When a thing has been said and said well, have no scruple. Take it and copy it. -- Anatole France Word count: 135,000+ Index of Topics: Misc Failibility Education Schools TCS (Taking Children Seriously) Parenting Children Coercion Force ARR (autonomy respecting relationships) Intelligence Wisdom Reason Meaning Truth Logic Science : General Immortality Philosophy Drugs Knowledge Ignorance Epistemology Language Post structuralism Memetics Chaos Order Complexity Freedom Responsibility Abundance Politics Government Law Love Advice (on how to live) : General Little Things (are important) You must do (that which you think you cannot) How to achieve contentment Release Control Nature of Life Life as Adventure NLP Emotion Friendship What is a man? Poetry Aging Fifty Proverbs Time Religion : Misc General Against Christianity: General Faith History : General Hitler Bible : Commentary Verses: Contradictory Errant Ridiculous Good Misc Terrible Belief Fear Freethought : General Awareness Consciousness Experience Science Einstein and the religiousness of Reason 65 Million Years of Mammalian Experience Agnosticism Atheism Extropy Extropians Singularity Transhumanism Virus Virian Empathy Parallel Lateral Bottomup Psychology Heaven Hell Afterlife God Buddhism Zen Taoism Existentialism Eschatology Conviction Level 3 Satanism Pagan Pantheism Discordian SubGenius (divide?) Politics Government Evolution Creationism Abortion Humour Humour A couple of things *you* could do for me: a) if you find a duplicate, let me know, so I can remove it. b) if you find a quotation out of place, let me know, so I can move it. (this should be especially common now that I've doubled the number of categories) c) if you find any thing mis-attributed, or you know who to attribute a quotation to, let me know, and I'll change it. and finally, d) if you have any quotation you think I'd like, send it to me and I might include it! (of more interest, is there any *topic* which is clearly missing from my file?) (is it just me, or do I seem to end up doing everything around this place?) E-mail: 6ceb3@qlink.queensu.ca Let the fun begin! ------------------------------------------------------------------**** Misc: As for vicissitudes of fortune and other disappointments connected with worldly circumstances, these are principally the effect either of gross imprudence, of ill-regulated desires, or of bad or imperfect social institutions. All the grand sources, in short, of human suffering are in a great degree, many of them almost entirely, conquerable by human care and effort; and though their removal is grievously slow-though a long succession of generations will perish in the breach before the conquest is completed, and this world becomes all that, if will and knowledge were not wanting, it might easily be made-yet every mind sufficiently intelligent and generous to bear a part, however small and inconspicuous, in the endeavor will draw a noble enjoyment from the contest itself, which he would not for any bribe in the form of selfish indulgence consent to be without. -- John Stuart Mill Beware of altruism. It is based on self-deception, the root of all evil. One can acquire everything in solitude but character. -- Stendhal "A good scientist is a person with original ideas. [A good artist is a person with original ideas.] A good engineer is a person who makes a design that works with as few original ideas as possible. There are no prima donnas in engineering." -- Freeman Dyson Talent is formed in still waters; character in the world's torrent. -- Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe "War does not determine who's right; war determines who's left." -- unknown ******* The hero, in living her own life, in being true to herself -- radiates a light by which others may see their own way. -- Laurence G. Boldt ******* Prejudice is the reason of fools. -- Voltaire If we want to bring light to the world, we have to be that light. When we're real with people, they sense the light in us and feel an opening within themselves. If someone is speaking from his or her authentic passion, we can feel the truth behind every word and gesture. Our radar responds with warmth, openness, and a desire to support and connect with that person. -- Lee Glickstein e (for he/she) em (for him/her) eir (for his/her) eirs (for his/hers) emself (for himself/herself) You don't have to go very far off the interpreted path to find yourself in very difficult situations. The courage to face the trials and to bring a whole new body of possibilities into the field of interpreted experience for other people to experience -- that is the hero's deed. -- Joseph Campbell If imagination is not set to the task of building a creative life, it busies itself with weaving a web of inner fears and doubts, blame and excuse. -- Laurence G. Boldt Human kindness has never weakened the stamina or softened the fiber of a free people. A nation does not have to be cruel in order to be tough. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt When you assume you make an 'ass' of 'u' and 'me'. The harder I work the luckier I get. -- Samuel Goldwyn ******* America has embraced nihilism *without* confronting the abyss that lies at it's center. -- Eric Boyd ******* The jury has the power to bring in a verdict in the teeth of both the law and the facts. -- Justice Holmes, Homing v District of Columbia, 138 (1920) If the jury feels the law is unjust, we recognize the undisputed power of the jury to acquit, even if its verdict is contrary to the law as given by a judge, and contrary to the evidence. -- 4th Circuit Court of Appeals, US v Moylan, 1969 But there's something even more important than that. To condone the censorship of *any* opinions -- to do anything less than wholeheartedly oppose every last instance of it and every last excuse for it -- is to concede that on a level playing field, false ideas will win against true ones. Wrong will win against right. And as soon as we concede that, TCS may as well give up, or merge with the Treating Children like Shit List. This is a core value we can't compromise on. -- David Deutsch , on the TCS mailing list Mortal Engines: "There are more possibilities in matter than in our heads; the thing to do, then, is provide matter with a mouth, that it may tell us itself what else can be created from it, which would never cross our minds!" -- Stanislaw Lem Listen: as I've said before there are basically just 4 types of power in the world. These are: 1. Money. Let's face it; if you're Bill Gates, with 8 billion bucks in your checking account, you've got some major clout. I don't just mean with women either; that kinda cash buys you lots of attention and co-operation. 2. Physical beauty. Uh-huh. No question about it; especially if you are a beautiful young woman, your power in our society is enormous. A 19 year old babe with a Penthouse body has the same power as a guy who's worked most of his adult life to build up his fortune. 3. Violence/force. Sad to say, the ability/willingness to use force to achieve your goals is very much in evidence in our world, and more and more members of society seem to be turning to this. 4. Persuasion. Ah-hah. Although there are plenty of examples of folks in the first 3 categories, how many people do you know who have mastered this art? The cool thing is, if you do master persuasion you can... -- Ross Jeffries, http://www.seduction.com/news/gln04.html I don't have time for your pathetic subtlety. -- Ross Jefferies Of those who say nothing, few are silent. -- Thomas Neill The thoughtless are rarely wordless. -- Howard W. Newton "How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world That has such people in it!" -- William Shakespeare, The Tempest V.i.l. 186-7 In our country are evangelists and zealots of many different political, economic and religious persuasions whose fanatical conviction is that all thought is divinely classified into two kinds -- that which is their own and that which is false and dangerous. -- Justice Robert H. Jackson ******* But then, maybe, fragmenting the nonsensical domain and removing rotten minds from areas of serious discussions would clear up the stage for more productive debates - just as the expense of supporting the army may be compensated by the social liberation resulting from the isolation of the military types from the civil cultural scene... -- Sasha Chislenko , on the CoV mailing list ******* I've noticed this occurrs in pop-psychology all too often. A perfectly straightforward word is redefined in a tortured, illogical, and not particularly useful way in order to generate enough cognitive dissonance in the potential reader to induce them to purchase the book. -- Darin Sunley , on the extropians mailing list "...the question whether we have the right to take our own life. As far as concerns the personal claims which others may possibly have upon us, they are subject to the condition that we are alive, and fall to the ground when we die. To demand of a man, who does not care to live any longer for himself, that he should live on as a mere machine for the advantage of others is an extravagant pretension." -- Schopenhauer, "On Government" Start to be what they want you to be And you see yourself as they see you "Out of one foolish word may start a thousand daggers." -- Jeremy Bentham "I should see the garden far better," said Alice to herself, "if I could get to the top of that hill: and here's a path that leads straight to it -- at least, no, it doesn't do that --" (after going a few yards along the path and turning several sharp corners), "but I suppose it will at last. But how curiously it twists! It's more like a corkscrew than a path! Well, *this* turn goes to the hill, I suppose -- no, it doesn't! This goes straight back to the house! Well then, I'll try it the other way." -- Lewis Caroll, Through the Looking Glass I think it can be dangerous for young writers to be modest when they're young. I've known a number of truly talented writers who did less than they could have done because they weren't vain and unpleasant enough about their talent. You have to take it seriously. -- Norman Mailer It is well to remember that the entire universe, with one trifling exception, is composed of others. -- John Andrew Holmes "Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain," the voice thundered. Our problem results from acting like cowboys on a limitless frontier when in truth we inhabit a living spaceship with a finely balanced life-support system." -- David C. Korton John Dewey said, "The existence of something is a matter of fact, not desire." -- |ACRONYM - A Capitalized Representation Of Names You Memorise| Reflecting on the source of impulse, of habits, is the first step in getting control of one's psychic energy. Knowing the origin of motives, and becoming aware of our biases is the prerequisite for freedom. -- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi Covering the true causes of urban violence would mean taking on some of the most difficult and sensitive issues in American life -- race, poverty, welfare systems, law enforcement. Many journalists, like academics, have come to fear such issues; probing them inevitably brings accusations of racism or some other form of bigotry. Blaming violence on media and culture is easier and safer, both for journalists and for opportunistic politicians. -- Jon Katz Every event that one would master must be mounted on the run, and no one ever caught the reins of a thought except as it galloped past. -- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. Controversy equalizes fools and wise men and the fools know it. -- Oliver Wendell Holmes Pastor Niemoeller's famous words might help focus your thinking: "When the Nazis came for the Communists I said nothing; I was not a Communist. When they came for the Social Democrats I said nothing; I was not a Social Democrat. When they came for the Catholics I did not protest; I was not a Catholic. Then they came for me but there was no one left to speak up for me". You may talk of the tyranny of Nero or Tiberius; but the real tyranny is the tyranny of your next-door neighbor. Public opinion is a permeating influence, and it exacts obedience to itself; it requires us to think other men's thoughts, to speak other men's words, to follow other men's habits. -- Walter Bagehot Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have the exact measure of the injustice and wrong which will be imposed on them. -- Frederick Douglass Anyone who acts in the power of the Spirit is going to gain a reputation as a compelling person. When that happens, temptation grows--the temptation to believe one's press clippings, to believe that one's reputation is a true mirror of one's soul, to give other people only what they want so that one's reputation can grow larger, to act more and more for the sake of reputation and less and less in the light of right action. -- Palmer J. Parker ******* We are no longer alert. We continuously lie to our children and teach them to be liars. Easter bunnies, Santa Claus, denying what their senses tell them, these are all lies. If you're well educated you'll work to hurt people, you'll do the work of big institutions. You'll work to make alcohol, drugs, TV, schools, religion, things to put people's minds to sleep. -- Grace Spotted Eagle Inuit Native American (1985) ******** When once a man has made celebrity necessary to his happiness, he has put it in the power of the weakest and most timorous malignity, if not to take away his satisfaction, at least to withhold it. His enemies may indulge their pride by airy negligence and gratify their malice by quiet neutrality. -- Samuel Johnson "I like dreams of the future better than the history of the past" --Thomas Jefferson "Dozens and dozens of readers strained their hardest to come up with inconceivably large numbers. Some filled their whole postcard with tiny '9's, others filled their cards with rows of exclamation points, thus creating iterated factorials of gigantic sizes, and so on. A handful of people carried this game much further, recognizing that the optimal solution avoids all pattern (to see why, read Gregory Chaitin's article "Randomness and Mathematical Proof"), and consists simply of a "dense pack" of definitions built on definitions, followed by one final line in which the "fanciest" of the definitions is applied to a relatively small number such as 2, or better yet, 9. [...] As it turns out, I don't know who won, and it doesn't matter since the prize is zero to such a good approximation that even God wouldn't know the difference." -- Douglas Hofstadter If we could shrink the earth's population to a village of precisely 100 people, with all the existing human ratios remaining the same, it would look like something like this. There would be: 57 Asians, 21 Europeans, 14 from the Western Hemisphere, both north and south, 8 Africans 52 would be female, 48 would be male 70 would be nonwhite, 30 would be white 70 would be non-Christian, 30 would be Christian 6 people would possess 59% of the entire world's wealth and all 6 would be from the U.S. 80 would live in "substandard" housing 70 would be unable to read 50 would suffer from malnutrition 1 would be near death; 1 would be near birth 1 (yes, only 1) would have a college education 2 would own a computer Affirming what must be affirmed, denying what must be denied, we should nonetheless be careful lest our denials outnumber our affirmations, lest our lives degenerate into rear-guard actions against grossness and nastiness. -- Robert Grudin A perennial victim is as great a drag on society as a perennial rascal, and in his own way is equally corrupt. Moreover, while we may hate and chide the rascal at will, we feel compelled to love the victim, an unnatural undertaking which makes him more bothersome still. -- Robert Grudin Inspiration could be called inhaling the memory of an act never experienced. -- Ned Rorem But, as Rousseau realized when he criticized the fad of medicine, this is not what treating persons as ends really signifies. It signifies treating persons as inviolable sources of their own unique meanings, as agents of their own energies. This is something quite different. It leads us to talk about control over choices, instead of devotion to health, because that is what characterizes human dignity, as Rousseau knew. -- Ernest Becker, _The Structure of Evil_ (Braziller, 1968) If I care to listen to every criticism, let alone act on them, then this shop may as well be closed for all other businesses. I have learned to do my best, and if the end result is good then I do not care for any criticism, but if the end result is not good, then even the praise of ten angels would not make the difference. -- Abraham Lincoln As long as I have a want, I have a reason for living. Satisfaction is death. -- George Bernard Shaw The ability to manipulate simulations is a form of power and the inability to see through simulations is a form of powerlessness. Those who manipulate appearances, today, exercise power over those who are taken in by appearances. -- Ken Sanes Now we are all sons of bitches. -- Kenneth Bainbridge, physicist, on the occasion of the Trinity atomic bomb test (7/16/45) But if humans are a Lamarckian wild-card in evolution, then we are the Naturalistic Fallacy incarnate. -- http://www.voicenet.com/~grassie/Fldr.Articles/NineLaws.html "He who commends the brutalities of the past, sows the seeds of future crimes." -- Robert G. Ingersoll We have a "junk in, order out" culture. -- "Reed Konsler" My favorite word out of all three is music, because it is muse-like Musicians, in Partch's mind, had become second-class citizens, relegated to the pit and forced to perform like mannequins in a tuxedo shop. And, Partch says, "I have watched them jealously guard their precious misconceptions." -- Jeff Smith, http://www.corporeal.com/hprvrb_2.html "Fortune favors the prepared mind" -- Pastuer You can cheat an honest man but not make a fool out of him. -- Confucius "Sensible and responsible women do not want to vote. The relative positions to be assumed by man and woman in the working out of our civilization were assigned long ago by a higher intelligence than ours." -- Grover Cleveland, 1905 One must show the greatest respect towards any thing that increases exponentially, no matter how small. -- Garrett Hardin Television is not vulgar because people are vulgar; it is vulgar because people are similar in their prurient interests and sharply differentiated in their civilized concerns. -- George Gilder The judgment that I make is that you enjoy feeling persecuted. I'm not particularly distanced by this, as it's a fairly common need in my judgment; like the need to be right. -- KMO, on the level-3 mailing list ******* THE ONLY WAY YOU CAN CONTROL PEOPLE IS TO LIE TO THEM. You can write that down in your book in great big letters. The only way you can control anybody is to lie to them. When you find an individual is lying to you, you know that the individual is trying to control you. One way or another this individual is trying to control you. That is the mechanism of control. This individual is lying to you because he is trying to control you -- because if they give you enough misinformation they will pull you down the tone scale so that they can control you. Conversely, if you see an impulse on the part of a human being to control you, you know very well that that human being is lying to you. Not "is going to," but "is" lying to you. Check these facts, you will find they are always true. That person who is trying to control you is lying to you. He's got to tell you lies in order to continue control, because the second you start telling anybody close to the truth, you start releasing him and he gets tougher and tougher to control. So, you can't control somebody without telling them a bunch of lies. You will find that very often Command has this as its greatest weakness. It will try to control instead of leading. The next thing you know, it is lying to the [illegible]. Lie, lie, lie, and it gets worse and worse, and all of a sudden the thing blows up. Well, religion has done this. Organized religion tries to control, so therefore must be lying. After a while it figures out (even itself) that it is lying, and then it starts down tone scale further and further, and all of a sudden people get down along this spring-like bottom (heresy) and say, "Are we going into apathy and die, or are we going to revolt?" And they revolt, because you can only lie to people so long. Unfortunately there is always a new cycle of lying." -- L. Ron Hubbard, 'Technique 88' ******* "I often pass two days running without encountering a single woman who is charmingly dressed.... It is the color that kills the clothes of the average woman. She runs to bright spots that take the eye away from her face and hair. She ceases to be woman clothed and becomes a mere piece of clothing womaned." -- H.L. Mencken "Smart Set" February 1920 ATTRACTION: the act of associating horniness with a particular person. Though they may have won all the battles, we had all the good songs. -- Tom Lehrer "In nature there are neither rewards nor punishments; there are consequences." -- Robert Ingersoll One of the most interesting concepts I've encountered in years is that rebelion is just another way to be a victim. -- Rhonda Chapman , on the level-3 mailing list The people who made England, Italy, or Greece such great places did it by staying firmly planted where they were, like an axis of the earth. -- Richard Brodie's translation of R.W. Emerson http://www.brodietech.com/rbrodie/emsr20.htm "The understandings of the greater part of men are necessarily formed by their ordinary employment’s. The man whose life is spent in performing a few simple operations . . . has no occasion to exert his understanding . . . He generally becomes as stupid and ignorant as it is possible for a human creature to become." -- Adam Smith in The Wealth of Nations Beauty is power; a smile is its sword. -- Charles Reade Man, that creature who believes his purpose is to control and conquer Nature, is just now beginning to remember the obvious--that he is a part of Nature himself. He has fought his way to the top of the planetary spinal cord, inflicting damage every step of the way. Now, bewildered, he looks around: What am I doing here? Assuming responsibility, answers a still, small voice all around him. -- Paul Williams There is no rule more invariable than that we are paid for our suspicions by finding what we suspect. -- Henry David Thoreau Judge not lest you be so fearful of judgment you can hardly breathe. It is our judgments-- all of which are ultimately judgments of ourselves-- that make us so defensive. -- Paul Williams The best way of avenging thyself is not to become like the wrongdoer. -- Marcus Aurelius Boys throw stones at frogs in sport, but the frogs do not die in sport. They die in earnest. -- Bion (c. 325 - c. 255 B.C.E.) From Plutarch, Water and Land Animals, 7. In America sex is an obsession; In the rest of the world it's a fact. -- Marlene Dietrich What do you do if you only care to impress yourself? the kind of logic in mythical thought is as rigorous as that of modern science, and that the difference lies, not in the quality of the intellectual process, but in the nature of things to which it is applied... man has always been thinking equally well; the improvement lies, not in an alleged progress of man's mind, but in the discovery of new areas to which it may apply its unchanged and unchanging powers -- Levi-Strauss, _Structural Anthropology_ (p.230) ******* The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, but wiser people so full of doubts. -- Bertrand Russel ******* A mighty flame followeth a tiny spark. -- Dante I think the modern world is easier physically than feudalism was, but much harder psychologically. We are propagandized constantly about living in democracies and what wonderful freedom we have, and most of us are condemned to work in totalitarian corporations which have no more freedom than fascism or communism. No wonder so many people just crack up and go postal these days. -- Robert Anton Wilson Cute things are dangerous. -- Dr. Shannon [In many circumstances,] the most important thing about a proposition is not that it be true, but that it be interesting. -- Whitehead All men are created Unequal. -- Heinlein A competent and self confident person is incapable of jealousy in anything. Jealousy is invariably a symptom of neurotic insecurity. -- Heinlein There are living systems; there is no "living matter." -- Jacques Monod, 1910-1977 "In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends." -- Martin Luther King Jr. Those who live virtuously may be desolate for a time, but those who depend on flattering the powerful are destitute forever. -- Huanchu Daoren All that we see or seem Is but a dream within a dream. -- Edgar Allan Poe "Morality must keep up with technology, because if a person is faced with the choice of being moral and dead or immoral and alive, they'll choose life every time." -- Art Lee Normal, happy people don't create great art. -- Garrison Keillor The most awkward means are adequate to the communication of authentic experience, and the finest words no compensation for lack of it. It is for this reason that we are moved by the true Primitives and that the most accomplished art craftmanship leaves us cold. -- Ananda K. Coomaraswamy A /New Yorker/ cartoon from a few years back illustrates the concept perfectly. It showss a fifty-ish man holding a photograph of himself roughly ten years earlier. In that photograph, he is likewise holding a photograph of himself, ten years earlier than /that/. And on it goes, until eventually it "bottoms out" -- quite literally -- in a photograph of a bouncy baby boy in his birthday suit (bottom in the air). This idea of recursive photo's catching you as you grow up is quite appealing. I wish my parents had thought of it! -- Douglas Hostadter, Metamagical Themas Never offend people with style when you can offend them with substance. -- Sam Brown ******* "The widely revered master-disciple concept represents, on both sides, too easy an escape into the limbo of no responsibility. I have said that if anyone calls himself a pupil of mine, I will happily strangle him. But this is simply the expression of an attitude, and -- amazingly -- in its deeper meaning it is an expression of hope." -- Harry Partch, http://www.corporeal.com/hprvrb_2.html ******* Sometimes it seems like we're all living in some kind of prison, and the crime is how much we hate ourselves. It's good to get really dressed up once in a while and admit the truth -- that when you look really closely, people are so strange and so complicated that they're actually beautiful. Possibly even me. "I get a sensual enjoyment out of reliving an experience -- maybe even an increased enjoyment. The experience seems heightened. There's a double play going on. The first time you do something, you're not conscious of it, as it were. You don't look at yourself in the mirror. Then, when you're writing, it's just like looking in a mirror and watching yourself doing it all over again. And you know you're performing this time. That's the difference between the conscious and the unconscious action." -- Henry Miller ******* In Rue's own memorable words: "It is just a tale told by humans, full of contingency and distortion, signifying hope. But it is a noble lie, one that washes down with a minimum of deception and offers up a maximum of adaptive change, and if it is well and artfully told, it will re-enchant the earth and save us from the truth." -- Loyal Rue, By the Grace of Guile (Oxford University Press 1994). ******* "If the doors of perception were cleansed, everything would appear to man as it is, infinite." -- William Blake "There's about a 15 percent genetic variation between any two individuals," according to science writer Deborah Blum. "Less than half of that, about 6 percent, is accounted for by known racial groupings... A randomly selected white person, therefore, can easily be genetically closer to an African than another white." -- "Race: many biologists argue for discarding the whole concept," Deborah Blum, The Sacramento Bee, October 18, 1995, p. A12. Nursing does not diminish the beauty of a woman's breasts; it enhances their charm by making them look lived in and happy. -- Robert Heinlein "Oh, what a tangled wed we weave, when first we practice to deceive!" -- Sir Walter Scott, _Marmion_, 1808. If mere preaching of virtue could provide the answer, then we would have arrived at the threshold of angelic existence some time ago. -- Terence McKenna though I confess with shame I sometimes cave in and give the dollar, it is a wicked dollar, which some day I'll have the guts to withhold. -- http://www.brodietech.com/rbrodie/emsr05.htm What we love, we have; what we desire, we lose. -- Richard Brodie's translation of R.W. Emerson http://www.brodietech.com/rbrodie/emsr15.htm Anthropic Principle: - Cosmologists Dicke and Carter reflected on the way the universe seems to be fine tuned for intelligent life and stated: "What we can expect to observe must be restricted by the conditions necessary for our presence as observers." p.135 -- http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/~grassie/StudentProjects/Glossary.html buildings -- machines designed for living in Let's take up dolphin training. WHY is the dolphin so readily trained to do the things we tell them to do? Part of it is that they're basing the behaviours on things they `already know how to do,' things in the wild, but could it be that /here/ are your researchers from the dolphin culture, thinking they've found a way to feedback with us and getting snookered by /our/ stupidity? We don't know. We /can't/ know, until someone enculturates dolphin, which might simply be impossible. -- Alex Williams , on the CoV mailing list HACKER, n., a term of endearment for someone with talent, knowledge, intelligence, and ingenuity, esp. concerning computer operations, networks, security concerns, etc. HACKER, n. 1. A person who enjoys learning the details of programming systems and how to stretch their capabilities, as opposed to most users who prefer to learn only the minimum necessary. 