#skeptic

Surely we cannot take an open question like the supernatural and shut it with a bang, turning the key of the madhouse on all the mystics of history. You cannot take the region of the unknown and calmly say that, though you know nothing about it, you know all the gates are locked. We do not know enough about the unknown to know that it is unknowable. ↗

— G.K. Chesterton

#mysticism #skepticism #faith

There was a time when skepticism was an act of rebellion. Since to a degree I both believe in evolution and have faith, I can only conclude that, as prophesied, to have faith will someday be an act of rebellion. ↗

— Criss Jami

#apologetics #atheism #evolution #faith #god

Blind belief in authority is the greatest enemy of truth. ↗

— Albert Einstein

#freedom-of-thought #independent-thought #skepticism #freedom

Skepticism, not cleanliness, is next to godliness. Skepticism is the father of freedom. It is like the pry that holds open the door for truth to slip in. ↗

— Gerry Spence

#skepticism #freedom

Some information is classified legitimately; as with military hardware, secrecy sometimes really is in the national interest. Further, military, political, and intelligence communities tend to value secrecy for its own sake. It's a way of silencing critics and evading responsibility - for incompetence or worse. It generates an elite, a band of brothers in whom the national confidence can be reliably vested, unlike the great mass of citizenry on whose behalf the information is presumably made secret in the first place. With a few exceptions, secrecy is deeply incompatible with democracy and with science. ↗

— Carl Sagan

#rationality #science #skepticism #intelligence

La duda es uno de los nombres de la inteligencia. ↗

— Jorge Luis Borges

#doubt #inteligencia #intelligence #la-duda #skepticism

In order to seek truth, it is necessary once in the course of our life to doubt, as far as possible, of all things. ↗

— René Descartes

#life

It is my firm conviction that man has nothing to gain, emotionally or otherwise, by adhering to a falsehood, regardless of how comfortable or sacred that falsehood may appear. Anyone who claims, on the one hand, that he is concerned with human welfare, and who demands, on the other hand, that man must suspend or renounce the use of his reason, is contradicting himself. There can be no knowledge of what is good for man apart from knowledge of reality and human nature, and there is no manner in which this knowledge can be acquired except through reason. To advocate irrationality is to advocate that which is destructive to human life. ↗

— George H. Smith

#religion #skepticism #life

Holy Writ was intended to teach men how to go to Heaven not how the heavens go. ↗

— Galileo Galilei

#science #skepticism #men

It Begins with skepticism. The history of human folly, and our own susceptibility to illusions and fallacies, tell us that men and women are fallible. ↗

— Steven Pinker

#skepticism #men