Just can’t get enough of Richard Feynman. Legend.
Just can’t get enough of Richard Feynman. Legend.
LGBTQ* Quotes and Quips
Popular Quotes and Quips
Yep, this. There was a Sagan quote on similar lines, but since I’ve not posted any Steven Pinker quotes. :)
This quote is part of Pinker’s answer to the question: Can You Believe in God and Evolution? His complete answer was:
It’s natural to think that living things must be the handiwork of a designer. But it was also natural to think that the sun went around the earth. Overcoming naive impressions to figure out how things really work is one of humanity’s highest callings.
Our own bodies are riddled with quirks that no competent engineer would have planned but that disclose a history of trial-and-error tinkering: a retina installed backward, a seminal duct that hooks over the ureter like a garden hose snagged on a tree, goose bumps that uselessly try to warm us by fluffing up long-gone fur.
The moral design of nature is as bungled as its engineering design. What twisted sadist would have invented a parasite that blinds millions of people or a gene that covers babies with excruciating blisters? To adapt a Yiddish expression about God: If an intelligent designer lived on Earth, people would break his windows.
The theory of natural selection explains life as we find it, with all its quirks and tragedies. We can prove mathematically that it is capable of producing adaptive life forms and track it in computer simulations, lab experiments and real ecosystems. It doesn’t pretend to solve one mystery (the origin of complex life) by slipping in another (the origin of a complex designer).
Many people who accept evolution still feel that a belief in God is necessary to give life meaning and to justify morality. But that is exactly backward. In practice, religion has given us stonings, inquisitions and 9/11. Morality comes from a commitment to treat others as we wish to be treated, which follows from the realization that none of us is the sole occupant of the universe. Like physical evolution, it does not require a white-coated technician in the sky.
Can You Believe in God and Evolution? Time Magazine, August 7, 2005
~ Kim
"Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction."
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Blaise Pascal, French philosopher, Pensees (1623-1662)
[Yes it’s that Pascal]
(via nonplussedbyreligion)
"I’m offended by [evangelical leaders’] actions, but I’m not offended by their opinion. They believe in a sky god who’s going to suck them up into the sky with a vacuum cleaner. What’s there to get offended by? That’s funny! That’s hilarious! Have at it, Hoss, I’d love to see it!"
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Cenk Uygur, speech to FFRF’s 2010 National Convention accepting the Emperor Has No Clothes Award
For my TYT fans who care about these things, today is also his birthday.
(via nonplussedbyreligion)
"Naturally since the Sumerians didn’t know what caused the flood any more than we do, they blamed the gods. (That’s the advantage of religion. You’re never short an explanation for anything.)"
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Isaac Asimov
I’m having an Asimov day. There will probably be more later. :)
"This right of privacy, whether it be founded in the Fourteenth Amendment’s concept of personal liberty and restrictions upon state action, as we feel it is, or, as the District Court determined, in the Ninth Amendment’s reservation of rights to the people, is broad enough to encompass a woman’s decision whether or not to terminate her pregnancy. The detriment that the State would impose upon the pregnant woman by denying this choice altogether is apparent. Specific and direct harm medically diagnosable even in early pregnancy may be involved. Maternity, or additional offspring, may force upon the woman a distressful life and future. Psychological harm may be imminent. Mental and physical health may be taxed by child care. There is also the distress, for all concerned, associated with the unwanted child, and there is the problem of bringing a child into a family already unable, psychologically and otherwise, to care for it. In other cases, as in this one, the additional difficulties and continuing stigma of unwed motherhood may be involved. All these are factors the woman and her responsible physician necessarily will consider in consultation."
- Roe v. Wade Issued
— Justice Blackmun, for the majority, Roe v. Wade (via nonplussedbyreligion)
(Source: ffrf.org, via nonplussedbyreligion-deactivate)
"One of the two major American political parties has been taken over by its most vicious and reckless element. The Southern racists of the old Democratic Party, defenders of lynch mobs, were a nasty bunch to be sure, but they didn’t run the national Party, nor could they win its presidential nomination for one of their own. The first Southerner nominated by Democrats since the Civil War was a champion of civil rights and of government aid to the poor. He was so hated by the Southern conservatives that they left the Democratic Party and joined the Republican, where they acquired instant influence. Their descendants are the backbone of the Tea Bagger movement. The Baggers’ rise is not due solely to their own aggressiveness, though they have plenty of that. They’ve formed an alliance with the corporations, who need footsoldiers for the class warfare they wage relentlessly. The corporations pay the Baggers to fight against their own best economic interests – fairer taxation, better health care, higher wages – and the Baggers are willing as long as they’re also allowed to harass people of the wrong race or religion or nationality or sexual inclination. They’re happily hateful."
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Arkansas Times (via azspot)
All of this. The old Dixiecrats have reared their ugly heads again.
(via timekiller-s)
(via stfuconservatives)