2. One who programs enthusiastically, or who enjoys programming rather than just theorizing about programming. 3. A person capable of appreciating hack value (q.v.). 4. A person who is good at programming quickly. Not everything a hacker produces is a hack. 5. An expert at a particular program, or one who frequently does work using it or on it; example: "A SAIL hacker". (Definitions 1 to 5 are correlated, and people who fit them congregate.) 6. An inquisitive meddler who tries to discover information by poking around. Hence "password hacker", "network hacker". My point is -- the internet, like the theatre is not a broadcasting medium, it is a narrowcasting medium. People come to you. -- Stephen Atkins , on the CoV mailing list Concerning the cogito: I'm sympathetic to the Objectivist version of this, which actually infers _three_ things: that consciousness exists ("I am"), that existence exists ("I _am_"), and that identity exists ("I am something-in-particular"). I find it inconceivable that none of these is so. -- Mitchell Porter I refuse to generalize about television for the same reason I won't generalize about drama, books, films, computers or ice-skating. I guess I agree with Sturgeon's Law; 95 percent of everything is bullshit. The other five per cent is worth finding, if you have the patience to dig for it. -- Robert Anton Wilson Those found guilty of thinking linearly will be punished by thinking they live in a linear world. That is cruel, but not unusual. -- Anders Sandberg Can't it be emergent? It just happens to be so today. There might be a history that explains how it came about without a structural reason why it must be that way. Why is the internet mostly in English? Why do the DNA triplets code the way they do? Why are L-amino acids common currency in biochemistry and D-amino acids so uncommon? Why do we have five fingers and toes? Why are our eyes structured with the circuitry in front of the receptors, requiring light to pass through the neurons and requiring a "blind spot" were the nerves can get through to the brain. Why do our digestive and respiratory systems cross in our throats? Why does the symbol "a" stand for a certain phonetic element? -- Reed Konsler konsler@ascat.harvard.edu, on the CoV mailing list "As far as I'm concerned, being any gender is a drag." -- Patti Smith History is irrelevant if it's anything more than a cheerful account or parable of my being and becoming. -- Richard Brodie's translation of R.W. Emerson http://www.brodietech.com/rbrodie/emsr12.htm "In some ways the case of Edward H. Winter is a prototypical miracle of modern medicine. ... He would probably have died of a heart attack in May 1988, when he was 82, if a nurse at St. Francis-St. George Hospital had not revived him through electric shock... A few months before his heart attack, he watched the slow, agonizing death of his wife of 55 years, who had suffered brain damage after shock resuscitation from a heart attack of her own, and he resolved that nothing like that would happen to him... When his time came, he told his children, they should simply let him die. He told his doctor the same thing... Two days after he was revived, he suffered a debilitating stroke... He is now partly paralyzed and largely confined to his bed in a nursing home, and although he can still speak, he can utter only a few words before he begins to cry, in despair... But for the hospital's intervention, he has charged, he could have died, and in dignity... His medical bills now total about $100,000 and are still rising, and his life savings are just about depleted... His doctors see scant chance for physical improvement. They say he could live for years... The hospital argues any damages Winter has suffered resulted from 'an act of God' over which the hospital had no control." -- David Margolick, New York Times, Press Democrat, 18 March 1990 "You can't get there from here." "People call me a feminist whenever I express sentiments that distinguish me from a doormat. -- Rebecca West, 1913 A cat's rage is beautiful, burning with pure cat flame, all its hair standing up and crackling blue sparks, eyes blazing and sputtering. -- William S. Burroughs I'm not sure what there is to explain. To be modest is to adjust your statements about yourself in such a way as to diminish the good and emphasize the bad. Using this criterion -- or any other criterion that conflicts with accuracy in context -- entails deliberately saying things that one believes will mislead the listener, i.e. lying. -- David Deutsch "Today, the dangers are of a different order -- more complicated, more universal, more widespread. Courage in the face of the "enemy" has become a much subtler ingredient, because we can no longer threaten to eliminate a hostile power without, at the same time, threatening to eliminate ourselves. Moreover, the enemies are manifold; they are everywhere and nowhere; they are difficult to locate, difficult to resist, and difficult to contain." -- Samuel Pisar, teenage survivor of Auschwitz KZ in his book, Of Blood and Hope. "The so-called dark side is not wholly an evil or negative place or force; after all, some things remain in the shadows because we've placed them there out of fear or squeamishness." -- Jay Kinney Long long ago in this ancient land A battle took place where two hill now stand. And on the plain there lay the slain For neither the battle was won. I think of the issue as one of maximizing complexity. The human species is more interesting - more complex - than any other species. However the existence of any species adds more complexity to the world than any individual instances of humans. To make this idea more concrete contrast the "complexity" (beauty) of two worlds: One, with 3 billion humans pursuing technology, science, and the arts along with vast unspoiled wilderness and endless natural beauty; The other with 15 billion people in which a small fraction are advancing human knowledge and many are living in misery, and nature has been obliterated. Few of us would choose the second path but collectively that is exactly what's happening. The root of the explanation for this lies in Game Theory, with each person maximizing their local "pleasure" at the expense of the global maximum. I would hope that a rational philosophy would attempt to transcend this kind of limitation. -- Deron Stewart , CoV mailing list As for "mindless vandalism" -- well, sometimes it's really art and should be applauded. Sometimes it's just youthful high spirits and should be tolerated. Sometimes it's rebellion against tyranny and should be morally condoned or even applauded, even though it must remain illegal for now. And sometimes it's just vandalism and should be suppressed by society in the usual ways. -- David Deutsch Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things. -- Peter F. Drucker Performance is the ritualization of experience. -- Christian Mendenhall, PhD, http://kali.murdoch.edu.au/~academy/articles/ jnode._FAITH._Phil_Morle_.847118000.0.html Nothing is more important than doing what is right. That is so absurdly obvious that most people pay no attention to it. Most people seem to think that what is obvious is beneath them. They pass up truth in favor of something more intellectually stimulating. -- Paul Williams "God not only plays dice. He sometimes throws the dice where they cannot be seen." -- Stephen Hawking Practice principled acts of self-interest and ruthless logic. --Ayn Rand As Freud is attributed to have said: "Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar." "Size is not the most important thing. Cunning, skill, powers of observation, those are the most important things" -- Star Trek TNG [Klingon training] A typical North American eats 110 lbs of meat a year, flushes 140,000 liters of water, and pumps 1,100 liters of gasoline into his car. Every year she disposes of 1,300 lbs of garbage, consumes one entire tree to read the daily newspaper, and blows a metric ton of carbon into the atmosphere with her car exhaust. -- Adbusters magazine I sort of remember seeing something on TV about NDEs and how there's usually a light at the end of a dark tunnel. The explanation that I remember is that the occipital lobe (responsible for sight) is overloaded with electrochemical activity, so what happens is that there's an intense whiteness in the center of someone's field of vision and it becomes dimmer towards the peripheral. -- "MarXidad" "Darkness makes me fumble for a key to a door that's wide open." -- The Police I don't have a solution but I admire the problem. ******* Don't ever think you know what's right for the other person. He might start thinking he knows what's right for you. -- Paul Williams, `Das Energi' ******* Valor grows by daring, fear by holding back. -- Publilius Syrus Decision-making is a vice. Some addicts reach a stage where they do almost nothing but agonize over decisions. It's a subtle form of hesitation. Like all addictions, the only cure is cold turkey. You could spend the rest of your life trying to decide whether to take the cure. -- Paul Williams "Throughout the 1970s I had been mainly studying black holes, but in 1981 my interest in questions about the origin and fate of the universe was reawakened when I attended a conference on cosmology organized by the Jesuits in the Vatican. The Catholic church had made a bad mistake with Galileo when it tried to law down the law on a question of science, declaring that the sun went round the earth. Now, centuries later, it had decided to invite a number of experts to advise it on cosmology. At the end of the conference the participants were granted an audience with the pope. He told us that it was all right to study the evolution of the universe after the big bang, but we should not inquire into the big bang itself because that was the moment of Creation and therefore the work of God. I was glad then that he did not know the subject of the talk I had just given at the conference -- the possibility that space-time was finite, but had no boundary, which means that it had no beginning, no moment of Creation. I had no desire to share the fate of Galileo, with whom I felt a strong sense of identity, partly because of the coincidence of having been born exactly 300 years after his death!" -- Stephen Hawking, _A Brief History of Time_, pg. 115-6 "practice random acts of kindness and senseless acts of beauty" A common technique in many Eastern martial arts is to provide for your opponent an obvious weak point in your own defenses, thus directing their attack were you want it and giving you control over it and them. -- Tim Rhodes ******* And it could even be, that those of us who never found what we dreamed of, may have found it a thousand times, but seeing only the things we feared, chose to stay among the dispossessed. -- Merle Shain ******* It makes me wonder what they do all of the time instead of thinking. -- John Aten jwa@inx.net, on the CoV mailing list "Fortune does not change men, it unmasks them." -- Suzanne Necker Our inventions are wont to be pretty toys, which distract our attention from serious things. They are but improved means to an unimproved end. -- Henry David Thoreau "Just cite what you see.... everything is Free" "If the Phone Doesn't Ring, It's Me" -- Song title by Jimmy Buffet "Who are we? We find that we live on an insignificant planet of a humdrum star lost in a galaxy tucked away in some forgotten corner of a universe in which there are far more galaxies than people." -- Carl Sagan, _Cosmos_ What strains the mind today will be tomorrow's common sense. -- Ben Goertzel "Your environment is somebody else's heredity." -- J. M. Cox, http://www.mindspring.com/~tendril2/1484n.html (thus freewill is an illusion) The problems of victory are more agreeable than the problems of defeat, but they are no less difficult. -- Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (1900-1944), French aviator, author. Flight to Arras, ch. 1 (1942). "When you betray somebody else, you also betray yourself." -- Isaac Bashevis Singer "What most experimenters take for granted before they begin their experiments is infinitely more interesting than any results to which their experiments lead." -- Norbert Wiener High quality typically requires many iterations. (Practice make perfect.) -- D.Prinn. "Carnival" means "festival of meat." "We have enslaved the rest of the animal creation, and have treated our distant cousins in fur and feathers so badly that beyond doubt, if they were able to formulate a religion, they would depict the Devil in human form. -- William Ralph Inge `I have a moral obligation to depravity.' -- J. Dinkelacker There are costs and risks to a program of action, but they are far less than the long range risks and costs of comfortable inaction. -- John F. Kennedy ******* "It's not what you are but what you don't become that hurts." -- Oscar Levant ******* Never ruin an apology with an excuse. -- Kimberly Johnson Make yourself an honest man, and then you may be sure there is one less rascal in the world. -- Thomas Carlyle This message originated solely in my brain, which has no authority to speak for other parts of my body. "Sin lies only in hurting other people unnecessarily. All other "sins" are invented nonsense. (Hurting yourself is not sinful--just stupid.) -- Robert A. Heinlein "A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices." -- William James "The surest way to corrupt a young person is to teach them to esteem more highly those who think alike than those who think differently." -- Nietsche There are two kinds of fools. One says, 'This is old, therefore it is good.' The other says, 'This is new, therefore it is better.' Worry is interest paid on trouble before it is due. standardization, which means degeneration. -- Harry Partch, http://www.corporeal.com/hprvrb_2.html It seems to be a law inflexible and inexorable that he who will not risk cannot win. -- John Paul Jones I used to be worried about influencing people's beliefs because I wanted them to make their own choice. Now I think I have a positive difference to make in people's lives and I go all-out to make that difference. -- Richard Brodie , on the CoV mailing list "If I didn't know better, I would think that you were just making definitions up in an ad hoc manner to avoid coming to a conclusion which contradicted your a priori wishes." -- Greg Erwin "He who decides a case without hearing the other side, even if he decides justly, cannot be considered just" -- Seneca "Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has". -- Margaret Mead Every man is the architect of his own fortune. -- Appius Claudius Beyond a critical point within a finite space, freedom diminishes as numbers increase. . . . the human question is not how many can possibly survive within the system, but what kind of existence is possible for those who do survive. -- Frank Herbert, Dune Interestingly, I think I have noticed a convention gaining ground wherein the universal pronoun is that of the author- so that I would keep 'he' and you all would know what I meant, and, Marie, for instance, would use 'she' and we'd all know the same thing. It seems totally defensible. I don't want to know anything about your system of ethics. Strength is the morality of the man who stands out from the rest, and it is mine. -- Ludwig van Beethoven The phrase "we [I] (you) simply must-" designates something that need not be done. "That goes without saying" is a red warning. "Of course" means you'd better check it yourself. These small-change clichés and others like them, when read correctly are reliable channel markers. -- Heinlein Diligently train your ideals UPWARD and STILL UPWARD toward a summit where you will find your chiefest pleasure in conduct which, while contenting you, will be sure to confer benefits upon your neighbor and the community. -- Mark Twain, _What_is_Man_ The search for truth is more precious than its possession. -- Albert Einstein I am reminded of how I found most of the things I've found- from off-hand mentions in books, articles, or papers- from just picking one shelf in a library and grabbing some volumes- to doing focused searches for specific ideas.... Et cetera, hopefully ad infinitum. At any rate, they all came from my own interests and curiosity. -- "Wade T.Smith" Thirty days have September, April, June and November; All the rest have thirty-one, Excepting February alone, And that has twenty-eight days clear And twenty-nine in each leap year -- Stevins MS. (c. 1555) Accuracy is how often the archer hits the bullseye. Precision is how well we determine that.... Sometimes it is the cursedly clear and unwelcome set of answers provided by straight thinking that makes us mental slackers. -- Robert B. Cialdini It is not easy to find happiness in ourselves, and it is not possible to find it elsewhere. -- Agnes Repplier Godwin's Law of Nazi Analogies: As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one. One of the common techniques for making progress in math is to create notation that allows discussion of infinitely many rules/objects in a finite space. -- Kenneth Boyd zaimoni@ksu.edu, on the CoV mailing list "Technology is a way of organizing the universe so that man doesn't have to experience it." -- Max Frisch Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you mad. -- Aldous Huxley Memory: a child walking along a seashore. You never can tell what small pebble it will pick up and store away among its treasured things. -- Pierce Harris Not the power to remember, but its very opposite, the power to forget, is a necessary condition for our existence. -- Sholem Asch We are obliged, of course, to be bold. Change is our proclaimed business, innovation our announced quarry, the accents of the future the language in which we deal. -- Terrence Hawkes "You cannot solve the problem with the same kind of thinking that has created the problem." -- Einstein If ignorance is bliss, why aren't there more happy people? Lee Daniel Crocker "All inventions or works of authorship original to me, herein and past, are placed irrevocably in the public domain, and may be used or modified for any purpose, without permission, attribution, or notification."--LDC A *No* uttered from deepest conviction is better and greater than a *Yes* merely uttered to please, or what is worse, to avoid trouble. -- Mahatma Gandhi It is better to be hated for what you are than to be loved for what you are not. -- André Gide The following metaphor may help understand it. Knowledge is a tool. Each tool has a handle which you grasp when you use it. Different people (or even creatures from other planets) may use the same tool, but whenever it is used, somebody grasps the handle, and this is the "I" of knowledge, meaning and truth. -- http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/SUBJ.html Periods of tranquillity are seldom prolific of creative achievement. Mankind has to be stirred up. -- Alfred North Whitehead Judge a man by his questions rather than his answers. -- Voltaire Dignity does not consist in possessing honors, but in deserving them. -- Aristotle This above all: to thine own self be true. -- William Shakespeare I'm not in the business. I am the business. -- 'Blade Runner' "It isn't so astonishing, the number of things that I can remember, as the number of things I can remember that aren't so!" -- Mark Twain / Samuel Clemens "He noblest lives and noblest dies Who makes and keeps his self-made laws" -- Richard Francis Burton I played with an idea, and grew willful; tossed it into the air; transformed it; let it escaped and recaptured it; made it iridescent with fancy, and winged it with paradox. -- Oscar Wilde I think, at a child's birth, if a mother could ask a fairy godmother to endow it with the most useful gift, that gift would be curiosity. -- Eleanor Roosevelt Action is the antidote to despair. -- Joan Baez That which does not kill me makes me stronger. -- Friedrich Nietzsche _The Twilight of the Idols_, 1888 One ought, everyday, to hear a song, read a fine poem, and, if possible, to speak a few reasonable words. -- Goethe If you really want to do something, you'll find a way; if you don't, you'll find an excuse. -- anonymous "Though this may be play to you, 'Tis death to us." -- Sir Roger L'Estrange Gurdjieff (or was it Ouspensky) said that to understand something was to agree with it. At first this sounds wrong, but I don't wish to debate it but suppose we take it as a prescription rather than a description. Now, having accepted this, when I find my self "disagreeing" with somebody I must instead say to myself that I have failed to understand that person. This puts the burden on me for further investigation. The door stays open, rather than closed as would be the case if I believed that I already understood, but simply disagreed. To 'agree that we do not understand' each other has so much more potential than to 'agree to disagree'. -- Michael Moore Speaking as a left hander I can't see what all the fuss about right-handed appliances is. Although I play guitar and write left-handed nearly everything else I can think of I have learnt to do right handed. I actually prefer using my right hand with a mouse as it leaves the superior (yes SUPERIOR) hand to type. The reason I don't begrudge "righties" (spit, curse :) forcing me to use my right hand is that studies have proven that due to more regularly using BOTH sides of the brain left-handers are generally more creative, spatially aware and more intelligent. But hey we knew that already didn't we :) So don't complain, God has given you a natural advantage over our unfortunate right counterparts and they will need sympathy not abuse as we, the glorious southpaws, triumphantly stride into the dawn of world domination that is our birth right!!!! "In theory there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice there is." -- Yogi Berra Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing. -- Benjamin Franklin One of the greatest tragedies of life is the murder of a beautiful theory by a gang of brutal facts. -- Benjamin Franklin "The surest way to be deceived is to think oneself cleverer than the others." -- La Rochefoucauld "The most important thing in communication is to hear what isn't being said." -- Peter F. Drucker "Many people would rather die than think; in fact, most do." -- Bertrand Russell "Just as the human eye sees only a small part of the light spectrum and the human ear can detect only a fraction of nature's sounds so that which is comprehensible to the human mind is only a small fraction of our reality." -- Anonymous "It is better to be silent, and be thought a fool, than to speak and remove all doubt." -- Silvan Engel "The man who does not read books has no advantage over the man that can not read them." -- Mark Twain Doublethink means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them. -- George Orwell (1903-1950), _1984_, pt.II, ch.9 "Everyone is born a genius, but the process of living de-geniuses them." -- Buckminster Fuller To believe your own thoughts to believe that what is true for you in your private heart is true for everyone that is genius. -- http://www.brodietech.com/rbrodie/emsr01.htm The greatest genius will never be worth much if he pretends to draw exclusively from his own resources. -- Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe Neither a lofty degree of intelligence nor imagination nor both together go into the making of genius. Love, love, love, that is the soul of genius. -- Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart Everyone has talent. What is rare is the courage to follow the talent to the dark place where it leads. -- Erica Jong "Impossible is a word to be found only in the dictionary of fools." -- Napoleon Bonaparte "Genius is one percent inspiration, ninety-nine percent perspiration " -- Thomas Edison "Whether it's my imagination is not the point, because the products of my imagination are real to me." -- David Duchovny Great spirits have always found violent opposition from mediocre minds. The latter cannot understand it when a man does not thoughtlessly submit to hereditary prejudices but honestly and courageously uses his intelligence. -- Albert Einstein "You see things and say 'Why?' but I dream of things that never were and say 'Why not?'" -- JFK "You see things and say, 'Why?', but I dream things and say, 'Why not?'" -- George Bernard Shaw "Few things are harder to put up with than the annoyance of a good example." -- Mark Twain "Get your facts first, and then you can distort them as much as you please." -- Mark Twain Talking and eloquence are not the same: to speak and to speak well are two things. A fool may talk, but a wise man speaks. -- Ben Jonson (1572-1637) "Wise men talk because they have something to say; fools, because they have to say something." -- Plato "When written in Chinese, the word "crisis" is composed of two characters. One represents danger and the other represents opportunity." -- John F. Kennedy I'm a huge fan of satire, intelligent expression that isn't a drag to be party to, and it appears you are, too. If we truly are amusing ourselves to death, than I suspect the best way to make a dent, or fulfill whatever agenda you may have, is to operate within the system without fully accepting it. -- Kim The inclination to accept unverified opinion simply because of currency or familiarity is a dangerous human weakness that is instrumental in self-deception and easily exploited for the deception of others. -- Thomas Cleary "Above all, deconstruction works to undo the idea -- according to Derrida, the ruling illusion of Western metaphysics -- that reason can somehow dispense with language and arrive at a pure, self-authenticating truth or method." -- Christopher Norris "This belief in absolutes, I would hazard...is the great enemy today of the life of the mind. This may seem a rash proposition. The fashion of the time is to denounce relativism as the root of all evil. But history suggests that the damage done by the relativist is far less than the damage done by the absolutist." -- Arther Schlesinger, Jr. Our progress in degeneracy appears to me to be pretty rapid. As a nation we began by declaring that "all men are created equal." We now practically read it "all men are created equal, except negroes." When the Know-Nothings get control, it will read "all men are created equal, except negroes, and foreigners and catholics." When it comes to this I should prefer emigrating to some country where they make no pretense of loving liberty - to Russia where despotism can be taken pure, and without the base alloy of hypocrisy. -- Lincoln - Letter to Joshua F. Speed, Aug. 24, 1855. "Lincoln- Selected Speeches and Writings", Vintage/Library of America, p105. "During my 87 years I have witnessed a whole succession of technological revolutions; but none of them has done away with the need for character in the individual, or the ability to think." -- Bernard Baruch Francis Bacon said it first, "Reading maketh a full man," I never resist temptation, because I have found that things that are bad for me do not tempt me -- George Bernard Shaw, _The Apple Cart_ (1929), Act II The one point on which all women are in furious secret rebellion against the existing law is the saddling of the right to a child with the obligation to become the servant of a man. -- George Bernard Shaw, _Getting Married_, (1908), preface [An American] is probably the most unhappy citizen in the history of the world. She has not the power to provide herself with anything but money, and her money is inflating like a balloon and drifting away, subject to historical circumstances and the power of other people. From morning to night, she does not touch anything that she has produced herself, in which she can take pride. For all her leisure and recreation, she feels bad, she looks bad, she is overweight, her health is poor. Her air, water, and food are all known to contain poisons. There is a fair chance that she will die of suffocation. She suspects that her love life is not as fulfilling as other people's. She wishes that she had been born sooner, or later. She does not know why her children are the way they are. She does not understand what they say. She does not care and does not know why she does not care. Certain advertisements and pictures in magazines make her suspect that she is basically unattractive. She feels that all her possessions are under threat of pillage. She does not know what she would do if she lost her job, if the economy failed, if the utility companies went on strike, if her husband left her, if her children ran away, if she should be found to be incurably ill. And for these anxieties, of course, she consults certified experts, who in turn consult certified experts about their anxieties. -- Wendell Berry What about "relativity" of consciousness (a place where e=mc^2 translates to "thought = being times consciousness squared") or an uncertainty theory of consciousness where "the subject and the thought cannot be determined at the same time"? -- Brett Lane Robertson, on the CoV mailing list "The truth against the world!"