#science

Why do humans exist? A major part of the answer: because Pikaia Gracilens survived the Burgess decimation. ↗

— Christopher Hitchens

#atheist #god #noremorse #science #religion

Progress is born of doubt and inquiry. The Church never doubts, never inquires. To doubt is heresy, to inquire is to admit that you do not know—the Church does neither. ↗

— Robert G. Ingersoll

#science #skepticism #religion

There are many sources of spirituality; religion may be the most common, but it is by no means the only. Anything that generates a sense of awe may be a source of spirituality. Science does this in spades. ↗

— Michael Shermer

#science #religion

Science can destroy religion by ignoring it as well as by disproving its tenets. No one ever demonstrated, so far as I am aware, the nonexistence of Zeus or Thor, but they have few followers now. ↗

— Arthur C. Clarke

#science #religion

Science has carried us to the gateway to the universe. And yet our conception of our surroundings remains the disproportionate view of the still-small child. We are spiritually and culturally paralyzed, unable to face the vastness, to embrace our lack of centrality and find our actual place in the fabric of nature. We batter this planet as if we had someplace else to go. That we even do science is a hopeful glimmer of mental health. However, it's not enough merely to accept these insights intellectually while we cling to a spiritual ideology that is not only rootless in nature but also, in many ways, contemptuous of what is natural. ↗

— Ann Druyan

#science #skepticism #nature

Scientists have power by virtue of the respect commanded by the discipline... We live with poets and politicians, preachers and philosophers. All have their ways of knowing, and all are valid in their proper domain. The world is too complex and interesting for one way to hold all the answers. ↗

— Stephen Jay Gould

#science #nature

The mentally disturbed do not employ the Principle of Scientific Parsimony: the most simple theory to explain a given set of facts. They shoot for the baroque. ↗

— Philip K. Dick

#mentally-disturbed #religion #science #religion

Anyone who values truth should stop worshipping reason. ↗

— Jonathan Haidt

#science #religion

Science is built of facts the way a house is built of bricks; but an accumulation of facts is no more science than a pile of bricks is a house ↗

— Henri Poincaré

#science

If you don't understand how something works, never mind: just give up and say God did it. You don't know how the nerve impulse works? Good! You don't understand how memories are laid down in the brain? Excellent! Is photosynthesis a bafflingly complex process? Wonderful! Please don't go to work on the problem, just give up, and appeal to God. ↗

— Richard Dawkins

#religion #science #religion