed in him. 'Not enough evidence, God, not enough evidence,' was Russell's (I almost said immortal) reply.

Reason should be destroyed in all Christians.