---Yes. Certainly. Fiction writers, at least in their braver moments, do desire the truth: to know it, speak it, serve it. But they go about it in a peculiar and devious way, which consists in inventing persons, places, and events which never did and never will exist or occur, and telling about these fictions in detail and at length and with a great deal of emotion, and then when they are done writing down this pack of lies, they say, There! That's the truth! In reading a novel, any novel, we have to know perfectly well that the whole thing is nonsense, and then, while reading, believe every word of it. Finally, when we're done with it, we may find---if it's a good novel---that we're a bit different from what we were before we read it, that we have been changed a little, as if by having met a new face, crossed a street we never crossed before. But it's very hard to *say* just what we learned, how we were changed. The artist deals with what cannot be said in words. The artist whose medium is fiction does this *in words*. The novelist says in words what cannot be said in words. -- Ursula K. Le Guin, in her 1976 introduction to _The_Left_Hand_of_Darkness_ (1969) "Freezing your head to save your ass." To see a world in a grain of sand, and heaven in a wild flower Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand, And Eternity in an hour. -- William Blake, 1757-1827, _Auguries of Innocence_, 1 Climb the mountains and get their good tidings. Nature's peace will flow into you as sunshine flows into trees. The winds will blow their own freshness into you, and the storms their energy, while cares will drop off like autumn leaves. -- John Muir "You can't always get what you want, but if you try... sometimes you get what you need." -- The Rolling Stones Let me restate the point I was trying to make with paintings instead of holograms. It is very difficult to perceive the image in the painting by studying the composition of the pigments. To perceive the image you must shift to a higher level of abstraction. I wasn't trying to say anything profound. I was just pointing out that the "illusion of self" can disappear the same way a forest disappears when you perceive the trees. -- Alan Ferguson In front of a window, viewed from inside a room, I placed a painting which depicts precisely that section of the landscape obstructed by the painting: that is, the tree of the painting concealed the tree located behind it outside the room. In the mind of the viewer, the tree exists both within the room, i.e., in the painting, as well as outside in the real landscape. And that is how we see the world: we see it as something located outside of us despite the fact that what we see is only a mental representation of that which we experience within us. -- Rene Magritte "I labor to be brief-and manage to be obscure." -- Horace Q: Are you a dyke? Yes, actually, now that you mention it. Since, as you know, a dyke is a retaining wall built to quell the flow of water to a particular area, you could say that I am a dyke, metaphorically speaking. I am here to quell bigotted and narrow minded individuals like you from flooding the Net. I'd like to add that somebody has to be a voice of reason since questions like that reveal also the true meaning of ignorance. -- Janis "Lying to ourselves is more deeply ingrained than lying to others." -- Fyodor Dostoevsky "The most common lie is that which one lies to himself; lying to others is relatively an exception." -- Nietzsche The creation of a thousand forests is in one acorn. -- Ralph Waldo Emerson Crocker's Law: The quality of an idea is often inversely proportional to the amount of energy expended in taking credit for it. Science is the toy of the Child. Do not say "Science has shown us the Way" For only the Child is the Way. Worship the Child, not the toys. - Zero Truths http://home1.gte.net/dleeper/HBook.html -- David de Void Take what you can use and let the rest go by. -- Ken Kesey "That inward eye Which is the bliss of solitude." -- William Wordsworth "O judgment! thou art fled to brutish beasts, And men have lost their reason." -- Shakespeare "It is better to suffer wrong than to do it, and happier to be sometimes cheated than not to trust." -- Samuel Johnson "I live in the crowds of jollity, not so much to enjoy company as to shun myself." -- Samuel Johnson "Why grab possessions like thieves, or divide them like socialists, when you can ignore them like wise men? " -- Natalie Clifford Barney "The pleasure which men are able to give in conversation holds no stated proportion to their knowledge or their virtue." -- Samuel Johnson The use of money is all the advantage there is in having it. -- Benjamin Franklin "Farming looks mighty easy when your plow is a pencil and you're a thousand miles from the cornfield." -- Eisenhower Well done is better than well said. -- Benjamin Franklin "curiosity, which is a lust of the mind . . ." -- Hobbes "There are several good precautions against temptation, but the surest is cowardice." -- Mark Twain "Under all speech that is good for anything there lies a silence that is better. Silence is deep as Eternity; speech is shallow as Time." -- Thomas Carlyle Necessity is the mother of invention, it is true -- but it's father is creativity, and knowledge is the midwife. -- Jonathan Schattke "On the whole human beings want to be good, but not too good and not quite all the time." -- George Orwell "People accept their limitations so as to prevent themselves from wanting anything they might get." -- Celia Green "When you reread a classic, you do not see more in the book than you did before; you see more in you than there was before." -- Cliff Fadiman "Theory is the captain. Practice, the soldiers." -- Leonardo Da Vinci "It has been my experience that folks who have no vices have very few virtues." -- Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865) The belief in the imminent paradigm shift is one of the enduring cliches of modernity. If you do not specify and confront real issues, what you say will surely obscure them. If you do not alarm anyone morally, you yourself remain morally asleep. If you do not embody controversy, what you say will be an acceptance of the drift of the coming human hell. -- C. Wright Mills, _The Power Elite_ "I do not fear computers. I fear the lack of them." -- Isaac Asimov We begin life with a seemingly blank slate, and, though the writing that gradually appears on that slate is not our own, our judgment of the things written thereon determines what we are and what we will become. In much the same way, our work will be judged by the use to which other people put it... -- Marion Zimmer Bradley, _The Codex of Riveda_ Looking at the proliferation of personal web pages on the net, it looks like very soon everyone on earth will have 15 MegaBytes of fame. -- MG Sriram "No one can make you feel inferior without your consent." -- Elanor Roosevelt "I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones." -- Albert Einstein (1879-1955) "I never think of the future - it comes soon enough." -- Albert Einstein (1879-1955) To those who like to say that we should just leave the world alone, I ask whether or not we should still be illiterate, terrified savages, running around forests, foraging or killing our food, living in caves, and dying from every opportunistic pathogen to take a liking to us. I agree that 'control of nature' can be taken too far and eventually be detrimental (though where to draw the line I'm unsure) I'm unequivocally glad we live in an 'improved' world. -- Mark Hornberger "Too much sanity is madness, but the maddest of all is to see life as it is and not as it should be." -- Cervantes " ... I do not want to hear from clergymen telling me [masturbation] is a sin. The sin is making people feel guilty about responding to this fundamental human drive." -- Columnist Ann Landers (1993) Happiness is as a butterfly which, when pursued, is always beyond our grasp, but which if you will sit down quietly, may alight upon you. -- Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864) When we are unable to find tranquillity within ourselves, it is useless to seek it elsewhere. -- La Rochefoucauld He that leaveth nothing to Chance will do few things ill, but he will do very few things. -- George, Lord Halifax The person who knows HOW will always have a job. The person who knows WHY will always be his boss. -- Diane Ravitch (b. 1938) Hope - "the worst of all evils, because it prolongs the torments of man" -- Nietzsche "Good judgment comes from experience. Experience comes from bad judgment." -- Jim Horning "Of course I'm crazy, but that doesn't mean I'm wrong. I'm mad but not ill" "Praise out of season, or tactlessly bestowed, can freeze the heart as much as blame." -- Pearl Buck We grow great by dreams. All big men are dreamers. They see things in the soft haze of a spring day or in the red fire of a long winter's evening. Some of us let these great dreams die, but others nourish and protect them; nurse them through bad days till they bring them to the sunshine and light which comes always to those who sincerely hope that their dreams will come true. -- Woodrow Wilson "Reasonable people adapt themselves to the world. Unreasonable people attempt to adapt the world to themselves. All progress, therefore, depends on unreasonable people." -- George Bernard Shaw, English playwrite "You're searching, Joe, for things that don't exist; I mean beginnings. Ends and beginnings-there are no such things." -- Robert Frost "Boredom is a vital problem for the moralist, since at least half the sins of mankind are caused by the fear of it." -- Bertrand Russell "Any man whose errors take ten years to correct is quite a man." -- J. Robert Oppenheimer, speaking of Albert Einstein "It has been said that man is a rational animal. All my life I have been searching for evidence which could support this." -- Bertrand Russell "Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear - not absence of fear." -- Mark Twain (1835-1910) "Reliance on intelligence alone results in rebelliousness. Exercise of humaneness alone results in weakness. Fixation on trust results in folly. Dependence on the strength of courage results in violence. Excessive sternness of command results in cruelty. When one has all five virtues together, each appropriate to its function, then one can be a military leader. -- Jia Lin "I hate mankind, for I think myself one of the best of them, and I know how bad I am." -- Samuel Johnson Write with the learned, pronounce with the vulgar. -- Benjamin Franklin It takes little talent to see what lies under one's nose, a good deal to know in what direction to point that organ. -- W. H. Auden HUME'S DEFINITION OF A CAUSE The most famous and influential definition of a cause is Hume's definition; indeed, most contemporary definitions include conditions that are similar in some respect to at least one of the three conditions included in Hume's definition: "Contiguity in time and place is therefore a requisite circumstance to the operation of all causes...Priority in time is...another requisite circumstance in every case....[A] third circumstance [is] that of constant conjunction betwixt the cause and the effect. Every object like the cause produces always some object like the effect. Beyond these three circumstances of contiguity, priority, and constant conjunction I can discover nothing in this cause."[1] Hume's definition includes three conditions for being a cause: temporal priority, spatio-temporal contiguity, and a nomological relation ("every object like the cause produces always some object like the effect".) -- http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/quentin_smith/causation.html Moderation in all things, including moderation "Let's have word peace. If we don't, all we'll have in the end is world pieces." The only real requirement for genius is honesty... and there are--statistically--very few geniuses. Brett Lane Robertson "Trust today is just naive sentimentality." -- Bill Sergio "He who hesitates is a damned fool." -- Mae West (1892-1980) Never try to impress a woman, because if you do she'll expect you to keep up to the standard for the rest of your life. -- W.C. Fields If I have seen farther than other men, it is because I stood on the shoulders of giants. -- Isaac Newton "Always keep your bullshit detector in good working order" -- Forrest Gump (with shadows of Carl Sagan?) "The optimist proclaims that we live in the best of all possible worlds; and the pessimist fears this is true." -- Irving Caesar "Better to write for yourself and have no public, than to write for the public and have no self." -- Cyril Connolly Television the world over seems to have the following effects on viewers: It makes them feel very relaxed, but also significantly less active, alert, mentally focused, satisfied, or creative compared with almost anything else they could be doing. -- Mihaly Csikszentmehalyi "Solitary trees, if they grow at all, grow strong." -- Winston Churchill There is a new prisoner, I think about five cells down from mine. Seeing him brought in, has, I think, saved me from losing my mind; for that I do not thank him - sanity, after all, is only reason applied to human affairs, and when this reason, applied over years, has resulted in disaster, destruction, despair, misery, starvation and rot, the mind is correct to abandon it. This decision to discard reason, I see now, is not the last but the first reasonable act; and this insanity we are taught to fear consists in nothing but responding naturally and instinctively rather than with the culturally acquired, mannered thing called reason; an insane man talks nonsense because like a bird or a cat he is too sensible to talk sense. V.R.T. (The Fifth Head of Cerberus); Gene Wolfe The programmer, like the poet, works only slightly removed from pure thought-stuff. He builds his castles in the air, from air, creating by exertion of the imagination. Few media of creation are so flexible, so easy to polish and rework, so readily capable of realizing grand conceptual structures. -- Frederick Brooks, Jr., The Mythical Man Month The road to my bedroom is paved with good intentions. --Comment to a college housemate who asked if my intentions towards a friend of his were good. -- Andrew, www.kantor.com he terms his affliction "a disease with a purpose -- maybe not such a bad disease after all"; he remarks that the disease "wants to turn me into something else, ... something that never existed before." Dean's Rule #45. The truth hurts for a moment. A lie hurts for a long time. Whether women are better than men I cannot say -- but I can say they are certainly no worse. -- Golda Meir "Bound only by our imagination, we have endless opportunities to design and build tomorrow's global infrastructure." -- Les McCraw Keep thinking (it's all you got) -- Tim Rhodes (Prof.Tim) ...or should I say, "a large set of data from which set of memes have infested me because they are useful in the advancement of my happiness and understanding of the nature of a possible underlying reality?" -- Tom Holz , on the CoV list The liar's punishment is not in the least that he is not believed, but that he cannot believe anyone else. -- George Bernard Shaw "If one can't be happy, one must be amused." -- Nancy Mitford Let us be of good cheer, remembering that the misfortunes hardest to bear are those which never happen. -- James Russel Lowell "Ideal conversation must be an exchange of thought, and not, as many of those who worry most about their shortcomings believe, an eloquent exhibition of wit or oratory." -- Emily Post Often the test of courage is not to die but to live. -- Conte Vittorio Alfieri Remember: It is 10 times harder to command the ear than to catch the eye. -- Duncan Maxwell Anderson Speak clearly, if you speak at all; carve every word before you let it fall. -- Oliver Wendel Holmes, Jr. Worry a little bit every day and in a lifetime you will lose a couple of years. If something is wrong, fix it if you can. But train yourself not to worry. Worry never fixes anything. -- Mary Hemingway Remember that happiness is a way of travel, not a destination. -- Roy Goodman Welcome everything that comes to you, but do not long for anything else. -- Andre Gide "Science fiction deals with improbable possibilities, fantasy with plausible impossibilities." -- Miraim Ellen deFord The hierarchy of rules for the use of science in science fiction: If you can make it correct, you should. If you can't make it correct, at least make it plausible. If you can't make it correct or plausible, you had better make it fun. The only thing that makes life possible is permanent, intolerable uncertainty; not knowing what comes next. -- Ursula K. LeGuin Plain women know more about men than beautiful women do. -- Katharine Hepburn I only have the two eyes, and they are useless in this dark room. -- Wade T. Smith , on the CoV list "I see I've been rather repetitive. Sorry -- I didn't have time to write a shorter posting." -- David Deutsch, on the TCS mailing list "It is better to know some of the questions than all of the answers." -- James Thurber "You can no more win a war than you can win an earthquake." -- Jeannette Rankin (1880-1973) "A censor is a man who knows more than he thinks you ought to." -- Granville Hicks (1901-1982) Almost every man wastes part of his life attempting to display qualities which he does not possess. -- Samuel Johnson A person is never happy except at the price of some ignorance. -- Anatole France A certain naivete is prerequisite to all learning. A certain optimism is prerequisite to all action. -- George Leonard If a man would register all his opinions upon love, politics, religion, and learning, what a bundle of inconsistencies and contradictions would appear at last! -- Jonathan Swift mindfuck: Usually a term used to describe a long session of intellectually inspiring debate and discussion. Mental stimulation. The person who knows how to laugh at himself will never cease to be amused. -- Shirley Maclaine Striving for excellence motivates you; striving for perfection is demoralizing. -- Harriet Braiker Justice is better than chivalry if we cannot have both. -- Alice Stone Blackwell It has taken me years of struggle, hard work and research to learn to make one simple gesture, and I know enough about the art of writing to realize that it would take as many years of concentrated effort to write one simple, beautiful sentence. -- Isadora Duncan The most useful piece of advice you can ever give anyone is: "Don't listen to me, I'm trying to manipulate you to my advantage." -- Reed Konsler The Warrior Code: (paraphrased here) "It is better to hold than hurt, to hurt than cripple, to cripple than kill. The greatest warrior is he who never needs to kill." -- (paraphrased from Thomas Covenant novels) Put it before them briefly so they will read it, clearly so they will appreciate it, picturesquely so they will remember it and, above all, accurately so they will be guided by its light. -- Joseph Pulitzer Sometimes you have to get to know someone really well to realize you're really strangers. -- Mary Tyler Moore "It's the truth, even if it never happened." -- Ken Kesey The real art of conversation is not only to say the right thing in the right place but to leave unsaid the wrong thing at the tempting moment. -- Lady Dorothy Nevill "tradeoff triangle" of features, time and resources. Alice came to a fork in the road and saw a Cheshire cat in a tree. "Which road do I take?" she asked. "Where do you want to go?" he responded. "I don't know," Alice replied. "Then," said the cat, "it doesn't matter." -- Lewis Carroll Night time is really the best time to work. All the ideas are there to be yours because everyone else is asleep. -- Catherine O'Hara Interpretation is the revenge of the intellectual upon art. -- Susan Sontag ------------------------------------------------------------------**** Failability: We must not fear error, though it is not easy to be bold in this respect, or rather it is very easy to fall into the folly of manufacturing pain for ourselves as we see our errors. But as Popper also said, if we see an error then we have learnt something for sure. So we would be happy when we see error. -- David McDonagh (TCS list, talking about failablity theory, paraphrasing Karl Popper) While one person hesitates because he feels inferior, the other is busy making mistakes and becoming superior. -- Henry C. Link The greatest obstacle to discovery is not ignorance -- it is the illusion of knowledge. -- Daniel J. Boorstin I believe in confessing one's mistakes and correcting them. Such confession strengthens one and purifies the soul. -- Mahatma Gandhi We are fallible, and prone to error; but we can learn from our mistakes. -- Karl Popper in Objective Knowledge Respect for the vulnerability of human beings is a necessary part of telling the truth, because no truth will be wrested from a callous vision or callous handling. -- Anais Nin Or, to put it another way, you often don't really understand the problem until after the first time you implement a solution. The second time, maybe you know enough to do it right. So if you want to get it right, be ready to start over at least once. --http://tuxedo.org/~esr/writings/cathedral-bazaar/ cathedral-bazaar-2.html We cling to our own point of view, as though everything depended on it. Yet our opinions have no permanence; like autumn and winter, they gradually pass away. -- Chuang Tzu Faced with the choice between changing one's mind and proving there is no need to do so, almost everyone gets busy on the proof. -- John Kenneth Galbraith Pain is one of the sure signs that contemplation is happening. Contemplation may lead eventually to bliss, but first it will give us the pain of knowing that some of our dearest convictions are shallow, inadequate, wrong. -- Parker J. Palmer Most light bulbs, by the way, also put out quite a bit of heat. -- Nathaniel Hall , on the CoV "The greatest of all faults is to be conscious of none." -- Carlyle Objective evidence and certitude are doubtless very fine ideals to play with, but where on this moonlit and dream-visited planet are they found? -- William James, 1842-1910, "The Will to Believe" "Far better it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure, than to rank with those poor souls who neither enjoy much nor suffer much because they live in the grey twilight that knows neither victory nor defeat" -- Theodore Roosevelt Man has yet another advantage over algorithms in that he possesses intellect, which he can perfect and exercise by means of contemplation; he has the power to understand, decide upon the proper direction of his progress, and move towards perfection. The Ultimate Wisdom Philosophers must ultimately find their true perfection in knowing all the follies of mankind by introspection. Piet Hein As machines become more and more efficient and perfect, so it will become clear that imperfection is the greatness of man. Ernst Fischer (1899-1972) The Necessity of Art, ch. 5 (1959; tr. 1963) Our greatest glory is not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall. -- Confucius The One Universal Truth: Sometimes, you're wrong. I live with my impotence of ability because I must. I'm not complaining, though. Bad coffee is the stuff of life. So is bad anything. Bad music, bad writing, bad public speaking. Bad product is a window into the mind of failure, and therefore into the nature of success. -- Mark Thomas "If I had to live my life again, I'd make the same mistakes, only sooner." -- Tallulah Bankhead (1903-1968) "A life spent making mistakes is not only more honorable, but more useful than a life spent doing nothing." -- George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950) To enter the field of intellectual argument is to accept the risk that we may lose by being proved wrong. But accepting the risk of being wrong is the inescapable price for making any meaningful statements about the world. The best scientists have never feared to accept that risk (RIB110) -- http://uts.cc.utexas.edu/~pennock/Pennock-SupNatExpl.html "A smart man learns from his own mistakes. A wise man learns from the mistakes of others." If you can't make a mistake, you can't make anything. -- Marva Collins Let's keep absolute false. Otherwise, we won't get science off the ground. -- Kenneth Boyd, on the CoV mailing list An error doesn't become a mistake until you refuse to correct it. -- Orlando A. Battista |Student| "But you must understand, Sir, that my logic is not impeccable." |Professor| "Ahhh.... Then indeed it is!" The road to wisdom? Well, it's plain and simple to express: Err and err and err again but less and less and less. -- Piet Hein Intellectual brilliance is no guarantee against being dead wrong. -- David Fasold One learns how, and where, and why to speak only by doing it. Revel in your mistakes. With a little inspection, even the absurd has meaning. -- Reed Konsler ...all men make mistakes. But a good man yields when he knows his course is wrong, and repairs the evil. The only crime is pride. -- Sophocles Our achievements speak for themselves. What we have to keep track of are our failures, discouragements, and doubts. We tend to forget the past difficulties, the many false starts, and the painful groping. We see our past achievements as the end result of a clean forward thrust, and our present difficulties as signs of failure and decay. -- Eric Hoffer He that wrestles with us strengthens our nerves and sharpens our skill. Our antagonist is our helper. -- Edmund Burke ------------------------------------------------------------------**** Education: Schools: "Education is an admirable thing, but it is well to remember from time to time that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught." -- Oscar Wilde, author, (1856-1900) More than anything (more than a philosophical principle), unschooling is a lifestyle that steps outside value dependent assessments and puts the emphasis on "living". -- Manasta "Education rears disciples, imitators, and routinists, not pioneers of new ideas and creative geniuses. The schools are not nurseries of progress and improvement, but conservatories of tradition and unvarying modes of thought." -- Ludwig von Mises ... In our day no man should be considered educated if he does not take an interest in science. ... For science is one of the most important spiritual movements of our day. Anybody who does not attempt to acquire an understanding of this movement cuts himself off from the most remarkable development in the history of human affairs. There can be no history of man which excludes a history of his intellectual struggles and achievements; and there can be no history of ideas which excludes the history of scientific ideas. Only if the student experiences how easy it is to err, and how hard to make even a small advance in the field of knowledge, only then can he obtain a feeling for the standards of intellectual honesty, a respect for truth, and a disregard of authority and bumptiousness. ... Science can be taught as a fascinating part of human history -- ... the basis of a new liberal University education; of one whose aim, there it cannot produce experts, will be to produce at least men who can distinguish between a charlatan and an expert. This modest and liberal aim will be far beyond anything that our Arts faculties nowadays achieve. -- Pg. 284 /The Open Society and Its Enemies (Vol. II: Hegel and Marx)\, Karl Popper "The plain fact is that education is itself a form of propaganda -- a deliberate scheme to outfit the pupil, not with the capacity to weigh ideas, but with a simple appetite for gulping ideas ready-made. The aim is to make 'good' citizens, which is to say, docile and uninquisitive citizens." -- H.L. Mencken The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn. -- Alvin Toffler To sit in a class where the teacher stuffs our minds with information, organizes it with finality, insists on having the answers while being utterly uninterested in our views, and forces us into grim competition for grades--to sit in such a class is to experience a lack of space for learning. -- Parker J. Palmer ******* Human history becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe. -- H.G. Wells ******* [T]he purpose of education is to show a person how to define himself authentically and spontaneously in relation to his world--not to impose a prefabricated definition of the world, still less an arbitrary definition of the individual himself. -- Thomas Merton One had to cram all this stuff into one's mind, whether one liked it or not. This coercion had such a deterring effect that, after I had passed the final examination, I found the consideration of any scientific problems distasteful to me for an entire year ... It is in fact nothing short of a miracle that the modern methods of instruction have not yet entirely strangled the holy curiosity of inquiry; for this delicate little plant, aside from stimulation, stands mainly in need of freedom; without this it goes to wrack and ruin without fail. -- Albert Einstein Next to the right to life itself, the most fundamental of all human rights is the right to control our own minds and thoughts. That means, the right to decide for ourselves how we will explore the world around us, think about our own and other persons' experiences, and find and make the meaning of our own lives. Whoever takes that right away from us, by trying to *educate* us, attacks the very center of our being and does us a most profound and lasting injury. He tells us, in effect, that we cannot be trusted even to think, that for all our lives we must depend on others to tell us the meaning of our world and our lives, and that any meaning we may make for ourselves, out of our own experience has no value. -- John Holt in Instead of Education (Chapter 1, "Doing, Not ‘Education'", page 4) "Nothing in education is so astonishing as the amount of ignorance it accumulates in the form of inert facts." -- Henry Adams Fundamentally, there is no right education except growing up into a worthwhile world. -- Paul Goodman. There are two common ways to avoid thinking: one is to never read, and the other is to do nothing but read. ******* They are objects, not subjects of their learning. -- Paulo Freire ******* Mangoes are apparently pickled, like cucumbers, when young and unripe, the way society pickles the minds of the young and unripe. -- "Wade T.Smith" , on the CoV mailing list It is because modern education is so seldom inspired by a great hope that it so seldom achieves great results. The wish to preserve the past rather that the hope of creating the future dominates the minds of those who control the teaching of the young. -- Bertrand Russell He who can, does. He who cannot teaches -- George Bernard Shaw, _Education_ First, and this is the reason that Jefferson urged public education, it is the duty of a citizen in a free country not to fit into society, but to make society. -- http://www.naturalmath.com/quotations1.html I have come to feel that the only learning which significantly influences behavior is self-discovered, self-appropriated learning. -- Carl R. Rogers, On Becoming a Person, 1961 "Education is a progressive discovery of our own ignorance." -- Will Durant "It's a lot of work to get up in front of a class and make it look like you know everything there is to know about something you know nothing about." -- Prof. Anonymous "There is nothing as stupid as an educated man if you get him off the thing he was educated in." -- Will Rogers "There are thousands of buildings in this country, with millions of people in them who have no telephones, no cable television, and no reasonable prospect of broadband services. They're called schools." -- Reed E. Hundt, FCC Chair, in the New York Times. "A teacher is one who makes himself progressively unnecessary." -- Thomas Carruthers "Bodily exercise, when compulsory, does no harm to the body; but knowledge which is acquired under compulsion obtains no hold on the mind" -- Plato, The Republic. Book VII. 536 "Real education must ultimately be limited to [wo]men who insist on knowing. The rest is mere sheep-herding." -- Ezra Loomis Pound "We are shut up in schools and college recitation rooms for ten or fifteen years, and come out at last with a bellyful of words and do not know a thing. " -- Ralph Waldo Emerson "Educated men are as much superior to uneducated men as the living are to the dead." -- Aristotle In large states public education will always be mediocre, for the same reason that in large kitchens the cooking is usually bad." -- Nietzsche, Human All-too-Human, I,1878 From: "This Book is not Required" by Inge Bell (1985) "Why do our school function this way? Why is intellectual curiosity regularly killed in order to teach discipline? Why do our school give even seven-year-olds failing grades? Whenever sociologists see a system continually operating in "dysfunctional" ways, they suggest that perhaps we have not discovered the "real" function of the system. A hint is given here in the fact that the only schools which don't beat up their students emotionally are a few private and public schools which serve the rich. The real purpose of school is to make people obedient to authority. The mindlessness of school is meant to prepare us for the mindlessness of most jobs. And, perhaps, most importantly, it is the job of schools to convince those who have lousy jobs that their fate is their own fault...that they just weren't smart enough (translate, deserving enough) to do any better." -p11 [Schools:] vast factories for the manufacture of robots. -- Robert Lindner (1914-1956) A child educated only at school is an uneducated child. -- George Santayana Education is a social process ... Education is growth.... Education is, not a preparation for life; education is life itself. -- John Dewey Together we have come to realize that for most men the right to learn is curtailed by the obligation to attend school. -- Ivan Illich, Deschooling Society (1971) Teaching means different things in different places, but seven lessons are universally taught from Harlem to Hollywood Hills. They constitute a national curriculum you pay for in more ways than you can imagine, so you might as well know what it is. . . . 