#th

By all means let's be open-minded, but not so open-minded that our brains drop out. -this quote is actually found in Carl Sagan's book The Demon Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark, where he attributes it to engineer James Oberg, who says he stole it from someone else. ↗

— Richard Dawkins

#good-advice #science

For, after all, how do we know that two and two make four? Or that the force of gravity works? Or that the past is unchangeable? If both the past and the external world exist only in the mind, and if the mind itself is controllable – what then? ↗

— George Orwell

#logic #metaphysics #ontology #philosophy #psychology

I want to put on the table, not why 85% of the members of the National Academy of Sciences reject God, I want to know why 15% of the National Academy don’t. ↗

— Neil deGrasse Tyson

#science #science

We owe a huge debt to Galileo for emancipating us all from the stupid belief in an Earth-centered or man-centered (let alone God-centered) system. He quite literally taught us our place and allowed us to go on to make extraordinary advances in knowledge. ↗

— Christopher Hitchens

#atheism #enlightenment #galileo #geocentricism #god

The split in America, rather than simply economic, is between those who embrace reason, who function in the real world of cause and effect, and those who, numbed by isolation and despair, now seek meaning in a mythical world of intuition, a world that is no longer reality-based, a world of magic. ↗

— Chris Hedges

#christianity #dominionism #dominionists #evangelists #fascism

As a child, I was aware that, at night, infrared vision would reveal monsters hiding in the bedroom closet only if they were warm-blooded. But everybody knows that your average bedroom monster is reptilian and cold-blooded. ↗

— Neil deGrasse Tyson

#monsters-in-the-dark #science #science

Those who are enslaved to their sects are not merely devoid of all sound knowledge, but they will not even stop to learn! ↗

— Claudius Galenus

#learning #science #truth #science

The essence of science is that it is always willing to abandon a given idea for a better one; the essence of theology is that it holds its truths to be eternal and immutable. ↗

— H.L. Mencken

#science #theory #truth #religion

People wrap themselves in their beliefs. And they do it in such a way that you can't set them free. Not even the truth will set them free. ↗

— Michael Specter

#atheism #denialism #fundamentalism #michael-specter #science

The anthropologists got it wrong when they named our species Homo sapiens ('wise man'). In any case it's an arrogant and bigheaded thing to say, wisdom being one of our least evident features. In reality, we are Pan narrans, the storytelling chimpanzee. ↗

— Terry Pratchett

#chimpanzees #humanity #stories #science