1. Confusion. 2. Class Position. 3. Indifference. 4. Emotional Dependency. 5. Intellectual Dependency. 6. Provisional Self-Esteem. 7. One Can't Hide... It is the great triumph of compulsory government monopoly mass-schooling that among even the best of my fellow teachers, and among even the best of my students' parents, only a small number can imagine a different way to do things. John Taylor Gatto, speech on accepting 1991 New York State teacher of the year award ... and there is, on the whole, nothing on earth intended for innocent people so horrible as a school. To begin with, it is a prison. But it is in some respects more cruel than a prison. In a prison, for instance, you are not forced to read books written by the warders (who of course would not be warders and governors if they could write readable books), and beaten or otherwise tormented if you cannot remember their utterly unmemorable contents. In the prison you are not forced to sit listening to the turnkeys discoursing without charm or interest on subjects that they don't understand and don't care about, and are therefore incapable of making you understand or care about. In a prison they may torture your body; but they do not torture your brains; and they protect you against violence and outrage from your fellow-prisoners. In a school you have none of these advantages. With the world's bookshelves loaded with fascinating and inspired books, the very manna sent down from Heaven to feed your souls, you are forced to read a hideous imposture called a school book, written by a man who cannot write: A book from which no human can learn anything: a book which, though you may decipher it, you cannot in any fruitful sense read, though the enforced attempt will make you loathe the sight of a book all the rest of your life. -- George Bernard Shaw, winner of the 1925 Nobel Prize in literature "A Treatise on Parents and Children," preface to Misalliance (1909), reprinted in Bernard Shaw: Collected Plays with Their Prefaces, volume IV (1972), page 35. [Education is] one of the chief obstacles to intelligence and freedom of thought. -- Bertrand Russell, winner of the 1950 Nobel Prize in literature All four of the presidents whose images are carved on the side of Mt. Rushmore had less classroom schooling before college than any of today's fifth graders. Theodore Roosevelt, winner of the Nobel Prize, was entirely home schooled. All four of those men (whose writings I've read) were considerably more literate than most of today's high school, or even college, graduates. Silberman goes on to quote a critic of age-grading: It is constructed upon the assumption that a group of minds can be marshaled and controlled in growth in exactly the same manner that a military officer marshals and directs the bodily movements of a company of soldiers. In solid, unbreakable phalanx the class is supposed to move through all the grades, keeping in locked step. This locked step is set by the 'average' pupil--an algebraic myth born of inanimate figures and an addled pedagogy. The class system does injury to the rapid and quick-thinking pupils, because these must shackle their stride to keep pace with the mythical average. But the class system does a greater injury to the large number who make slower progress than the rate of the mythical average pupil... They are foredoomed to failure before they begin. "education" defined as "the cultivation of the moral, mental and physical faculties of the young," -- Lieber "You must begin Your education with the distinct resolution to know what is true, and make choice of the straight and rough road to such knowledge." -- Ruskin If you would thoroughly know anything, teach it to others. -- Tryon Edwards Education is learning what you didn't know you didn't know. -- George Boas What we want is to see the child in pursuit of knowledge, and not knowledge in pursuit of the child. -- George Bernard Shaw Men are born ignorant, not stupid. They are made stupid by education. -- Bertrand Russell The most awesome learning feat on this planet - a child's acquisition of spoken language - occurs in the absence of any formal instruction. -- George Leonard The true purpose of education is to cherish and unfold the seed of immortality already sown within us; to develop, to their fullest extent, the capacities of every kind with which the God who made us has endowed us. -- Anna Jameson (1794-1860) ------------------------------------------------------------------**** TCS: Parenting: Children: Coercion: Use of Force: TAKING CHILDREN SERIOUSLY The Right to Bite TCS axiom: *ideas have consequences* Anarchism -- the radical notion that I am the sole authority when it comes to deciding what's best for me. -- Raze The Walls! prisoner support group, Fire in the Sky Let them *choose* for themselves, but not *fend* for themselves. -- David Deutsch, on the TCS mailing list The effects of infantile instruction are, like syphilis, never completely cured. (1931) -- Robert Briffault Happiness is when there is no contradiction between one's desires, wills & actions. -- Trygve B. Bauge "Let us consider the effect that coercion produces upon the mind of him against whom it is employed. It cannot begin with convincing; it is no argument. ... It begins with violently alienating the mind from the truth with which we wish it to be impressed. ... If he who employs coercion against me could mould me to his purposes by argument, no doubt he would. He pretends to punish me because his argument is strong; but he really punishes me because his argument is weak." -- William Godwin Capt. Picard: "When a child learns to devalue an enemy, they can learn to devalue anyone...even their parents." (Chains of Command) ******* Distrust all in whom the impulse to punish is powerful. -- Friedrich Nietzsche ******* More and more, we had drifted into the baby boomer habit of defining ourselves by our children, rather than by the things we ourselves were doing. Sometimes, I thought, I could almost see the people around me disappear into their children's lives, their expectations and identities swallowed almost whole by the experience of having children. -- Jon Katz It has been discovered that the best way to insure implicit obedience is to commence tyranny in the nursery. (1874) -- Benjamin Disraeli I have an art piece in which barriers implied by lines painted on the floor separate the viewer from a clear view of a TV screen. The viewer can only see its the blue light shining on the wall, but cannot see what is on the screen without stepping past the painted line (and entering into the art itself). At showings no one will step over the line, although everyone cranes their neck, trying to see the screen without going over the line. Everyone except the children. They walk right in, sit down and start watching the cartoons. -- Tim Rhodes Punishment or the threat of it doesn't help the subject learn how to modify the behavior involved. What the subject does learn, if the behavior is so strongly motivated that the subject _needs_ to continue it (stealing food when hungry, being one of the gang during adolescence), is to try not to get caught. Evasiveness increases rapidly under a punishment regime--a sad situation in a family setting and not so great in society at large either. Also, repeated or severe punishment has some very nasty side effects: fear, anger, resentment, resistance, even hate in the punished one, and sometimes in the punisher, too. Those are mental states not conducive to learning (unless you _want_ the subject to learn fear, anger, and hatred, emotions that are sometimes deliberately established in the training of terrorists). -- "Don't Shoot the Dog: the New Art of Teaching and Training" by Karen Pryor The hideous thing about the escalation of punishment is that there is absolutely no end to it. The search for a punishment so bad that maybe _this_ one will work is not a concern of apes or elephants, but it has preoccupied humans since history began and probably before. -- Karen Pryon [In our approach,] families do not have rules. Rules are for controlling people that you don't trust or respect enough to let them act on their own best theories. -- Nick Lockwood However, it can be misleading to identify TCS with the proposition that "coercion is harmful". It would be more accurate to say that we believe that coercion tends to disable those processes in the child's mind, and in the family's dynamics, which alone can solve problems or avoid harm. -- David Deutsch, , on the TCS mailing list What makes us good parents is not the infrequency of our ignorance, it is the infrequency of our settling for ignorance. -- Stephen Trapani , on the TCS mailing list [W]e can never be the perfect exemplars of our future vision because we each bear the marks of our history. It is our duty to do our best to point the way and to avoid vomiting our pain and anger into the next generation... -- Reed Konsler, on the CoV mailing list From the TCS mailing list: Steven Smith D Smith writes: <> Bob responds: My view is that it's not fair to tell a child to do something. Follow through is irrelevant. Kids don't need to have rules. They are perfectly capable of finding their own ways by sharing ideas with other children and adults and by actively observing the world around them and trying out their own ideas. My character was *not* established by the time I became an adult. It still isn't. Since I never accepted the idea of authority deciding my behavior, I have never lost the capacity to change the ways in which I solve problems. A person whose character has become "established" is a person whose development was so controlled by others as to have lost his or her capacity to adapt to changing conditions or to develop creative new approaches for dealing with old environments. I don't find this to be at all desirable. I think that children are very good at determining which of their behaviors give better results without being "taught" by someone who has absolute knowledge of right and wrong. In fact the problem here is that no one does have such absolute knowledge, and acting *as if* one has such knowledge on the behalf of a child who is assumed to have zero knowledge in this area and zero ability to learn without parental controls is likely to interfere with the child’s natural ability to evaluate outcomes. In addition acting *as if* one has absolute knowledge of right and wrong is dishonest, and the child may very well figure this out. At that point, when the child understands that the parent is fundamentally dishonest, does parental consistency based on this dishonesty help in any way? It seems to me that it is more part of a problem than of a solution. I would say that when people become parents they first find themselves acting irrationally with respect to matters concerning their children. That is, having suddenly encountered something, perhaps for the first time, that they feel is more important than anything else they have known including many of their own needs and desires, they begin to act on their unreasonable fears of dangers to their offspring in order to protect the child from any and all harms. Once accustomed to thinking and acting within this irrational paradigm, they then lose their bearings, which is to say their morality, entirely. It is at this point that they become unable to distinguish not only what is moral with respect to the external world and its population, but also lose track of their genuine moral responsibilities to their own children as autonomous beings. The will to protection mutates into suffocating authoritarianism. The parents become radical instrumentalists who lack any objective reference for even their goals for their children. And in their zeal, they see this debauched righteousness as itself a moral duty in order, as you say, to explain their own actions to themselves. -- "Mark E. Slagle" , on the TCS mailing list This underlying idea is that it is not only acceptable, but imperative to manipulate children through external means to satisfy the aims of others. -- "Steven K. Graham" , on the TCS list, talking about the horrors of regular parenting To the extent that we lack motivation we are probably suffering the damage of earlier coercion. I don't think motivation has to be learned, but it is easily interfered with by coercion. -- Mike & Jan , on the TCS mailing list After careful analysis and consultation with colleagues, I believe that I have succeeded in distilling all known anti-TCS arguments into a single sentence: Children are so gullible that you can't persuade them of anything. -- David Deutsch , on the TCS list When kids won't tell me what's going on with them, or when they tell me obvious falsehoods (like "I'm fat") it usually appears to be because they've been treated in such a way that they do not trust adults (or anyone) and they believe that my motivation in wanting to talk about it is to get the better of them somehow. Refusal to communicate honestly is a way to maintain control. -- Angela WestEmmer , on the TCS mailing list [context: anorexia] Observe the persistence, in mankind’s mythologies, of the legend about a paradise that men had once possessed, the city of Atlantis or the Garden of Eden or some kingdom of perfection, always behind us. The root of that legend exists, not in the past of the race, but in the past of every man. You still retain a sense -- not as firm as a memory, but diffused like the pain of hopeless longing -- that somewhere in the starting years of your childhood, before you had learned to submit, to absorb the terror or unreason and to doubt the value of your mind, you had known a radiant sense of existence, you had known the independence of a rational consciousness facing an open universe. That is the paradise which you have lost, which you seek -- which is yours for the taking. -- Ayn Rand, _Atlas Shrugged_, pg. 972 "A child who is protected from all controversial ideas is as vulnerable as a child who is protected from every germ. The infection, when it comes -- and it will come -- may overwhelm the system, be it the immune system or the belief system." -- Jane Smiley, in the Chicago Tribune So when you see your kids watching what seems like simplistic cliched trivial garbage, just remember that for them it is new and exciting. Trying to hurry along their development with educational programs that they won't understand or care about will just interfere with their learning. -- Nick , on the TCS mailing list Eating what someone else tells you to is a bad eating habit, probably the worst kind, so in fact by 'saving them' from their own cravings, you are damaging their ability to decide by themselves what they should eat and so, as soon as they are adults and this control over them is relinquished they will immediately dive for the cookie jar, and will eat only the foods you didn't let them, in order to 'make up for lost time'. meanwhile you'll be turning all of these supposedly healthy foods into means of torture for them, so they are unlikely to agree to continue inflicting this torture on themselves after they leave home. Of course it might have the effect you are hoping for, but do you really want kids who eat healthy food because they are incapable of choosing what they really want to eat? -- Nick , on the TCS mailing list One of these assumptions is that your function is to cause certain behaviour in your child, and therefore that *effectiveness* is the proper moral criterion by which you and others ought to be judging your actions towards him. This is not just immoral, it amounts to a principled rejection of morality in your dealings with your child. -- David Deutsch , on the TCS mailing list However, children have other characteristics besides these. They are excitable and like excitement. They are in a hurry; it seems to them that to do a thing now may be altogether different from doing it tomorrow. They are easily bored. They ask questions. They want to grow up to be the first Emperor of Space. In short, they seek intensity of experience. -- http://www.home.aone.net.au/think/humevas.html Exactly. Here we have a socially condoned and protected thing ('godfearing child rearing and discipline'), that is almost indistinguishable from a socially stigmatized thing ('sadistic child abuse') -- David Deutsch , on the TCS mailing list, about http://www.spankingparents.org The 'well known fact that boys are more violent than girls' is a self fulfilling prophesy. -- Nick , on the TCS mailing list In what frame of mind would you rather have your child spend his time? Resenting you and/or his siblings? Or enjoying what he is doing and learning and growing in understanding and appreciation of the tasks he does choose to tackle? -- Ellen Thompson , on the TCS mailing list Practice did not seem to be necessary. Desire and maturity seemed to much more important than practice. -- Ellen Thompson , on the TCS mailing list It is your privilege to coerce your child? To interfere with your child's thinking in such a way as to potentially produce permanent difficulties with thinking rationally and creatively for his entire life? -- Janet Reiland , on the TCS mailing list I was not allowed to be myself very often as a child, I was forced to do things and act in ways that were not natural to my personality. I am just now, in my middle 30's figuring out who I am, what I like, etc. That seems such a shame and criminal. -- "STARLENE D. STEWART" , on the TCS mailing list >do you believe coercion the worst evil of all? The answer to that is very simple. Coercion is not the worst evil, it is the *only* evil. -- Nick , on the TCS mailing list There is, of course, a difference between what one seizes and what one really possesses. -- Pearl Buck Coercion often will produce very compliant obedient children in situations where they know they will be coerced if they defy their parents in some way. Such compliant obedient children are not wonderful children -- they are damaged children. This is not a great goal to have for our children. -- Janet Reiland , on the TCS mailing list Great people have always done that. Like children, they take for granted the adventure of the world they were born into. -- http://www.brodietech.com/rbrodie/emsr03.htm Society everywhere is in a conspiracy against the humanity of every one of its members. -- http://www.brodietech.com/rbrodie/emsr04.htm You see it doesn't matter what the issue is, it doesn't even matter if you are right or wrong, unless you are omnipotent, you can't coerce your child every second of the day. If you force things on them, all the creativity they might have devoted to something useful will go into finding ways to defy you. Turn your back for an instant and they will be finding ways to get hold of sugar, or hide the toothbrush, or whatever. Because you can't exert absolute control over a person the only way you can make sure they do what's right even when you aren't looking, is to convince them that it is right, and the only way to do that is to stop using force to make them do it. -- Nick , on the TCS mailing list fear is an almost universal aspect of irrationality. -- Stephen Trapani , on the TCS mailing list "The Santa myth is one of the most effective means ever devised for intimidating children, eroding their self-esteem, twisting their behavior, warping their values, and slowing their development of critical thinking skills." -- Tom Flynn, 'The Trouble with Christmas' there isn't a child-rearing philosophy in the world that is compatible with people not enacting it. -- David Deutsch, on the TCS mailing list "Now, back to the carrots. When you pull the child away from the carrots against his will, Stephen is right that this will tend to impair his thinking about such matters, and about you, and so on, and this *could* cause him to acquire serious hang-ups that *could* make him very unhappy in his future life. But his creativity is great, so in practice this one instance of coercion probably won't cause such a disaster. So let me set that 'coercion-damage' effect aside for a moment. One certain and immediate effect of thwarting him in this way is that *he will no longer believe that you will never thwart him in this way*. No irrationality is involved here. It is not a matter of 'coercion damage'. It is simply a fact that he has become aware of. But his awareness of this fact has unlimited potential to harm both him and you. That is because, from then on, he must classify all his actions, desires and projects into two categories: those that you will thwart when you become aware of them, even when that distresses him, and those that you will not thwart. In regard to the latter category, he will continue to be honest with you, seek your advice and be open to your criticism because he knows that it is designed to make him better off *by his lights*. In regard to the former, he will behave evasively, conceal his actions and intentions, and not take your advice seriously because he knows that it is not designed to make him better off by his lights. Furthermore, it will not take many occurrences of this before it becomes vital to him to build up a detailed understanding of which actions, desires and projects are in which of these two categories. Among other things, he will need to perform experiments to determine where the line is, where it is drawn sharply and where there are grey areas, and so on. You will perceive these experiments as repeated, cruel assaults directed with uncanny accuracy at your most vulnerable points -- your areas of irrationality. -- David Deutsch TCS is a theory about what to do in the face of conflict. TCS rejects the "discipline is an expression of love" dogma that permeates conventional coercive parenting. Feeling love for another person does not confer the right to act towards them in a way that would be wrong if you did not love them. Love is no justification for tyranny. "Sending someone someplace against their will is imprisonment no matter how well the walls are decorated" -- Cath Girves, TCS list, 98/05/01 "'Why should I miss my supper?' you ask. Well, why should they miss their playtime? because you're bigger and stronger than they are? because you're older? Is that how you like to run your relationships?" -- Nick Lockwood, the Taking Children Seriously list, 98/05/25 As an additional comment in this thread, it isn't *just* creativity that may be lacking. A prerequisite is a *belief* or attitude that *seeks* to solve problems. Which searches for creative solutions to problems. All the creativity in the world does no good unless it's engaged. So I see the real problem as people who don't *believe* that they can solve the problems of parenting. People who adopt a victim mentality and expect others to solve their problems for them. -- skg , on the TCS mailing list TRANSDERIVATIONAL SEARCH The process of searching back through one's stored memories and mental representations to find the reference experience from which a current behaviour or response was derived. -- http://www.nlp.com/cgi-bin/mfs/05/NLP/glossary.html#T It sounds like you need to stop and take a deep breath and look at what "chores" you are doing and *why* you are doing them. If a person clearly understands (within their own mind) that there is a real reason for doing the "chore" then often the person *wants* to do that chore. If we are doing things that have meaning and that we want to do, the attitude we carry is very different. -- Janet MomReil , on the TCS mailing list But the two central ideas to TCS (as I understand it: that it is important to take children seriously, and that coercion undermines learning) -- "T. Harms" , on the TCS mailing list even preverbal children are very clear about what they want and don't want. All we have to do is pay attention and consider such expressions important. -- Stephen Trapani , on the TCS mailing list What we have to learn to do, we learn by doing. -- Aristotle (B.C. 384-322) Lazy is OK in my book. One of my favorite expressions is that we are human beings, not human doers. Having children has really helped me to understand the value of just "being" in the moment in life. Life simply unfolds for children, especially very young children, and it is such a wonderful way to live. -- Janet Reiland If you assume that children are evil, irrational little thugs who need a firm hand, otherwise they'll grow up to be outcasts, misfits and criminals, then you will treat them accordingly and they may well "reward" you admirably. If you assume that children are actively forming their own minds, testing their theories and replacing false theories with truer ones -- reaching for truth -- then you will be more likely to treat them in such a way that they do indeed learn and develop. -- Sarah Lawrence, on the TCS mailing list Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent. -- Salvor Hardin A problem is a conflict between theories It often seems that parents are so fearful of the worst that can happen that they won't try approaches that give their children input. However, people don't learn nearly as well when forced into something as they do when they are intimately involved in the decisions. As a result, the long term consequences of the use of force in this area is less safety. -- Bob RReil51097 , on the TCS mailing list "Coercion: the psychological state of enacting one theory while a rival theory is still active in one's mind. A person doing one thing while having a real, active wish to do something else, is acting under coercion. A person not doing something while having a real, active wish to do it, is acting under coercion. .. ...Coercion impairs creativity. Its effects are cumulative and effectively permanent. Coercion destroys a person's ability to think and solve problems in the affected areas of his mind. When a person is acting on one theory while still retaining the wish to act otherwise, that is what we call "acting under coercion". -- TCS definition, from the FAQ My theory is that nobody can hurt my feelings, thus I stop myself if I'm inclined to make such a statement and look again. Feelings are not hurt, feelings exist. A good starting point is to identify feelings without interpreting their presence as damage. Easier said than done, perhaps, but near as I can tell doing this is not delusion. -- "T. B. Harms" , on the TCS mailing list "I am in favour of agreement, and against consensus" -- Margaret Thatcher We can't perhaps, but children should be able to. If you do not grant her permission to make all her decisions herself, why should you have the right to force her to face up the consequences of them? -- Nick , on the TCS mailing list Coercion, whether for the purported "good of the whole" or for the paternalistic protection of the individual, is unacceptable to us. Compulsion breeds ignorance and weakens the connection between personal choice and personal outcome, thereby destroying personal responsibility. -- Max More; The Extropian Principles v2.6; http://www.primenet.com/~maxmore/extprn26.htm Here's a hypothetical question for you. Suppose that one day you come to know *more* than you currently do. In particular, suppose (just for the sake of argument) that one day you become convinced that being forced to wear seat belts against one's will damages a child's thinking in regard to safety, so that the risk that the child will be accidentally killed or injured in other ways increases. Suppose that the increase in that risk is far greater than the reduction in risk caused by wearing seat belts. Will it then become your view that your current behaviour is "abuse"? -- David Deutsch, on the TCS mailing list "If you think that your belief is based upon reason, you will support it by argument, rather then by persecution, and will abandon it if the argument goes against you. But if your belief is based on faith, you will realize that argument is useless and will therefore result to force either in the form of persecution or by stunting and distorting the minds of the young in what is called "education"." -- Bertrand Russell There is a very close connection between the meanings of "to inform" and "to form" -- Robin Faichney http://www.faichney.org/synthesis/infomat/cause.html Self-referential paradoxes should be avoided if possible. The simple example of such a paradox is "This statement is false" (is it true or false?). A couple of more complex examples: "I do not have any entrenched theories" or "My upbringing did not harm me." -- Maria Droujkova , on TCS theory Control can never be a means to anything other than more control. -- William S. Burroughs I think that only a few people realize how afraid most children are of their parents. Think about that: the very common, almost routine threat of "I will tell your parents this and that..." frightens almost every child, and is often quite effectively used to blackmail children into doing ugly things (unwanted sexual relations and crime come to mind). -- Maria Droujkova You don't need to understand his motivation. I believe it *seems* that he may act in a way for the sheer joy of tormenting another human being, but you know in your heart that this isn't true. More than likely he is trying to get a need met and he is under the mistaken impression that his sister is somehow thwarting him. He is frustrated. You need to be on his side and help him get what he wants. This was (is still) a hard shift for me to make. When one child is bullying another, rescue the victim and figure out how to help the bully. It pays off for everyone. -- CathGirves , on the TCS mailing list This was a result of coercion. You must have had no other means to get what you wanted. If you knew that your parents were on your side, you would not need to resort to making their life hell. If they showed you true empathy, you would *know* that they understood what you wanted and why. See the thing is, if a person is treated with respect and understanding from the beginning they will treat others with respect and understanding. If you have been coerced, and had your feeling denied from the beginning, then you will treat others with coercion and disrespect. -- Samantha Loesch , on the TCS mailing list it is possible to force injury upon a man, but impossible to please him against his will. "Morality and performance of duty are artificial measures that become necessary when something essential is lacking. The more successfully a person was denied access to his or her feelings in childhood, the larger the arsenal of intellectual weapons and the supply of moral prostheses has to be, because morality and a sense of duty are not sources of strength or fruitful soil for genuine affection. Blood does not flow in artificial limbs; they are for sale and can serve many masters. What was considered good yesterday can - depending on the decree of government or party - be considered evil and corrupt today, and vice versa. But those who have spontaneous feelings can only be themselves. They have no other choice if they want to remain true to themselves. Rejection, ostracism, loss of love, and name calling will not fail to affect them; they will suffer as a result and will dread them, but once they have found their authentic self they will not want to lose it. And when they sense that something is being demanded of them to which their whole being says no, they cannot do it. They simply cannot." Alice Miller, "For your own good: hidden cruelty in child-rearing and the roots of violence." In short, the rules for ritualized violence of parents against their children are seen to be nothing other than a tool by which the parents can rationalize their naked aggression while absolving themselves of any formal guilt. Naturally, we should understand that the relief from formal guilt is just that, formal and not genuine. The parents are necessarily corrupted both by their violent behavior itself and all the more so by their mendacious refusal to accept responsibility for it openly (variations on this refusal include the usual excuses such as 'It's for your own good,' or 'I'm only preserving order and rationality,' or 'The family needs rules,' etc.) The hidden guilt eats away at themselves and at their relationship to their children, eventually consuming that which it is meant, on the surface, to preserve. All tyrants ultimately provide for their own destruction and degradation. The pity is that they so often take most everyone else with them on the journey into their self-made hell. -- "Mark E. Slagle" , expounding on TCS theory Fatigue is often caused not by work, but by worry, frustration and resentment. We rarely get tired when we are doing something interesting and exciting. -- Dale Carnegie ------------------------------------------------------------------**** ARR: (autonomy respecting relationships) It's a cooperative effort to support each others' autonomy. -- "stephen trapani" on the ARR list ******* What kind of relationship could one build with a person with whom you cannot share your most fundamental beliefs honestly and straightforwardly? ******* One can give nothing whatever without giving oneself--that is to say, risking oneself. If one cannot risk oneself, then one is simply incapable of giving. -- James Baldwin Creativity is the subject-specific meta-knowledge of how to solve a problem. -- http://www.tcs.ac/FAQ/FAQTheoryObjections.html He notes clinical research that concluded whenever a person consciously tried to dominate and control others, then that person had difficulty in maintaining affectionate relationships with others (15). Kipnis states that "This is because the goal of power over others leads to a rejection of equality. Loving relations become especially difficult to maintain" -- http://home.istar.ca/~wkrossa/kros8~1.htm Love and coercion are mutually exclusive realities -- http://home.istar.ca/~wkrossa/kros8~1.htm It seems to me that American society is, for all its freedom, a punitive society. We carry a burden of Calvinistic negativeness that colors all our institutions and much of our judgment, no matter what our personal backgrounds. -- Karen Pryor Oh, yes. I've got lots of thoughts. All of them have to do with "control." TCS is a way of parenting that takes "control" of others out of the picture. All of what you are describing here is still very "control" based. Many people only know how to work within the "control" framework -- they are unable to even begin to contemplate a world where personal relationships are not based on control. So if that is the only framework one knows, then one wants the most amount of control one can get (preferable nice, gentle looking control because that seems "nicer" and "more humane"). In a framework that does not involve control -- things look very different -- there are whole different assumptions and ways of looking at things. -- Janet, MomReil@AOL.COM, on the TCS mailing list Consistency (in the sense of constancy in time) is a virtue when you are exercising brute power. It is a vice when you are trying to approach the truth, and especially when you are trying to solve problems jointly with another person. Laying down rules to be enforced upon the other party is, similarly, an unmitigated vice in any close human relationship. -- David Deutsch on the TCS mailing list http://eve.physics.ox.ac.uk/Personal/deutsch/David.html "You can't hold a man down without staying down with him." -- Booker T. Washington Unrealistic expectations are a basic relationship issue in or out of TCS. -- Allison Crawford, on the TCS list If you begin by sacrificing yourself to those you love, you will end by hating those very people. -- Kevin Solway, http://www.ozemail.com.au/~bsolway/poison.html it is possible to obtain satisfaction from personal relationships in the absence of the ability to force the other person to do what one wants. -- kevin@quipu.waterloo-rdp.on.ca (Kevin Schoedel), on the TCS mailing list It can be extremely hard to see someone else as genuinely individual -- with their own, possibly quite different, ideas -- instead, we tend to cast people into roles that we have envisioned for them. But when you care about the others, you've got to say to hell with the roles we imagined and figure out what roles make sense between two real people instead of two characters in a romantic fantasy. -- Steven K. Graham, on the ARR mailing list One of the things that kills passion in long term relationships is obligation. Many long term relationships are built on promises. A promise is a commitment to something in the future that one may not want. If you wanted it in the future, a promise would not be necessary. How can one continue to feel passionate about someone they are obliged to be with? It seems to me passion in a long term relationship has a chance if we throw out promises, obligations, and commitments. Instead we must insist for ourselves and our partners that we act on our best thinking in every moment and act to maximize our happiness. -- Catherine Girves, cathgirves@aol.com, on the ARR list It is not possible to find common preferences with people who do not respect your autonomy. Bill and his mother do not have a common preference relationship. Because she is not taking Bill seriously. She is treating him like property. -- Catherine Girves cathgirves@aol.com, on the ARR mailing list I don't *want* to be in an intimate relationship where people are satisfied to keep their bad theories. I don't want to be in an intimate relationship with someone who is not interested in growing. -- Catherine Girves, cathgirves@aol.com on the ARR list people who are emotionally committed to the insolubility of their own problems ------------------------------------------------------------------**** Intelligence: Wisdom: Reason: There is no expedient to which a man will not resort to avoid the real labor of thinking. -- Sir Joshua Reynolds One who is plenteously provided for from within needs but little from without. -- Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe Academics are the end result of memetic inbreeding. -- Richard Brodie It is as useless to argue with those who have renounced the use of reason as to administer medication to the dead. -- Thomas Jefferson "Intelligence, like love, resists definition or qualification but its presence-or absence-is particularly easy to detect." -- David Backus; Echoes "A wise man proportions his belief to the evidence." -- David Hume, "An Inquiry Concerning Human Understanding" The intelligent man who is proud of his intelligence is like the condemned man who is proud of his large cell. -- Simone Weil "This is, of course, a point on which reasonable people can disagree." I'd like to take this opportunity to side with Reed for a change. Any belief can theoretically be justified by reason, you just have to pick the right premises. Don't you think any good racist can come up with a plethora of reasons for hating a given ethnic group? The real power of reason is that it provides an avenue for challenging the veracity of the assumptions. As long as they claim to be reasonable and play by the rules of rationality, you have a chance to convince them of the error in their ways (and, importantly, vice versa). -- David McFadzean david@lucifer.com, on the CoV mailing list "Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter." -- Martin Luther King, Jr. Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius -- and a lot of courage -- to move in the opposite direction. -- Albert Einstein It's not that I'm so smart, it's just that I stay with problems longer. -- Albert Einstein "True greatness consists in the use of a powerful understanding to enlighten oneself and others." -- Voltaire When a man's physical body is not straight he feels dissatisfied and seeks to fix it. But when his mind is not straight he doesn't feel dissatisfaction. This is called ignorance of the relative importance of things. "The great snare of thought is uncritical acceptance of irrational assumptions." -- Will Durant May you live all the days of your life. -- Jonathon Swift There is this difference between happiness and wisdom, that he that thinks himself the happiest man really is so; but he that thinks himself the wisest is generally the greatest fool. -- Charles Caleb Colton The beauty and wonder of our ability to find order in chaos, now that, that is truly a remarkable and astounding thing. -- Tim Rhodes [Prof. Tim], on the CoV mailing list One way you can recognize if a theory is unfalsifiable, is if it has anything to say about the person arguing against it. In real life, things do not modify themselves according to what some individual is saying about them. The validity of a theory cannot in any way be related to whether or not it is criticized, so any theory which includes clauses about what happens when it is criticized is highly suspicious. -- Nick , on the TCS mailing list Far from troubling him, this state of being lost became a source of happiness, of exhilaration. He breathed it into his very bones, as if on the brink of some previously hidden knowledge. He breathed it into his very bones and said to himself, almost triumphantly, "I am lost." -- Paul Auster "Knowing and not doing are equal to not knowing at all." Siddhartha said: "I have had many thoughts, but it would be difficult for me to tell you about them. But this is one thought that has impressed me, Govinda. Wisdom is not communicable. The wisdom which a wise man tries to communicate always sounds foolish... knowledge can be communicated but not wisdom. One can find it, live it, be fortified by it, do wonders through it, but one cannot communicate and teach it." -- H. Hesse, _Siddhartha_ "Thinking is the activity I like best, and writing is simply thinking though my fingers." -- Issac Asimov "One is not idle because one is absorbed. There is both visible and invisible labor. To contemplate is to toil. To think is to do." -- Victor Hugo There are forces friendly to our struggle to birth ourselves as an intelligent species. But they are quiet and shy; they are to be sought, not in the arrival of alien star fleets in the skies of Earth, but nearby, in wilderness solitude, in the ambiance of waterfalls, and yes, in the grasslands and pastures now too rarely beneath our feet. -- Terence McKenna Also, recall: stupidity [as opposed to slow processing] is inherently unverifiable by oneself with regard to oneself. I have very few uses for that word; it seems to reduce the intelligence of the invoker. -- Kenneth Boyd zaimoni@ksu.edu, on the CoV mailing list It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it. -- Aristotle [an intelligent mind] An intellectual is someone whose mind watches itself. -- Albert Camus ...Another writer again agreed with all my generalities, but said that as an inveterate skeptic I have closed my mind to the truth. Most notably I have ignored the evidence for an Earth that is six thousand years old. Well, I haven't ignored it; I considered the purported evidence and *then* rejected it. There is a difference, and this is a difference, we might say, between prejudice and postjudice. Prejudice is making a judgment before you have looked at the facts. Postjudice is making a judgment afterwards. Prejudice is terrible, in the sense that you commit injustices and you make serious mistakes. Postjudice is not terrible. You can't be perfect of course; you may make mistakes also. But it is permissible to make a judgment after you have examined the evidence. In some circles it is even encouraged. -- Carl Sagan, The Burden of Skepticism, Skeptical Enquirer, Vol. 12, pg. 46 "There is no greater, nobler, more heroic form of devotion that the act of a man who assumes the responsibility of thinking" -- Ayn Rand, _Atlas Shrugged_, pg.935 There is no greater, nobler, more heroic form of devotion than the act of a man who assumes the responsibility of thinking. -- John Galt For any proposition there is always some sufficiently narrow interpretation of its terms, such that it turns out true, and some sufficiently wide interpretation such that it turns out false...concept stretching will refute *any* statement, and will leave no true statement whatsoever. -- Imri Lakatos "Discussion among rational people is best conducted as a partnership in discovering the truth, not as combat or indoctrination. Discussion and debate are values only if they are means to the discovery of the truth." -- David Kelley Those who invalidate reason ought seriously to consider whether they argue against reason with or without reason; if with reason, then they establish the principles that they are laboring to dethrone: but if they argue without reason (which, in order to be consistent with themselves they must do), they are out of reach of rational conviction, nor do they deserve a rational argument. -- Ethan Allen "The difference between stupid and intelligent people ... is that intelligent people can handle subtlety. They are not baffled by ambiguous or even contradictory situations -- in fact, they expect them and are apt to become suspicious when things seem overly straightforward." -- Neal Stephenson _The Diamond Age_ "Iron rusts from disuse, stagnant water loses its purity and in cold weather becomes frozen; even so does inaction sap the vigor’s of the mind." -- George Allen Anger and worry are the enemies of clear thought. -- Madeline Brent "The three great strategies for obscuring an issue are to introduce irrelevancies, to arouse prejudice, and to excite ridicule...." -- Bergen Evans, The Natural History of Nonsense "If you don't think that logic is a good method for determining what to believe, make an attempt to convince me of that without using logic. No one has even bothered to try yet." -- Brett Lemoine "...to argue with a man who has renounced his reason is like giving medicine to the dead." -- Ingersoll's Works, Vol. 1, p.127 "Intelligence without ambition is a bird without wings" -- C.A. Danielson "The Meta-Turing test counts a thing as intelligent if it seeks to devise and apply Turing tests to objects of its own creation. -- Lew Mammel, Jr. "By three methods we may learn wisdom: First, by reflection, which is noblest; Second, by imitation, which is easiest; and third by experience, which is the bitterest." -- Confucius At first sight, the idea of any rules or principles being superimposed on the creative mind seems more likely to hinder than to help, but this is quite untrue in practice. Disciplined thinking focuses inspiration rather than blinkers it. -- G. L. Glegg, The Design of Design "The temptation shared by all forms of intelligence: cynicism." -- Albert Camus "cynic. A blackguard whose faulty vision sees things as they are, not as they ought to be." -- Ambrose Bierce the Dictionary of Philosophy defines Cynicism as a school of philosophy teaching that human beings' true happiness "lies in right and intelligent living... The Cynics attempted to free [people] from bondage to human custom, convention, and institution by reducing [their] desires and appetites to such only as are indispensable to life and by renouncing those which are imposed by civilization." "If to look truth in the face and not resent it when it's unpalatable, and take human nature as you find it . . . is to be cynical, then I suppose I'm a cynic." -- Somerset Maugham "The mind is not a vessel to be filled but a fire to be kindled." -- Plutarch "A scholar knows no boredom." -- Jean Paul Richter The mere formulation of a problem is far more often essential than its solution, which may be merely a matter of mathematical or experimental skill. To raise new questions, new possibilities, to regard old problems from a new angle requires creative imagination and marks real advances in science -- Albert Einstein "It is better to fail in originality than to succeed in imitation." -- Herman Melville, American author "Intelligence is the ability to understand what you know." True wisdom is less presuming than folly. The wise man doubteth often, and changeth his mind; the fool is obstinate, and doubteth not; he knoweth all things but his own ignorance. -- Akhenaton? (c. B.C. 1375) If a man will begin in certainties he shall end in doubts; but if he will be content to begin in doubts he shall end in certainties. -- Francis Bacon (1561-1626) We could then say that rationalism is an attitude of readiness to listen to critical arguments and to learn from experience. It is fundamentally an attitude of admitting that "I may be wrong and you may be right, and by an effort, we may get nearer to the truth". -- Karl Popper Silly is a state of mind, stupid is a way of life. "I can live with doubt and uncertainty and not knowing. I think it's much more interesting to live not knowing than to have answers which might be wrong." -- Richard Feynman, physicist Man once surrendering his reason, has no remaining guard against absurdities the most monstrous, and like a ship without rudder, is the sport of every wind. -- Thomas Jefferson to James Smith, 1822. Fantasy, abandoned by reason, produces impossible monsters; united with it, she is the mother of the arts and the origin of marvels. -- Goya "Pain makes man think. Thought makes man wise. Wisdom makes life endurable." -- Sakini Anyone who stops learning is old, whether at twenty or eighty. Anyone who keeps learning stays young. The greatest thing in life is to keep your mind young. -- Henry Ford ------------------------------------------------------------------**** Meaning: It was the realization that there is no intrinsic meaning that resolved it for me -- that meaning is a relationship of the form: The meaning of ______ to _______. -- Deron Stewart To go into a bit more detail I think there are three types of meaning, all related to cause and effect. If X means Y then one of three situations is true: 1) X caused Y 2) X was intended to cause Y 3) X caused knowledge of Y -- David McFadzean (note: 4) X was intended to cause knowledge of Y is another possibility) ------------------------------------------------------------------**** Truth: Logic: The great enemy of truth is not the lie--deliberate, contrived, and dishonest--but the myth--persistent, persuasive, and realistic. Too often we hold fast to the cliches of our forebearers. -John Fitzgerald Kennedy, Yale commencement address, 1962 Where doubt, there truth is - ‘tis her shadow. -- P.J. Bailey I do not know what I may appear to the world; but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the sea-shore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me. -- Isaac Newton When Thomas Henry Huxley was chided by a friend for abandoning the traditional solace of religion he replied: "Had I lived a couple of centuries earlier I could have fancied a devil scoffing at me ... and asking me what profit it was to have stripped myself of the hopes and consolations of the mass of mankind? To which my only reply was and is -- Oh devil! truth is better than much profit. We are the stories we tell ourselves. We understand ourselves through their telling and re-telling. Science is, to the art of social mythology, what technical writing is to great literature. (But at least the writers of VCR manuals and MSDS sheets aren't silly enough to claim that the _novel_ is the overwhelming cause of folly and wickedness in human beings and should be extinguished.) -- Tim Rhodes There's nothing I like less than bad arguments for a view that I hold dear. -- Daniel Dennett truth: coherence and correspondence criteria "Sometimes," Vijaya agreed, "even more. For the simple reason that a talent for manipulating symbols tempts its possessors into habitual sybmol-manipulation, and habitual symbol-manipulation is an obstacle in the way of concrete experiencing and the reception of gratuitous graces." -- Aldous Huxley, _Island_ "Many of the truths we cling to depend greatly upon our own point of view." -Ben Kenobi axiom n, 1 a recognized truth; 2 an established and universally accepted principle or rule; 3 a proposition which is assumed without proof for the sake of studying the consequences that flow from it. (The New Hamlyn Dictionary). The method of proof just exhibited can clearly be applied to every formal system having the following features: firstly, interpreted as to content, it disposes of sufficient means of expression to define the concepts occurring in the above argument (in particular the concept "provable formula"); secondly, every provable formula in it is also correct as regards content. -- Kurt Godel, on when his Incompleteness Theorem is valid, http://www.ddc.net/ygg/etext/godel/godel3.htm "When you tell the truth, you don't have to remember anything." -- Samuel Clemens Even more interesting, the reality of Platonic 'forms' - ideals contemplated by the human intellect - is questioned by some simple corollaries to Gödel's Theorem. His Propostion XI states that the consistency of any formal deductive system (if it is consistent) is neither provable nor disprovable within the system. A quick leap of logic interprets this corollary as such: 'Any sufficiently complex, consistent logical framework cannot be self-dependent' - i.e., it must rely on intuition, or some external confirmation of certain propositions (specifically, one that proves internal consistency). -- Siegfried, Introduction to Godel's Theorem http://www.ddc.net/ygg/etext/godel/ "Truth emerges more readily from error than from confusion" -- Francis Bacon "There cannot be a language more universal and more simple, more free from errors and obscurities... more worthy to express the invariable relations of natural things [than mathematics]." -- Joseph Fourier, Analytic Theory of Heat, 1822 (as quoted in Cosmos, by Carl Sagan) "Mathematics is instead the study of the structures we use to understand and reason about our experience" -- George Lankoff, _Women, Fire and Dangerous things: What categories reveal about the mind_" Anyone who cannot cope with mathematics is not fully human. At best he is a tolerable subhuman who has learned to wear shoes, bathe, and not make messes in the house. -- Robert A. Heinlein For a crisp logic, I prefer a 4-valued logic supporting True, False, Unknown, and Contradiction [with extreme repulsion from Contradiction truth values] -- Kenneth Boyd, on the CoV mailing list `This well-formed formula is unprovable-in-Peano-Arithmetic.' -- http://users.ox.ac.uk/~jrlucas/implgoed.html If truth can outrun provability, reality can outrun knowledge. -- The Implications of Godel's Theorem http://users.ox.ac.uk/~jrlucas/implic.html Gödel's theorem shows that mathematical insight need not be algorithmic. -- http://users.ox.ac.uk/~jrlucas/implgoed.html Absolute truth is the perfect portrait of objective reality. -- "Jason McVean" , on the CoV mailing list [and now the question is: who defines "perfect"?] God grant me the company of those who seek the truth, and God deliver me from those who have found it. -- Isaac Newton I agree that humans are the only animals that philosophize about truth, but truth is something that concerns any intentional agent, meaning any entity whose behaviour is at least partially driven by an internal representation of the world. This includes all humans and animals, and I believe the notion can be usefully extended to computer programs, robots, control systems, and perhaps even something as simple as an instrument such as a thermostat. In short, anything that can be "wrong" or "mistaken". -- David McFadzean , on the CoV mailing list "...when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth." -- Sherlock Holmes [Sir Arthur Conan Doyle] Here is a restatement of Godel's Theorem: Within any formal system there are unrational statements which are reasonable but which it is impossible for the system to rationalize. appeal to ignorance: absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. QED: quod erat demonstrandum "Truth demands to be declared even if it is ugly and unethical" -- F. Nietzsche A logical argument must begin with a least one axiom which is assumed to be true. The analysis continues until the conclusion is reached. The conclusion-space of a logical argument must be smaller than the axiom-space assumed at the beginning. A common axiom is: There exists a physical universe independent of consciousness. -- "Reed Konsler" "The right to search for the truth implies also a duty; one must not conceal any part of what one has recognized to be the truth." -- Albert Einstein When we say we understand or know something we say "I see". But to understand something do we also not "stand under" it? That is, place ourselves, ontologically, inside it as a "truth"- as a virtual reality? -- Stephen Atkins , on the CoV mailing list I think logic is a great lens but a lousy mirror. -- Stephen Atkins I think Richard is saying that the absolute truth meme is *used* in the same way as god memes - as rhetoric to justify behavior. (Sometimes ghastly behavior) -- Stephen Atkins , on the CoV mailing list My statement "I do not lie" is based on the classical definition of lying: 1) The speaker says A. 2) A is not true. 3) The speaker KNOWS A is not true. 4) The speaker INTENDS the listener to believe A is true. ALL FOUR of these elements must be present to lie. The first two are self-evident, ruling out silence/misquotation and factual speech. The third allows for ignorance; the speaker could be honestly mistaken about whether A is true or not. The last rules out sarcasm and similar figures of speech. The law of non-contradiction is -(P& -P). "The opposite of a correct statement is a false statement. But the opposite of a profound truth may well be another profound truth." -- Niels Bohr Deron Stewart mentioned in a recent message that there is an implicit Virian belief in one objective truth that is true for all people. I think that is true (for all people :-). The claim that truth is subjective is self-inconsistent. Either that proposition is an objective truth (which obviously makes it false) or it is a subjective truth. If it is subjective then it implies that someone else can truthfully claim that truth is objective, which again makes the original claim false. This seems to imply that there is indeed a way that things are: an objective truth. (of course, Truth may not be bound by the structure of our language; also, "Is truth objective" could be a complex question) As for the Truth, I find myself leaning toward the dark side. I now see that postmodernism does not imply that there is no objective reality (I unfairly characterized it as such in previous posts). But it does say there is no objective truth and the reason is quite simple: Truth is a property of statements, propositions, assertions, descriptions, i.e. texts made of words. Truth is not property of physical objects. It makes no sense to say this bicycle or that asteroid is true or false. The truth of a text depends on its meaning, which in turn depends on the context and that is what makes truth subjective (and also why truth is fuzzy). The world is out there, but the truth (sorry X-Files fans) is not. -- David McFadzean david@ideosphere.com, on the CoV mailing list Truth cannot be established -- it can only be discovered. The truth does not change according to our ability to stomach it. -- Flannery O'Connor A thing is not necessarily true because a man dies for it. -- Oscar Wilde Convictions are more dangerous foes of truth than lies. -- Friedrich Nietzsche 'Every fact is backed up by the whole universe.' -- Washburn "Seek out the company of those who are searching for the truth. But avoid at all cost those who claim to have found it! -- Lois Wilson "Occasionally man will stumble over the truth, but most of the time he will pick himself up and go on." -- Churchill ... one has nothing to fear and everything to gain, from the honest pursuit of truth. The desire for knowledge, for facts unvarnished by emotional prejudices and so forth, will always function for a man's long-range benefit. It can never be against your interest to know what the truth is. -- George Smith: How to Defend Atheism (1976) "Some lies are so well disguised to resemble truth, that we should be poor judges of the truth not to believe them." -- anonymous "Truth is a shining goddess, always veiled, always distant, never wholly approachable, but worthy of all the devotion of which the human spirit is capable." -- Thomas Daly, "University Education", Fact and Fiction [London: Allen & Unwin, 1961]) "Truth: n. An ingenious compound of desirability and appearance. " -- Bierce "Truth is beautiful, without doubt; but so are lies." -- Emerson ------------------------------------------------------------------**** Science: A proper definition of a theory in science is this: A working explanation of natural phenomena based on available evidence For purposes of clarity science will be taken to mean: a set of cognitive and behavioral methods designed to describe and interpret observed or inferred phenomenon, past or present, aimed at building a testable body of knowledge open to rejection or confirmation. -- http://www.skeptic.com/01.1.shermer-skep-manifesto.html I am much fonder of my critics than I am of my fans. -- Thomas Kuhn "For example, how could children in religious education classes fail to be inspired if we could get across to them some inkling of the age of the universe? Suppose that, at the moment of Christ's death, the news of it had started traveling at the maximum possible speed around the universe outwards from the earth. How far would the terrible tidings have traveled by now? Following the theory of special relativity, the answer is that the news could not, under any circumstances whatever, have reached more than one-fiftieth of the way across one galaxy -- not one- thousandth of the way to our nearest neighboring galaxy in the 100-million-galaxy-strong universe. The universe at large couldn't possibly be anything other than indifferent to Christ, his birth, his passion, and his death. Even such momentous news as the origin of life on Earth could have traveled only across our little local cluster of galaxies. Yet so ancient was that event on our earthly time-scale that, if you span its age with your open arms, the whole of human history, the whole of human culture, would fall in the dust from your fingertip at a single stroke of a nail file." -- Prof. Richard Dawkins THE NORMAL LAW OF ERROR STANDS OUT IN THE EXPERIENCE OF MANKIND AS ONE OF THE BROADEST GENERALIZATIONS OF NATURAL PHILOSOPHY * IT SERVES AS THE GUIDING INSTRUMENT IN RESEARCHES IN THE PHYSICAL AND SOCIAL SCIENCES AND IN MEDICINE AGRICULTURE AND ENGINEERING * IT IS AN INDISPENSABLE TOOL FOR THE ANALYSIS AND THE INTREPRETATION OF THE BASIC DATA OBTAINED BY OBSERVATION AND EXPERIMENT Justifying space exploration because we get non-stick frying pans is like justifying music because it is good exercise for the violinists right arm. -- Richard Dawkins "In questions of science, the authority of a thousand is not worth the humble reasoning of a single individual." -- Galileo Galilei "The separate sciences - epistemology, physics, chemistry, mathematics, astronomy - are approaching one another with acceleration, converging towards a complete identity of results. The issue will be a fusion of the form-worlds, which will present on the one hand a system of numbers, functional in nature and reduced to a few ground-formulae, and on the other a small group theories, denominators to those numerators, which in the end will be seen to be myths of the springtime under modern veils...." -- Spengler "I would like to say something about the alienness of quantum mechanical reality. It is no accident, I would maintain, that quantum mechanics is so wildly counterintuitive. Part of the nature of explanation is that it /must/ eventually hit some point where further probing only increases opacity rather than decreasing it. Consider the problem of understanding the nature of solids. You might wonder where solidity comes from. What if someone said to you, "The ultimate basis of this brick's solidity is that it is composed of a stupendous number of eensy-weensy bricklike objects that themselves are rock-solid"? You might be interested to learn that bricks are composed of micro-bricks, but the initial question -- "What accounts for solidity" -- has been thoroughly begged. What we ultimatly want is for solidity to vanish, to dissolve, to disintegrate into some totally different kind of phenomenon with which we have no experience. Only then, when we have reached some completely novel, alien level will we feel that we have /really/ made progress in explaining the top-level phenomenon." "That's the way it is with quantum-mechanical reality. It is truly alien to our minds. Who can fathom the fact that light -- that most familiar of daily phenomena -- is composed of incredible numbers of indescribably minuscule "particles" with zero mass, particles that receed from you at the same speed no matter how fast you run after them, particles that produce interference patterns with with each other, particles that carry angular momentum and that bend in a gravitational field? And I have barely scratched the surface of the nature of photons! I like to summarize this general phenomenon in the phrase "Greenness disintegrates." It's a way of saying that no explanation of /macro/scopic X-ness can get away with saying that it is a result of /micro/scopic X-ness ("just the same, only smaller"); macroscopic greenness, solidity, elasticity -- X-ness, in short -- /must/, at some level, disintegrate into something very, very different." "I first saw this thought expressed in the stimulating book /Patterns of Discovery/ by Norwood Russell Hanson. Hanson attributes it to a number of thinkers, such as Isaac Newton, who wrote, in his famous work /Opticks/: "The parts of all homogeneal hard Bodies which fully touch one another, stick together very strongly. And for explaining how this may be, some have invented hooked Atoms, which is begging the Question." Hanson also quotes James Clerk Maxwell (from an article entitled "Atom"): "We may indeed suppose the atom elastic, but this is to endow it with the very property for the explaination of which ... the atomic constitution was originally assumed." Finally, here is a quote Hanson provides from Werner Heisenberg himself: "If atoms are really to explain the origins of color and smell of visible material bodies, then they cannot possess properties like color and smell." So, although it is not an original thought, it is useful to bear in mind that /greenness disintegrates/. -- Douglas Hofstadter, Metamagical Themas "I maintain there is much more wonder in science than in pseudoscience. And in addition, to whatever measure this term has any meaning, science has the additional virtue, and it is not an inconsiderable one, of being true." -- Carl Sagan, The Burden Of Skepticism "Science is the refusal to believe on the basis of hope." -- Carrie P. Snow The sciences do not try to explain, they hardly even try to interpret, they mainly make models. By a model is meant a mathematical construct which, with the addition of certain verbal interpretations, describes observed phenomena. The justification of such a mathematical construct is solely and precisely that it is expected to work. -- John von Neumann "Certainly I see the scientific view of the world as incompatible with religion, but that is not what is interesting about it. It is also incompatible with magic, but that also is not worth stressing. What is interesting about the scientific world view is that it is true, inspiring, remarkable and that it unites a whole lot of phenomena under a single heading." -- Richard Dawkins A theory, in the scientific sense, is "a coherent group of general propositions used as principles of explanation for a class of phenomena" [Random House American College Dictionary]. Being a theory implies self-consistency, agreement with observations, and usefulness. To make progress in understanding all of this, we probably need to begin with simplified (oversimplified?) models and ignore the critics' tirade that the real world is more complex, which has the advantage that we shan't run out of work. -- John Ball, 1984 "Science, to put its warrant as concisely as possible, is the organized systematic enterprise that gathers knowledge about the world and condenses the knowledge into testable laws and principles." -- Edward O. Wilson I'm so tired of "you guys are soooo arrogant", "you guys can't explain THIS observation, can you?", "you guys have all these conflicting models, can't you come up with something better than that?" The only response I can give is: we're fucking working on it. This is a human, physical endeavor and it is error prone and time/energy intensive. If you think God will inspire you to better solutions to the problems of how to feed, clothe, and educate, and provide for 10 billion people...well, God help you. I've never claimed that SCIENCE is infallible. -- Reed Konsler konsler@ascat.harvard.edu, on the CoV mailing list "We are all deeply accustomed to seeing science as the one enterprise that draws constantly nearer to some goal set by nature in advance. But need there be any such goal? Can we not account for both science's existence and its success in terms of evolution from the community's state of knowledge at any given time? Does it really help to imagine that there is some one full, objective, true account of nature and that the proper measure of scientific achievement is the extent to which it brings us closer to that ultimate goal? If we can learn to substitute evolution-from-what-we-do-know for evolution-toward-what-we-wish-to-know, a number of vexing problems may vanish in the process." -- Kuhn One could not be a successful scientist without realizing that, in contrast to the popular conception supported by newspapers and mothers of scientists, a goodly number of scientists are not only narrow-minded and dull, but also just stupid. -- J. D. Watson, "The Double Helix" According to Dretske, what is to be expected from any scientific theory is "a more or less complete, precise, and systematic description of those entities and processes underlying the phenomena of interest." Religion presents a set of models that describe reality. So does science. The difference is that the models of science can be used piece-meal. Some are contradictory or internally inconsistent (hey, nobody is perfect). The set of scientific models of reality is not a clear, consistent picture of reality...it doesn't have to be, no one should claim it is. They're just models. Is the world made up of little atoms? If I act as if it were so, I have tremendous predictive and manipulative power. The model is accurate. Is it true? Who cares? Science isn't about finding the absolute truth, it's about finding a reasonably good approximation...making a good map. -- Reed Konsler konsler@ascat.harvard.edu on the CoV mailing list Carl Sagan, 1987 CSICOP Keynote Address: In science it often happens that scientists say, 'You know that's a really good argument; my position is mistaken,' and then they would actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn't happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time something like that happened in politics or religion. Science is the tool of the Western mind and with it more doors can be opened than with bare hands. It is part and parcel of our knowledge and obscures our insight only when it holds that the understanding given by it is the only kind there is. -C. G. Jung (1875-1961) "I had, during many years followed a golden rule, namely, that whenever a published fact, a new observation or thought came across me, which was opposed to my general results, to make a memorandum of it without fail and at once; for I had found by experience that such facts and thoughts were far more apt to escape from the memory than favorable ones. Owing to this habit, very few objections were raised against my views which I had not at least noticed and attempted to answer." -- Charles Darwin, Autobiography, p.123 > So: how *do* you feel justified in saying things that you know may > have no basis at all in anything real if you do not allow yourself > to take that irrational cognitive leap? That's a fair question. I don't feel I have no basis at all in anything real. Even though scientific knowledge doesn't have any rock solid foundations at the bottom (which means that technically it is circular), it is so vast and interconnected it forms its own foundation. Sort of like a planet in space. Nothing holds it up, but it is enough to build on. It is the complexity, the coherence and the mutual support of the millions of bits that provides a justification. -- David McFadzean (he later added that a large fraction of those bits are observations of nature, and thus stand independent of the body of science itself) All men have the desire to know. An indication of this is the delight we take in our senses; for even apart from their usefulness they are loved for themselves. -- Aristotle "Out yonder there is this huge world, which exists independently of us human beings and which stands before us like a great, eternal riddle, at least partially accessible to our inspection and thinking." -- Albert Einstein We live in a society exquisitely dependent on science and technology, in which hardly anyone knows anything about science and technology. -- Carl Sagan CLARKE'S LAW OF REVOLUTIONARY IDEAS: Every revolutionary idea -- whether in science, politics, art or whatever -- evokes three stages of reaction. They may be summed up by three phrases. 1. "It's crazy -- don't waste my time." 2. "It's possible -- but not worth doing." 3. "I said it was a good idea all along." -- Arthur C. Clarke "It used to be thought that physics describes the universe. Now we know that physics only describes what we can say about the universe." -- Niels Bohr The observer cannot be left out of the description of the observation. -- Dr. John A. Wheeler, physicist It does not make any difference how beautiful your guess is. It does not make any difference how smart you are, who made the guess, or what his name is -- if it disagrees with experiment it is wrong. That is all there is to it. -- Richard Feynman (The Character of Physical Law) "Science is made up of things that appear obvious after they are explained." -- Frank Herbert "In science one tries to tell people, in such a way as to be understood by everyone, something that no one ever knew before. But in poetry, it's the exact opposite." -- Paul Dirac (1902-1984) ------------------------------------------------------------------**** Science: Immortality: For those of us who are now alive, the signal and astonishing difference from the immemorial past is that we really do have a chance, finally. One might think, if an audacious analogy is required, of the freedom fighter and political prisoner Nelson Mandela, locked away from life for a quarter of a century - but freed at last in a triumph of democracy, and not just freed as a wretched old man with no future but elevated into the presidency of his new nation, sought out in many high places of the world for his wisdom and charisma. The 20th century witnessed this kind of cruel oppression and phoenix recovery again and again, most poignantly, perhaps in the survivors of the Holocaust. Millions died, but some prevailed even in those hellish conditions. Perhaps it will be that way for us, too, faced by the impersonal and mindless cruelty of evolution's strategies of death. We must live as vividly as we may, while life is ours - hoping that we will triumph, in the end, even over that final enemy. And not merely passively hoping, but acting to make it so. If we are to be the first immortal generation - the first for whom death is not an automatic imposition of our genes - then we must be prepared to fund the necessary research, demand that every effort be spent on this last and most extraordinary quest, make the overthrow of routine human mortality our epoch's responsibility and wonderful privilege. -- THE LAST MORTAL GENERATION, Damien Broderick , on the extropians mailing list "Immortality: My long life ambition" -- Loree Thomas Oh, I see. I thought you were saying that libraries and cemetaries somehow demonstrated the importance of death. Instead, they're just kludges to get around some of the problems of death. It'll be really nice if we get to the point where libraries are replaced by direct access to the public portions of each other's minds, and both public and private portions can be backed up and run on different hardware. If you want to get poetic, imagine a society where people could install selected parts of other people, and when they got tired of life they'd simply (optionally) declare their entire mind public and turn off their consciousness. Death kind of loses its meaning then. -- Christopher J. Phoenix , on the nanotech mailing list ------------------------------------------------------------------**** Philosophy: "To be a philosopher is not merely to have subtle thoughts, but so to love wisdom as to live according to its dictates....The philosopher is in advance of his age even in the outward form of his life. He is not fed, sheltered, clothed, warmed, like his contemporaries. How can a man be a philosopher and not maintain his vital heat by better methods than other men?" -- Thoreau What objectivity and the study of philosophy requires is not an 'open mind,' but an active mind - a mind able and eagerly willing to examine ideas, but to examine them criticially. -- Ayn Rand, "Philosophical Detection," Philosophy: Who Needs It "If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put foundations under them. " -- Henry David Thoreau TELEOLOGY: The study of goal-directed behavior. Ontology -- the furniture of the universe Ontological reduction: A view of reality that has life to be understood as a type of organization and activity of materials, not a separate nonmaterial entity or substance. p.167 -- http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/~grassie/StudentProjects/Glossary.html Meta-physics -- God, the soul and immortality (Kant) A philosophy is a set of principles which provides a consistent and comprehensive frame of reference from which to judge man and his environment. His advice to us was the to critique a philosopher's work based upon the following questions: 1) Where is the author going? 2) Do you think they get there? 3) What compromises do you have to make to go with them? 4) Can you get there "cheaper"; making less compromises? 5) Do you want to go there? -- Reed Konsler konsler@ascat.harvard.edu Philosophy is a form of discourse, a method of arriving at the questions. Science is that discipline which endeavors to find the answers. Theology is fraud from both camps, although it dangles as a branch of philosophy, apparently with permission, and without bearing fruit. -- Wade T. Smith, wade_smith@harvard.edu, on the CoV mailing list Philosophy: a system of thought containing the following 5 areas: 1) Metaphysics : The nature of existence. Is it objective? Is it subjective? Something in-between? 2) Epistemology : How do we know what we know? Sensory input? Intuition? Faith? Is knowledge even possible? 3) Ethics: What is the good? Is there a good? 4) Politics: How should people live together? 5) Aesthetics: What is beauty? Is there such a thing as beauty? -- Nathaniel Hall metaphysical - the branch of philosophy that systematically investigates the nature of first principles and problems of ultimate reality, including the study of being (ontology) and, often, the study of the structure of the universe (cosmology) (Barbour: p.74) -- http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/~grassie/StudentProjects/Glossary.html "Philosophy, like all other studies, aims primarily at knowledge. The knowledge it aims at is the kind of knowledge which gives unity and system to the body of the sciences, and the kind which results from a critical examination of our convictions, prejudices, and beliefs. But it cannot be maintained that philosophy has had any very great measure of success in its attempts to provide definite answers to its questions. If you ask a mathematician, a mineralogist, a historian, or any other man of learning, what definite body of truths has been ascertained by his science, his answer will last as long as you are willing to listen. But if you put the same question to a philosopher, he will, if he is candid, have to confess that his study has not achieved positive results such as have been achieved by other sciences. It is true that this is partly accounted for by the fact that, as soon as definite knowledge concerning any subject becomes possible, this subject ceases to be called philosophy, and becomes a separate science. The whole study of the heavens, which now belongs to astronomy, was once included in philosophy; Newton's great work was called "the mathematical principles of natural philosophy." Similarly, the study of the human mind, which was a part of philosophy, has now been separated from philosophy and has become the science of psychology, thus, to a great extent, the uncertainty of philosophy is more apparent than real: those questions which are already capable of definite answers are placed in the sciences, while those only to which, at present, no definite answer can be given, remain to form the residue which is called philosophy." -- Bertrand Russell, Problems of Philosophy - The Value of Philosophy (Chp.15) Philosopher (n): a blind person in a dark room looking for a black hat that is not there. But as the philosopher Immanuel Kant pointed out, "ought implies can." ------------------------------------------------------------------**** Drugs: "Let us declare nature to be legitimate. All plants should be declared legal, and all animals for that matter. The notion of illegal plants and animals is obnoxious and ridiculous." -- Terence McKenna In the mescalin experience the implied questions to which the eye responds are of another order. Place and distance cease to be of much interest. The mind does its Perceiving in terms of intensity of existence, profundity of significance, relationships within a pattern. -- Aldous Huxley, The Doors of Perception http://www.druglibrary.org/schaffer/lsd/doors.htm I hate to advocate drugs, alcohol, violence, or insanity to anyone, but they've always worked for me. -- Hunter S. Thompson "A fool who, after plain warning, persists in dosing himself with dangerous drugs should be free to do so, for his death is a benefit to the race in general." -- H.L. Mencken, "Minority Report: H.L. Mencken's Notebooks", published 1956 "Pursuing the religious life today without using psychedelics drugs is like studying astronomy with the naked eye because that's how they did it in the first century A.D., and besides, telescopes are unnatural." -- Timothy Leary, "The Politics of Ecstasy" "At one point consciousness-altering devices like the microscope and telescope were criminalized for exactly the same reasons that psychedelic plants were banned in later years. They allow us to peer into bits and zones of Chaos." -- Timothy Leary Our fear of Drugs is a fear of ourselves, specifically our unconscious, that dark, unknown, and mysterious part of ourselves that lies below the surface of our awareness. But we can no more wipe out Drugs than we can wipe out our unconscious. -- Doug Aanes "The contemporary World War on Drugs is nothing more nor less than the modern manifestation of the millennial struggle between state power and individual freedom; between the proselytizers of purely symbolic simulacra of religion - propagandists of what Blake called "pale religious letchery" - and the practitioners of the real thing - for religion is an experience, not merely a "social activity with mild ethical rules." This War on Drugs originally started as a War on Religious Experiences, and it is nothing new (...) It is the Pharmacratic Inquisition, distinguished from outcroppings of brutal bigotry in other areas only by the choice of scapegoat, and with a pseudoscientific veneer of rational civility which, however ingenuously constructed or vociferously defended, remains far too small and transparent to conceal the ignorant superstition and unrestrained cruelty which fuels it." -- Jonathan Ott ------------------------------------------------------------------**** Knowledge: Ignorance: Epistemology: There is no Energy Shortage. There is no Energy Crisis. There is a Crisis of Ignorance. -- R. Buckminster Fuller "The Questioning Spirit, whose curiosity has for its wholesome object the verification of truth, is the most effectual instrument of knowledge available to mankind. A well-directed question is like a pickaxe - it liberates the gold from the superincumbent quartz. Whole systems of error sometimes fall to the ground from the force of unanswerable questions. All error has contradiction in it, which is revealed by a relevant inquiry, when an artillery of counter assertions might not disclose it. Arguments may be evaded, but a fair and pertinent question creates no animosity, and must answered, since silence is a confession of error or of ignorance." -- George Jacob Holyoake, "Introduction" to _A New Catechism_ by M.M. Mangasarian Creativity is the marvelous capacity to grasp mutually distinct realities and draw a spark from their juxtaposition -- Max Ernst A man becomes creative, whether he is an artist or scientist, when he finds a new unity in the variety of nature. He does so by finding a likeness between things which were not thought alike before -- Jacob Bronowski The young specialist in English Lit, ...lectured me severely on the fact that in every century people have thought they understood the Universe at last, and in every century they were proved to be wrong. It follows that the one thing we can say about our modern "knowledge" is that it is wrong. ... My answer to him was, "... when people thought the Earth was flat, they were wrong. When people thought the Earth was spherical they were wrong. But if you think that thinking the Earth is spherical is just as wrong as thinking the Earth is flat, then your view is wronger than both of them put together." -- Isaac Asimov,The Relativity of Wrong, Kensington Books, New York, 1996, p 226. (1) In the knowledge economy, "Our's is not to reason why," is obsolete and counterproductive. Keeping your nose to the grindstone makes your nose sharp but dulls your mind. A good knowledge worker is a whys-ask. -- David S. Isenberg Ignorance killed the cat. Curiosity was framed. "Learning is not a means to an end; it is an end unto itself." -- Robert Heinlein Only those who build on ideas build for eternity. -- Ralph Waldo Emerson In any stage of your researches be as clear as you can about your problem, and watch the way it changes and becomes more definite. Be as clear as you can about the various theories you hold, and be aware that we all hold theories unconsciously, or take them for granted, although most of them are almost certain to be false. Try again and again to formulate the theories which you are holding and to criticize them. And try to construct alternative theories -- alternatives even to those theories which appear to you inescapable; for only in this way will be understand the theories which you hold. Whenever a theory appear to you as the only possible one, take this as a sign that you neither understand the theory nor the problem which it was intended to solve. And look upon your experiments always as tests of a theory -- as attempts to find faults in it, and to overthrow it. If an experiment or observation seems to support a theory, remember that what it really does is to weaken some alternative theory -- perhaps one which you have not thought of before. And let it be your ambition to refute and replace your own theories: this is better than defending them, and leaving it to others to refute them. But remember also that a good defence of a theory against criticism is a necessary part of any fruitful discussion since only by defending it can we find out its strength, and the strength of the criticism directed against it. There is no point in discussing or criticizing a theory unless we try all the time to put it in its strongest form, and to argue against it only in that form. -- Karl Popper, Objective Knowledge: an evolutationary approach If you want to understand our controlling conception of knowledge, do not ask for our best epistemological theories. Instead, observe the way we teach and look for the theory of knowledge implicit in those practices. That is the epistemology our students learn -- no matter what our best contemporary theorists may have to say. -- Palmer J. Parker ******* 'I write to find out what I know.' - Patricia Hampl ******* We want to know in ways that allow us to convert the world--but we do not want to be known in ways that require us to change as well. To learn is to face transformation. -- Palmer J. Parker "Why, when no honest man will deny in private that every ultimate problem is wrapped in the profoundest mystery, do honest men proclaim in pulpits that unhesitating certainty is the duty of the most foolish and ignorant? Is it not a spectacle to make the angels laugh? We are a company of ignorant beings, feeling our way through mists and darkness, learning only by incessantly repeated blunders, obtaining a glimmering of truth by falling into every conceivable error, dimly discerning light enough for our daily needs, but hopelessly differing whenever we attempt to describe the ultimate origin or end of our paths; and yet, when one of us ventures to declare that we don't know the map of the universe as well as the map of our infintesimal parish, he is hooted, reviled, and perhaps told that he will be damned to all eternity for his faithlessness..." -- Leslie Stephen, "An agnostic's Apology", Fortnightly Review, 1876 "On the contrary," I answered. "It's because somebody knows something about it that we can't talk about physics. It the things that nobody knows anything about that we can discuss. We can talk about the weather; we can talk about social problems; we can talk about psychology; we can talk about international finance -- gold transfer we can't talk about, because those are understood -- so it's the subject that nobody knows anything about that we can all talk about!" -- Richard Feynman, _Surely you're joking, Mr. Feynman!_ "...Then anyone who leaves behind him a written manual, and likewise anyone who receives it, in the belief that such writing will be clear and certain, must be exceedingly simple-minded..." -- Plato, _Phaedrus_ Most ignorance is vincible ignorance. We don’t know because we don’t want to know. -- Aldous Huxley "Any fool can know. The point is to understand." -- Einstein "Man's mind, once stretched by a new idea, never regains its original dimensions." -- Oliver Wendell Holmes Knowing ignorance is strength. Ignoring knowledge is sickness. We know accurately only when we know little, with knowledge doubt increases. -- Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe What we need is not the will to believe, but the wish to find out. -- Bertrand Russel Knowledge is the only instrument of production that is not subject to diminishing returns. -- J. M. Clark The confidence of ignorance will always overcome the indecision of knowledge. The greater part of all the mischief in the world arises from the fact that men do not sufficiently understand their own aims. -- Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe "Whenever a theory appears to you as the only possible one, take this as a sign that you have neither understood the theory nor the problem which it was intended to solve." -- Karl Popper Now, I'm going to suggest that of all the goods and virtues that man has, knowledge is the most important. Knowledge is a fundamental value for man because it stands at the root of all of his other values. We must know facts; we must know something about the world before we can determine anything about what is of value to you in the world. Thus, knowledge is indispensable to our very survival. -- http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/george_smith/defending.html Library: Modern: George Smith: How to Defend Atheism (1976) "In the study of ideas, it is necessary to remember that insistence on hard-headed clarity issues from sentimental feeling, as it were a mist, cloaking the perplexities of fact. Insistence on clarity at all costs is based on sheer superstition as to the mode in which human intelligence functions." -- A. N. Whitehead, "Adventures in Ideas." ev-i-dence - n. 1. A thing or things helpful in forming a conclusion or judgment. 2. Something indicative; an outward sign. 3. Law. The documentary or oral statements and the material objects admissible as testimony in a court of law. -idiom. in evidence. 1. Plainly visible; to be seen. 2. Law. As legal evidence. Noun: Something visible or evident that gives grounds for believing in the existence or presence of something else. sign, index, mark, witness, indication, symptom, indicator, stamp, token, signification. -- the American Heritage Dictionary Here's an analogy I find useful: Say that objective reality is a person and our model (theory, description, belief) about reality is a portrait of that person. There is no end to the number of different portraits that can be created: pencil sketch, oil painting, bronze bust, chalk drawing, marble statue, photograph, short story, X-ray picture, home video, artfully arranged vials of bodily fluids, caricature, mug shot, JPEG, 3-D computer model, Myers-Briggs type, etc., etc. They can be more or less accurate (an X-ray of the person is certainly more accurate than a drawing of a totally different person) and they can be more or less useful depending on the task at hand (a mug shot is more useful than a painting if you want to find the person, but a painting is more useful if you want to decorate your house). But which portrait is the True one? I hope you can see how the question doesn't even make sense, no matter how skillful and talented the artist, no matter what materials are used, a portrait can never become the portrayed. And the same is true of our models, beliefs and theories. -- David McFadzean , on the CoV mailing list The idea of a ball doesn't bounce. Our knowledge is the amassed thought and experience of innumerable minds. -- Ralph Waldo Emerson "[So] long as the proponents of our best theories... have their attention turned defensively backwards, and expend their intellectual energies in futile refutation and re-refutation of theories long known to be false, the state of our deepest knowledge cannot improve." -- David Deutsch, *The Fabric of Reality* ... one of my operating axioms is to curse the lesson but bless the knowledge -- "Gifford, Nate F" In a time of drastic change, it is the learners who inherit the future. The learned find themselves equipped for a world that no longer exists. -- Eric Hoffer "...we are entitled to make almost any reasonable assumption, but should resist making conclusions until evidence requires that we do so." -- Steve Allen instincts --> input input + thinking --> data data + thinking --> information information + thinking --> knowledge knowledge + thinking --> understanding understanding + thinking --> wisdom wisdom + thinking --> -- Dan Plante Discovery consists of seeing what everybody has seen and thinking what nobody has thought. -- Albert von Szent-Gyorgy The problem isn't ignorance but the illusion of knowledge "Every branch of knowledge, if traced up to its source and final principles, vanishes into mystery." -- Arthur Machen "Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: It is those who no little, and not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science." -- Charles Darwin in The Descent of Man No general description of the mode of advance of human knowledge can be just which leaves out of account the social aspect of knowledge. That is of its very essence. What a thing society is! The workingman, with his trade union, knows that. Men and women moving in polite society understand it, still better. But Bohemians, like me, whose work is done in solitude, are apt to forget that not only is a man as a whole little better than a brute in solitude, but also that everything that bears any important meaning to him must receive its interpretation from social considerations. -- C.S.Peirce from the peirce-l mailing list, MS 1573.273 "Everybody is ignorant, only on different subjects." -- Will Rogers "Knowledge is power" -- Francis Bacon It is impossible for a man to learn what he thinks he already knows. -- Epictetus Knowledge is power, but enthusiasm throws the switch. -- Ivern Ball Numerical objectivity is a fallacy. Like verbal language, numerical designations must be abstracted by humans. They are subjected to varying interpretations by both initiator and receiver. Numbers constitute merely another language with built-in paradoxes, confusion, contradictions, and hidden agendas. -- Wilson Bryan Key "Irrationally held truths may be more harmful than reasoned errors." -- Thomas Huxley (1825-1895), English biologist and advocate of Darwin's natural selection theory "I have taken all of knowledge for my province." -- Francis Bacon Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world. -- Albert Einstein Imagination is the beginning of creation. You imagine what you desire; you will what you imagine, and at last you create what you will. -- George Bernard Shaw Without this playing with fantasy no creative work has ever yet come to birth. The debt we owe to the play of the imagination is incalculable. -- Carl Jung "Knowledge becomes wisdom only after it has been put to practical use. " -- Anonymous I rationally and with good effect oppose the declaration of answers to unanswerable questions in the same way that I oppose the declaration of the invention of a perpetual motion machines. For similar reasons: one opposes my fundamental understanding of physics, the other my fundamental understanding of knowledge. -- Reed Konsler We tell lies when we are afraid, . . . afraid of what we don't know, afraid of what others will think, afraid of what will be found out about us. But every time we tell a lie, the thing that we fear grows stronger -- Tad Williams, _Memory, Sorrow and Thorn_ If you resist reading what you disagree with, how will you ever acquire deeper insights into what you believe? The things most worth reading are precisely those that challenge our convictions. There is nothing which can better deserve our patronage than the promotion of science and literature. Knowledge is in every country the surest basis of public happiness. -- George Washington (address to Congress, 8 January, 1790) Computers are useless. They can only give you answers." -- Pablo Picasso By identifying the new learning with heresy, you make orthodoxy synonymous with ignorance. -- Desiderius Erasmus "There is only one nature - the division into science and engineering is a human imposition, not a natural one. Indeed, the division is a human failure; it reflects our limited capacity to comprehend the whole." -- Bill Wulf Avoidable human misery is more often caused not so much by stupidity as by ignorance, particularly our own ignorance about ourselves. -- Carl Sagan (The Demon-Haunted World) ------------------------------------------------------------------**** Language: Science and technology multiply around us. To an increasing extent they dictate the languages in which we speak and think. Either we use those languages, or we remain mute. -- J. G. Ballard How often misused words generate misleading thoughts. -- Herbert Spencer "You don't need to take drugs to hallucinate; improper language can fill your world with phantoms and spooks of many kinds." -- Robert Anton Wilson, "Chaos and Beyond: The Best of Trajectories", 1994 Like fish in water, people in a culture swim in the virtually invisible medium of culturally sanctioned yet artificial states of mind. Languages appear invisible to the poeple who speak them, yet they create the fabric of reality for their users. The problem of mistaking language for reality in the everyday world is only too well known. -- Terence McKenna Remember the context of the phenomenon we discuss here. For example, we wouldn't use nuclear physics to describe these relationships. You _could_ do that, but you would find that, as your descriptions of atomic dynamics got more and more complex, you would be recapitulating (in the form of previous equations being reused repeatedly as components inside the next, more complex equation) all the levels of distinct emergent behaviour between atoms and memes anyway. Part way through this herculean task, you would resolve to replace all those of physics equations with shorter symbols. In the beginning, you would start out using the Greek letter "roh" for the smallest and simplest bits of repeated equations. As you progressed, you would notice that there were repeating chunks of identical equations that contained roh. So, to make things simpler, you would use the term "molecular dynamics" for those. Do you see where this is going? By the time you got to the cellular replicator emergent level, you would be using symbols like "AGCT" to represent repeating mountains of repeating piles of repeating chunks of repeating bits of nuclear physical dynamics. At this level, you would be using these symbols to describe phenomena in terms of storage (DNA), transcription (RNA), transmission (mRNA), and expression (protein). By the time you got to the human culture level of emergent phenomenon, you would be using "words". Language. English, French, etc. -- Dan Plante , on the Virus mailing list The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one's real and one's declared aims, one turns, as it were, instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish squirting out ink. -- George Orwell But perhaps the most mysterious thing he ever said about it was this. I was questioning him on the subject . . . and had incautiously said, "Of course, I realize it's all rather too vague for you to put into words," when he took me up rather sharply by saying, "On the contrary, it is words that are vague. The reason why the thing can't be expressed is that it's too definite for language." -- C. S. Lewis, Voyage To Venus "He should have known better because, early in his learnings under his brother Mahmoud, he had discovered that long human words (the longer the better) were easy, unmistakable, and rarely changed their meanings, but short words were slippery, unpredictable changing their meanings without any pattern. Or so he seemed to grok. Short human words were never like a short Martian word -- such as "grok" which forever meant exactly the same thing. Short human words were like trying to lift water with a knife. And this had been a very short word." -- Robert Heinlein, Valentine Michael Smith's musings on the word "God" in Stranger in a Strange Land That which, in the language of religion, is called "this world" is the universe of reduced awareness, expressed, and, as it were, petrified by language. -- Aldous Huxley, The Doors of Perception http://www.druglibrary.org/schaffer/lsd/doors.htm ""What's the use of their having names," the Gnat said, "if they won't answer to them?" "No use to them," said Alice; "but it's useful to the people that name them, I suppose. If not, why do things have names at all?"" -- Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking-Glass "With only one or two exceptions, all the books on prose style in English are by writers quite unable to write. The subject, indeed, seems to exercise a special and dreadful fascination over schoolma'ams, bucolic college professors, and such pseudo-literates. In a thousand texts they set forth their depressing ideas about it, and millions of suffering high-school pupils have to study what they say. Their central aim, of course, is to reduce the whole thing to a series of simple rules - the overmastering passion of their melancholy order, at all times and everywhere. They aspire to teach it as bridge whist, the flag-drill and double-entry bookkeeping are taught. They fail as ignominiously as that Athenian of legend who essayed to train a regiment of grasshoppers in the goose-step." -- H.L. Mencken, "Prejudices: Fifth Series", 1926 According to Bourland, certain questions *some would say pseudo-questions* that have uselessly preoccupied many people, cannot be asked in E-prime: "Who am I?"; "What is my destiny?"; "What is man?"; "What is woman?"; "Is it art?" Because of their semantic structure, such "questions" seldom lead to useful answers; they more usually result in confusion, disagreement, conflict, and even war. It may be more appropriate to ask: "What characterizes me uniquely?"; "What can I do to improve my potential success in life?"; "What healthy food should I eat next?" -- http://www.buildfreedom.com/tl/tl07a.htm The true power of language is not what it allows us to say, but what it keeps us from saying -- Eric Boyd In today's world we have come to neglect the habit of writing because so many other media of communication have taken its place. Telephones and tape recorders, computers and fax machines are more efficient in conveying news. If the only point to writing were to _transmit_ information, then it would deserve to become obsolete. But the point of writing is to _create_ information, not simply to pass it along. -- Mihaly Csikzentmihalyi The difference between the right word and almost the right word is the difference between lightning and the lightning bug. -- Mark Twain "How many legs does a dog have if you call the tail a leg? Four. Calling a tail a leg doesn't make it a leg." -- Abraham Lincoln "E-Prime attempts to clarify the difference between speculations and actual experiences in space-time, so that we do not wander into theology without realizing where we have gotten ourselves." -- http://www.hotweird.com/~occupant/docs93/E-Prime: "According to Thomist Aristotelianism (the official Vatican philosophy) "things" not only have indwelling "essences" or "spooks" but also have external "appearances". This "explains" the Miracle of Transubstantiation. In this astounding, marvelous, totally wonderful, even mind-boggling Miracle, a piece of bread changes into the body of a Jew who lived 2000 years ago. Now the external "appearances" which include everything that you can observe about the bread, with your senses or with the most subtle scientific instruments admittedly do not change. To your eyes or taste buds or electron microscopes the bread has undergone no change at all. It doesn't even weigh as much as a human body, but retains the weight of a small piece of bread. Nonetheless, to Catholics, after the Miracle (which any priest can perform) the bread "is" the body of the aforesaid dead Jew, one Yeshua ben Yusef, who the goys in the Vatican call Jesus Christ. In other words, the "essence" of the bread "is" the dead Jew. It appears obvious that, within this framework, the "essence" of the bread can "be" anything, or can "be" asserted to "be" anything. It could "be" the essence of the Easter Bunny, or it could "be" Jesus and the Easter Bunny both, or it could "be" the Five Original Marx Brothers, or it could "be" a million other spooks happily co-existing in the realm outside space time where such metaphysical entities appear to reside. -- http://www.hotweird.com/~occupant/docs93/E-Prime: "All words, in every language, are metaphors." -- Marshall and Eric McLuhan. When I was a boy, I felt that the role of rhyme in poetry was to compel one to find the unobvious because of the necessity of finding a word which rhymes. This forces novel associations and almost guarantees deviations from routine chains of thought. It becomes paradoxically a sort of automatic mechanism of originality. -- Stanislaw Ulam, _Adventures of a Mathematician_, 1976 When ideas fail, words come in very handy. When you unthinkingly or uncritically identify words with words, words with pictures, or words and pictures with things or people, you have been victimized. -- Wilson Bryan Key We need to make new symbols Make new signs Make a new language With these we'll redefine the world And start all over -- Tracy Chapman ******* "If language is not correct, then what is said is not what is meant; if what is said is not what is meant, then what must be done remains undone; if this remains undone, morals and art will deteriorate; if justice goes astray, the people will stand about in helpless confusion. Hence there must be no arbitrariness in what is said. This matters above everything." -- Confucius ******* ...'fire' does not matter, 'earth' and 'air' and 'water' do not matter. 'I' do not matter. No word matters. But man forgets reality and remembers words. The more words he remembers, the cleverer do his fellows esteem him. He looks upon the great transformations of the world, but he does not see them as they were seen when man looked upon reality for the first time. Their names come to his lips and he smiles as he tastes them, thinking he knows them in the naming. -- Siddartha, "Lord of Light" by Roger Zelazny Every atom, molecule, organism, personality, language, and society is a novelty--a constantly changing novelty. Language categorizations, or the perceptions that result from them, are fantasies and illusions of the first order. They may be useful from time to time, but they remain fantasies. -- Wilson Bryan Key ``Language serves three functions: | Jim Riverman (1) to communicate ideas, | Software Engineer (2) to conceal ideas, and | ----------------- (3) to conceal the absence of ideas.'' | (408) 728-0152 "I love the wild power of language and the purity of the madness that governs it and makes it music." -- Andy Kravetz, Independent Journalist "The spoken word was the first technology by which man was able to let go of his environment in order to grasp it in a new way." -- Marshall McLuhan; Understanding Media, p. 57 A word is a tool for delimiting one area of thought from others. The word becomes useless if it is defined to include everything. The word "everything" already serves that purpose quite well; we don't need a synonym. A definition may be said to be 'wrong' in math when its consequences do not reflect its English name well. -- Kenneth Boyd, on the CoV mailing list Harry Browne so aptly put it: "to draw a sharp line between what IS a certain thing and what isnt." "The purpose of defining one's terms is to afford oneself the inestimable benefit of knowing what one is talking about." What do you think it is to "be defined?" I define "define" as : "to create a relationship between an idea and an object or a symbol so that the object or symbol signifies the idea." "defined: -distinguishable as part of a system". Thomas Szasz coined the very useful word "semanticide" to mean the murder of language. Semanticide is the ultimate goal of Newspeak. ------------------------------------------------------------------**** Post structuralism: Post Modernism: I'm claiming that reality may: a) not have any intrinsic patterns, and any organization we perceive is imposed by the mind *or* b) reality has an intrinsic pattern that we perceive imperfectly because of our interior position in reality; i.e., we cannot observe it without being involved in it. -- John Williams, on Post-Structuralism > Mr. Hermit, tell me please, do you think that "truths" are > qualities of the universe or _descriptions_ of the qualities > of the universe? And can you see the difference? ...I'd like to present option 3 - the universe does not have qualities as such, it's fundamentally undefined [an infinite system without limits, the sum of all possible orders] and qualities, truths, attributes etc. are impositions placed upon the undifferentiated flux [Kant's manifold] by the process of consciousness. -- psypher (overload@fastmail.ca), on the CoV mailing list It's not that they can't *because* they are models; it's that they can't be tested because there is nothing to test them *except* models. There's the model that we manufacture through language and dialectic (like this one). Then there's the model in our head that is how we see the world, and we can compare our manufactured model to our learned/perceptual model, but we *cannot* compare either to the "reality model" because there is no way to access it except through the biases and interpretations and expectations imposed/created by the learned/perceptual model. -- John Williams I think Eliezer said it best when he observed that when one attempts to bottom out human formal systems like physics or math or philosophy, one finds human semantic primitives, not universal ontological primitives. -- Darin Sunley, on the extropians mailing list Sounds like logical positivism is the thesis and postmodernism is the antithesis. What if there is an objective truth but no theory can even theoretically become identical to it? Because theories are necessarily constructed of ideas, concepts, words, and memes. No matter how sophisticated or accurate they are, theories cannot become what they describe. This allows for pluralism: there can be many maps of the territory, all accurate but all focusing on different aspects of Truth(tm). Is that a reasonable Hegelian-like synthesis? -- David McFadzean An operating system is not just a computer program -- it's a consensus reality. -- http://electriclichen.com/people/dmarti/linuxmanship.html We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are. -- Anais Nin We feel in one world, we think and name in another. Between the two we can set up a system of references, but we cannot fill the gap. -- Marcel Proust (1871-1922) ------------------------------------------------------------------**** Memetics: The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function. One should, for example, be able to see that things are hopeless and yet be determined to make them otherwise. * F. Scott Fitzgerald A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is still putting on its shoes. -- Mark Twain Repeat after Meme The products that sell the most will be the best products at getting themselves sold. And that's all. -- Prof Tim, on the Virus mailing list In a sense, it was Greek philosophy, born of their difficult circumstances, their desire for answers to questions, that started change happening in Western culture. What got it accelerating, though, was something else, and that's the ease with which people communicated, moved ideas around. The easier you cross-talk, the faster change happens. -- James Burke Patterns of a lifetime die hard. Sometimes harder than fragile human beings. -- David Brin "Ideas are more powerful than guns. We would not let our enemies have guns, why should we let them have ideas." -- Joseph Stalin "We are all victims of mythology in one way or another. We are the inheritors, and many times the propogators, of a desire to believe what we want to believe, regardless of whether or not it is true." -- J.V. Stewart, MD, "Astrology - What's Really in the Stars" "A virus of the mind is something out in the world that infects people with memes. These memes, in turn, influence the infected people's behaviour so that they help perpetuate and spread the virus." -- Brodie, echoing Dawkins change of heart, on the CoV mailing list If an idea is good it will survive defeat. It may even survive victory. -- Steven Vincent Benet [note: memetics disagrees!] "... Genes are replicated, copied from parent to offspring down the generations. A meme is, by analogy, anything that replicates itself from brain to brain, via any available means of copying. It is a matter of dispute whether the resemblance between meme and gene is good scientific poetry or bad. On balance, I still think it is good, although if you look the word up on the worldwide web you'll find plenty of examples of enthusiasts getting carried away and going too far. There even seems to be some kind of religion of the meme starting up -- I find it hard to decide whether it is a joke or not." Richard Dawkins's, _Unweaving The Rainbow_ (science, delusion and the appetite for wonder), p.302 Even the most outrageous lies can, through steady repetition, gain a kind of unholy seniority. They may never be believed, but at least they will cease to shock. -- Robert Grudin The fundamental idea is that ideas are not just things we have, but that we are also things that ideas have. -- Eric Boyd, _Divine Discontent II_ Memetics has that weird effect of allowing you to examine the components of your "personality" only to discover that most of them are not "yours". it's a disturbingly selfish/self destroying undertaking. Ego-freshener -- Stephen Atkins , on the CoV mailing list Several years ago my ideas got sick. One hell of a lot of them died off. It was terrible. [...] My mind has become the factory for producing slick meme viruses. I crank them out at an alarming rate, each more insidious than the last. -- Baldridge, Opinion editor for the Daily Nebraskan. http://www.unl.edu:80/DailyNeb.arch/zzzzz/nov95/ nov27/opinion/baldridge.html Memes are not mysterious forces controlling anything, just a useful theoretical construct that allows the analysis of culture on an evolutionary model. -- Robin "Question the origin of my thoughts. Just because I experience them does not mean I created them!" -- Kenneth Boyd zaimoni@ksu.edu, on the CoV mailing list 'memotype' and 'phenomeme' On the other hand, metaphor can be a powerful tool for studying abstractions and moving them around so we can make other analysis based on them. In a strictly `real' sense, genes do not exist. Oh, there's a coiled mass of deoxyribonuclaic acids in the middle of every cell in your body, but even if you could get inside and stretch it out, you'd just see a long strand of bumpy white goop. Even looking at it on the molecular level, all you'd see is some strange variations in the patterns of bumpiness along its length. Genes, sections that `code' for traits, only `exist' once you look at the strand statistically, with a goodly amount of slop and with an eye for patterns overall rather than on an individual strand. Likewise, memes don't have a `real' existence outside of metaphor, statistical pattern and wishful thinking. However, genetic engineering is creating new forms of life daily; who can say what the more plastic results of memetic engineering might engender? -- Alex Williams , on the CoV mailing list Taken as a whole, what are fads but the response of a hive mind to its own reflection? -- Kevin Kelly There is no argument that can convince willful ignorance to change. -- Kenneth Boyd, zaimoni@ksu.edu, on the CoV mailing list The formation of different languages and of distinct species, and the proofs that both have been developed through a gradual process, are curiously the same. -- Charles Darwin 1871, p. 59 Yes. As Robert Wright says-- we are acknowledging the fact that we are puppets before we attempt to decipher the logic of the puppeteer. -- Stephen Atkins One must particularly achieve control over instinctual drives to achieve a healthy independence of society, for as long as we respond predictably to what feels good and what feels bad, it is easy for others to exploit our preferences for their own ends. -- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi In 1992 a pamphlet called "Seizing the Media" was published by a group known as the Immediasts. The pamphlet's first page deserves to be quoted here at length: We can each see how extended exposure to television and mass media dulls people with a sense of numbness and nausea. From every public space a monologue of coercion penetrates our senses and rapes our attention. Wherever we look, wherever we listen, wherever we go: the pornography of billboards, bus side placards, subway cards, glaring storefront signs and displays, the glut of junk mail, stupid fly-by beach planes and blimps, coupons, obnoxious bumper stickers and breast pins, embarrassing service uniforms, plastic banners and ribbons, absurd parades, street-corner handouts, windshield wiper flyers, matchbook ads, business cards, screaming radios, the daily papers, every nanosecond of television, the package wrapped around everything we buy--from the label in our underwear to the robot computer that calls our homes--only the upper atmosphere and the ocean floor offer any sanctuary from America's ecology of coercion. And at every turn the monologues drone on, imbedding the psychological mutagens that coax us to become pathetic customers and unquestioning flag wavers. At every turn, we are under attack. An invasion of armies can be resisted, but not an idea whose time has come. -- Victor Hugo _The Future of Man_ "Understanding the often unconscious nature of genetic (read: memetic) control is the first step toward understanding that we are all puppets, and our best hope for even partial liberation is to try to decipher the logic of the puppeteer." -- Robert Wright, author of "The Moral Animal:" Attempts to propagate a counter-meme which makes direct reference to the meme to be countered reinforces the enemy meme. The harder you try to fight it, the more attention you bring to it. -- c538128@mizzou1.missouri.edu (KMO), on the CoV mailing list The most important thing that a memes-eye view of the world gives us is (to paraphrase Dawkins and Dennett) the new insight that some ideas may be pervasive in our culture simply because they are good replicators and not because they are of any use to the individuals infected. That is the paradigm shift. -- "Reed Konsler" , on the CoV mailing list In this way, the net becomes a petri dish for the ASCII lifeform. -- http://www.hok.no/marius/memetics/communique.on.net.viruses.html "But following sexual mores makes you behave in the interest of *everyone else's* DNA, not your own. So the optimal selfish-gene strategy, before people became conscious and had the possibility of a life about something other than spreading their DNA, was to participate in spreading mores, but to secretly ignore them whenever an opportunity arose to mate counter to them. That is the evolutionary explanation for hypocrisy." -- Richard Brodie, "Virus of the Mind" My point is that if good people do nothing with their knowledge of memetics, the militant ignorance of cultural viruses and the evil of designer viruses will take over. There is no turning back. -- Richard Brodie RBrodie@brodietech.com, on the CoV mailing list The point of consensus which I thought we'd achieved but with which you claimed to disagree was that 'node-level' security was preferable (both from a practical and moral standpoint) to 'firewall' security. In other words, empowering individuals with the knowledge to defend themselves from mind-viruses and self-destructive memetic programming is preferable to trying to choke off harmful memes at their source. Fostering personal responsibility and empowerment is better than censorship. -- c538128@mizzou1.missouri.edu (KMO), on the CoV mailing list Memetics is the practice of forgetting yourself in order to free up enough attention to keep track of all the things you need to. -- Reed Konsler konsler@ascat.harvard.edu [to clarify, we are only "forgetting" ourselves by a change in intentional stance from us to the meme] "It is hard to fight an enemy who has outposts in your head." -- Sally Kempton "The most potent weapon of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed." -- Steve Biko "Language creates spooks that get into our heads and hypnotize us." -- Robert Anton Wilson What is bedtime for? Compulsory bedtime has only this purpose: To make children feel frustrated, excluded from the world, powerless to allocate their time and resources, and neurotic about sleep, and to make them insecure about whether their values and priorities carry any weight at all in the scheme of things, so that when they grow up and have children they will feel similarly powerless and neurotic about time, sleep etc., in precisely the way that is required to make them want to enforce bedtimes upon their own children. -- David Deutsch , on the TCS mailing list Hmm...I think I understand what you are saying. In fact, you are reiterating Dennett as stated in "The Intentional Stance" Things we understand well we approach from the "Physical Stance" This is how physics and simple chemistry in described, we speak in terms of constitution and characteristics of matter leading to certain stabilitied and changes. Things we understand not so well we approach from the "Design stance" This is how complex chemistry and simple biology are understood. The things we study, we assume, are "designed" to do something well and through observation we try to discern what. Things we understand not well at all we approach from the "Intentional Stance" We assume the thing "wants to do something and we try to negotiate with it as if it were at least as complex as we are...in some cases more so. This is the level at which we become wary of subterfuge on the part of the subject. It is morally wrong to allow suckers to keep their money. Advertising is the means by which the memetically unfit are weeded from the population. Evolution requires both variation and /selection/. Advertisers are just the predators of the meme pool. -- Lee Daniel Crocker [This is the "naturalistic fallacy"; reasoning from _what is_ directly to _what should be_ -- which once resulted in the Holocaust] Well, even an n-dimensional map of a n-dimensional space is still going to be a "Level-2" picture. I might rephrase your comment more generally: Every model compels us to think it explains everything. A common mnemonic (or aphorism) to use when you feel theory-hubris getting out of hand is "The map is not the geography." --Reed Konsler konsler@ascat.harvard.edu, on the CoV list, Mon, 30 Jun 1997 A scholar is just a library's way of making another library. In the world of memes it might work a little like this. The works of William Shakespeare are very interesting and have useful functions in English culture, but there was nothing to suggest that it was a required or inevitable move in meme space. Newton's laws on the other hand are much more inevitable. If Newton hadn't discovered them, someone else surely would have. But both of these examples show that regardless of variations in the words, language, style and presentation, there is a convergence or underlying meaning that is arrived at time and time again. -- Jake Prime One of my responsibilities as a Memetic Vector is to condense and redistribute the data I gather from eclectic travels so others don't have to. I would never ask everyone to go and read/hear/dance to/talk with/visit all the people and places I have just to understand something I say. Time is a very limited resource (for instance, I get about 1 hour a day to play on the computer, that's it. CoV alone can take up most of that time). As a vector it is important to package ideas in a manner that is accessible to others. By giving background and defining terms I can increase the odds that my insights get communicated. This is the theory at least. -- Tim Rhodes , on the CoV mailing list Interesting. I wonder if the since the invention of language we might have come to rely on it as a way of understanding others to a greater and greater extent, to the possible detriment of our ability to relate without words. (A good argument for having a pet, I think.) -- "Tim Rhodes" The idea that is not dangerous is unworthy of being called an idea at all. -- Elbert Hubbard "May your memes be fruitful and multiply" -- The Necromemecon "The creed whose legitimacy is most easily challenged is likely to develop the strongest proselytizing impulse. It is doubtful whether a movement which does not profess some preposterous and patently irrational dogma can be possessed of that zealous drive which "must either win men or destroy the world." It is also plausible that those movements with the greatest inner contradiction between profession and practice-that is to say with a strong feeling of guilt-are likely to be the most fervent in imposing their faith on others." -- Eric Hoffer, 'The True Believer', 1951, section 88 remember: THE OBJECTIVE IS: the survival of the meme. no -- remember: THERE IS NO OBJECTIVE: memes which can replicate do so. In fact, I've proposed that saying a mind is infected by memes is akin to saying the brain is infected by neurons. -- David McFadzean a meme is "a contagious information pattern that replicates by parasitically infecting human minds and altering their behavior, causing them to propagate the pattern"(Memetic Lexicon by Glenn Grant) A meme is a concept (or an idea, or a unit of information) studied from a point of view of replication (cultural transmission or imitation), evolution, interaction, and/or application. -- Tadeusz Niwinski , on the CoV mailing list. "meme (pron.`meem=B4) A contagious information pattern that replicates by symbiotically" OR PARASITICALLY " infecting human " OR OTHER " minds and altering their behavior, causing them to propagate the pattern." OR CAUSING THEM TO BEHAVE IN SUCH A WAY THAT OTHERS PROPAGATE THE PATTERN."........"An idea or information pattern is not a meme until it causes someone to replicate it, to repeat it to someone else. All transmitted knowledge is memetic."... -- Peter =D6kner okner@arch.kth.se, adding to Grant's definition MEME. Noun. A memory item, or portion of an organism’s neurally-stored information, identified using the abstraction system of the observer, whose instantiation depended critically on causation by prior instantiation of the same memory item in one or more other organisms’ nervous systems. ("Sameness" of memory items is determined with respect to the above-mentioned abstraction system of the observer.) -- Aaron Lynch http://www.mcs.net/~aaron/mememath.html A meme is a unit of information in a mind whose existence influences events such that more copies of itself get created in other minds. -- Richard Brodie, _Virus of the Mind; the New Science of the Meme_ A meme is any pattern or configuration of information that has been evaluated for its tendency to become replicated within the minds of humans.* This allows for an evaluation of information not just in terms of its content, meaning and function, but also in terms of its tendency to become replicated, altered, or associated with other patterns or configurations of information. In short we are talking about the tendency of informational patterns and configurations to *EVOLVE*. -- Jake Prime , on the CoV list External forces are very important in determining which new ideas will be _selected_ from among the many available, but they cannot explain their production. -- Mihaly Cskizentmihalyi We are what we think. All that we are arises with our thoughts. With our thoughts we make the world. -- Buddha "As we move toward the millennium, the year 2000, the most powerful nations are not those that have nuclear bombs, but those that control the media. That's where the battle is being fought; that is how you control people's minds." -- Spike Lee, filmmaker Part of an address at Fisk University, Nashville, TN, 1996-SEP-4 "The way to get a lie believed is to continue to REPEAT it". -- George Orwell I've always felt that a person's intelligence is directly reflected by the number of conflicting points of view he can entertain simultaneously on the same topic. -- Lisa Alther "Doublethink means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them." -- George Orwell In fact what we should do is consciously favour memetic variation, selection then does the rest. -- Chitren Nursinghdass (question to ponder: selection for WHAT? Memetic "fitness" is the answer, but is that what WE HUMANS want? NO) "Level 3 is characterized by the ability to flex your meme-space on the fly; to use multiple models depending upon your purpose and priorities. It's possible to gain an intellectual understanding of what this means from Level 2, but probably not possible to really feel the impact of the difference in life experience. The Level-3 mind has a great capacity to hold dissonant, contradictory beliefs. (Einstein was said to have this ability.)" -- Richard Brodie Can't one accept mutually exclusive paradigms on a provisional basis? -- Reed Konsler konsler@ascat.harvard.edu Dwight Conquergood put it, "Instead of a stable, monolithic paradigm...I prefer to think in terms of a caravan: a heterogeneous ensemble of ideas and methods on the move." Level 1: replicators based on genes (Example: Humans) Level 2: replicators based on memes (Examples: Emotions, Knowledge-bases/fields of study) Level 3: applying extreme internal selective pressures to the replicators based on memes. [This is effectively what the 'one purpose' does.] -- Kenneth Boyd, zaimoni@ksu.edu, on the CoV mailing list Level 4: applying extreme internal selective pressures to the replicators based on dynamic memes. [Effectively 'multi-purpose'.] -- Martin Traynor , on the CoV mailing list Level 1: Tim hit things with hammer, good. Level 2: One can both insert and remove nails using a claw-hammer. Level 3: For some things, a screwdriver or a wrench might work better. -- Tim Rhodes (Prof. Tim), on the CoV mailing list "much can be gained from constructing possible models of other world views within one's own". -- Smullyan Level-3 isn't just the ability to change your belief system, but the ability to change among belief systems. By the distinction, I mean that a Level-3 person isn't merely seeking to improve on a current model, but to keep multiple models around, and change among them depending on which aspects of the world one most wants illuminated at the time. In fact, the illumination metaphor seems like a good one; let me fill it in. A worldview is like a light source--using a particular kind and direction of light, we can see many aspects of the room we're in and its contents. Some light sources will be generally more useful than others, and some will be more helpful for specific purposes than others. None of them can illuminate everything in the room at once for us--all of them will cast shadows, and include only part of the spectrum. A Level-1 person is using whatever light source is handy, without particularly thinking about how it might be improved on. A Level-2 person is working to perfect their light source--to make it bright, broad-spectrum, and well-positioned. A Level-3 person has collected several lights of various types e has found useful, has probably worked on them a bit, and now uses them for different purposes, and/or switches among them to get new insights. E is also likely to be willing to play with new possibilities. -- Eva, on the CoV mailing list If there is any one secret of success, it lies in the ability to get the other person's point of view and see things from that person's angle as well as from your own. -- Henry Ford First Law of Memetics: Repeat only those things you wish to hear. I'll consider myself forewarned. I don't doubt that you've had these experiences with yoga. But please remember that I'm an evolutionist. Beasts survive because they're adapted to their environment. If you create an environment in your mind using meditation which supports ideas like reincarnation, it's not surprising to me that the thoughts that survive in that environment deal with reincarnation. In fact, I'd be surprised if that didn't happen. -- David de Void, the Zero mailing list. One of the most significant points I think Richard makes is that once you successfully initiate a Mind-virus it propagates more or less out of your control. By manufacturing a "living" entity to do your bidding you catch yourself in Pygmalion's dilemma: your creation will eventually overcome you. Perhaps God had the same problem. -- Reed Konsler Our minds, it seems, are not well equipped to understand how they themselves work. You, in fact, may at first be very confused or distracted, or suddenly get tired as you read this, or even get angry just from reading these words. Although right now you may think this statement absurd, those feelings and symptoms are actually the defense mechanisms of mind viruses. They have evolved to be very protective of the parts of your mind they have stolen, and any attempts to cleanse yourself of them can trigger reactions. -- Richard Brodie; Virus of the Mind: The New Science of the Meme ...we must celebrate the Promethean power of humans to create - and recreate - themselves. It is precisely our refusal to accept our biological destiny which makes us more than insects. Unlike our fellow species, we can transform ourselves through thought and action. http://www.aec.at/meme/symp/contrib/barbro.html The idea that Art should only ever be a mirror to reality has always seemed ass-backwards to me, given that Art is always and everywhere well-groomed and impeccably turned out, whereas Reality wears a pair of two-year-old Adidas trainers and a Toy Story T-shirt. As far as I'm concerned, it's rather the job of reality to try and reflect Art. ***The purpose of Art is not to mirror reality, but to shape it by the imprints and aspirations that it leaves in the human mind.*** -- Alan Moore ------------------------------------------------------------------**** Chaos: Order: Complexity: If you look at a Mandelbrot set what you see is literally chaos. But within it is something recursive...perhaps not "order", but at least "pattern". That's what complexity is about...finding patterns in the chaotic; looking for prophecy in the White Noise. -- "Reed Konsler" "Emergence, it had become clear to me, is the central feature of the new science of Complexity." -- Roger Lewin, Life at the Edge of Chaos, 1992 "On a philosophical level, it [chaos] struck me as an operational way to define free will, in a way that allowed you to reconcile free will with determinism. The system is deterministic, but you can't say what it's going to do next. At the same time, I'd always felt that the important problems out there in the world had to do with the creation of organization, in life or intelligence. But how did you study that?" -- Doyne Farmer, a founder of Chaos theory ------------------------------------------------------------------**** Freedom: Responsibility: "response-ability" People should respect public opinion in so far as it is necessary to avoid starvation and to keep out of prison, but anything that goes beyond this is voluntary submission to an unnecessary tyranny. -- Bertrand Russell INTEGRITY: Your agreement with yourself to abide by your own rules. -- Heinlein Whenever a conflict arises between privacy and accountability, people demand the former for themselves and the latter for everybody else. -- David Brin No man is free until he learns to do his own thinking and gains the courage to act on his own personal initiative. -- Napoleon Hill If all mankind minus one were of one opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind. -- John Stuart Mill To give up the task of reforming society is to give up one's responsibility as a free man. -- Alan Paton "In the end more than they wanted freedom, they wanted security. When the Athenians finally wanted not to give to society but for society to give to them, when the freedom they wished for was freedom from responsibility, then Athens ceased to be free." -- Edward Gibbon (1737-1794) "Freedom is the right to be wrong, not the right to do wrong." -- John G. Riefenbaker A person who invests psychic energy exclusively in goals prescribed by society is forfeiting the possibility of choice. -- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi Liberation is not deliverance. -- Victor Hugo I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in the stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Councilor or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to "order" than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: "I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action"; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for someone else's freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a "more convenient season." -- Martin Luther King I think that in reality, science gives religious people TOO MUCH of a sense of control -- and in such a direct and non-supernatural manner that they cannot deny their responsibility in that control, which is what they are trying to avoid. Hence we hear religious people making pleas that we not "play God" through genetic engineering and so forth. In fact with each major techonological breakthrough, there is almost always some religious plea that we not indulge in the new technology for whatever reason (angering or usurping the gods etc.) -- but ultimately for the reason that they do not want to be responsible for the new control that it will bring. -- LogicNazi@aol.com, on the CoV mailing list Equal rights for equal responsibility and risk. No double standards. No exceptions. -- D.Prinn. 7/20/93 The only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not a sufficient warrant. -- John Stuart Mill, "On Liberty" Society has always been the free man's greatest enemy. And the free man has always been society's greatest friend. How did society treat Jesus, or Socrates, Galileo or Martin Luther King? Yet look what they have left mankind. -- Laurence G. Boldt One of the annoying things about believing in free will and individual responsibility is the difficulty in finding someone to blame your troubles on. And when you do find someone, it's remarkable how often their picture turns up on your driver's license. -- P. J. O'Rourke My own thoughts on the subject are few, but I have wondered if: a deterministic self-aware system living in a quantum (uncertain) world, would be indistinguishable from a freewilled being living in a deterministic world. -- JPSchneider jschneid@hanoverdirect.com, on the CoV mailing list In my conception, freedom is not an immutable fact graven in nature and on the heart of man. It is not inherent in man or in society, and it is meaningless to write it into law. The mathematical, physical, biological, sociological, and psychological sciences reveal nothing but necessities and determinisms on all sides. As a matter of fact, reality is itself a combination of determinisms, and freedom consists in overcoming and transcending these determinisms. Freedom is completely without meaning unless it is related to necessity...We must not think of the problem in terms of a choice between being determined and being free. We must look at it dialectically, and say that man is indeed determined, but that it is open to him to overcome necessity, and that this act is freedom. Freedom is not static but dynamic; not a vested interest, but a prize continually to be won. The moment man stops and resigns himself, he becomes subject to determinism. He is most enslaved when he thinks he is comfortably settled in freedom. -- The Church of Euthanasia e-sermon #12 Our privileges can be no greater than our obligations. The protection of our rights can endure no longer than the performance of our responsibilities. -- John F. Kennedy Non-Conformism: Doing\saying exactly the opposite of what the rest do\say. Individualism (for this question): Doing\saying what you see fit, denying the relevance of what the rest do\say. -- Lior Golgher , on the CoV mailing list There is only one basic human right, the right to do as you damn well please. And with it comes the only basic human duty, the duty to take the consequences. -- P. J. O’Rourke, 1993 Address at the Cato Institute 26. Oversocialization can lead to low self-esteem, a sense of powerlessness, defeatism, guilt, etc. One of the most important means by which our society socializes children is by making them feel ashamed of behavior or speech that is contrary to society's expectations. If this is overdone, or if a particular child is especially susceptible to such feelings, he ends by feeling ashamed of HIMSELF. Moreover the thought and the behavior of the oversocialized person are more restricted by society's expectations than are those of the lightly socialized person. The majority of people engage in a significant amount of naughty behavior. They lie, they commit petty thefts, they break traffic laws, they goof off at work, they hate someone, they say spiteful things or they use some underhanded trick to get ahead of the other guy. The oversocialized person cannot do these things, or if he does do them he generates in himself a sense of shame and self-hatred. The oversocialized person cannot even experience, without guilt, thoughts or feelings that are contrary to the accepted morality; he cannot think "unclean" thoughts. And socialization is not just a matter of morality; we are socialized to confirm to many norms of behavior that do not fall under the heading of morality. Thus the oversocialized person is kept on a psychological leash and spends his life running on rails that society has laid down for him. In many oversocialized people this results in a sense of constraint and powerlessness that can be a severe hardship. We suggest that oversocialization is among the more serious cruelties that human beings inflict on one another. -- The UnaBomber, http://www.soci.niu.edu/~critcrim/uni/uni.txt note 21. (Paragraph 128) Since many people may find paradoxical the notion that a large number of good things can add up to a bad thing, we will illustrate with an analogy. Suppose Mr. A is playing chess with Mr. B. Mr. C, a Grand Master, is looking over Mr. A's shoulder. Mr. A of course wants to win his game, so if Mr. C points out a good move for him to make, he is doing Mr. A a favor. But suppose now that Mr. C tells Mr. A how to make ALL of his moves. In each particular instance he does Mr. A a favor by showing him his best move, but by making ALL of his moves for him he spoils the game, since there is no point in Mr. A's playing the game at all if someone else makes all his moves. The situation of modern man is analogous to that of Mr. A. The system makes an individual's life easier for him in innumerable ways, but in doing so it deprives him of control over his own fate. -- The UnaBomber, http://www.soci.niu.edu/~critcrim/uni/uni.txt Loyalty to petrified opinion never yet broke a chain or freed a human soul. -- Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) (Inscription beneath his bust in the Hall of Fame.) A free society is a place where it's safe to be unpopular. -- Adlai Stevenson We can remember that the more we can take responsibility for ourselves, within limits, the more we are empowered to change our subjective and objective world - whereas the more we try to shift responsibility onto others, the more we disempower ourselves and become dependent on convincing others to take care of us. -- Zhahai Stewart What a curious phenomenon it is that you can get men to die for the liberty of the world who will not make the little sacrifice that is needed to free themselves from their own individual bondage. -- Bruce Barton (1886-1967) It is not enough that we have responsible leaders. It is not enough that we have "responsible". It is not enough that we discuss "responsible". It is not enough that we think responsible thoughts. Each of us must act responsibly and take responsibility for our actions. This is enough. -- Reed Konsler He that would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself. -- Thomas Paine You can choose a ready guide In some celestial voice If you choose not to decide You still have made a choice You can choose from phantom fears and kindness that can kill I will choose a path that's clear I will chose free will. -- RUSH, Free Will With the first link, a chain is forged. The first speech censured, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably. -- Picard, ST:TNG, quoting a fictional judge, The Drumhead "Is life so dear or peace so sweet as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take, but as for me, give me liberty, or give me death!" -- Patrick Henry Part of a speech delivered to the Virginia Convention, 1775-MAR "...the opinions and belief of men depend not on their own will, but follow involuntarily the evidence proposed to their minds..." -- Thomas Jefferson "Liberty not only means that the individual has both the opportunity and the burden of choice; it also means that he must bear the consequences of his actions... Liberty and responsibility are inseparable." -- Friedrich von Hayek "The Constitution of Liberty" (1960) "Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be. You are a child of God. Your playing small doesn't serve the world. There's nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we're liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others." -- Marianne Williamson "It is harder to preserve than to obtain liberty." -- John C. Calhoun "Libertarianism is the view that each man is the absolute owner of his life, to use and dispose of as he sees fit; that all man's social actions should be voluntary; and that respect for every other man's similar and equal ownership of life, and by extension, the property and fruits of that life, is the ethical basis of a humane and open society." -- Karl Hess "The greatest crimes in history have been committed by those who chose to exercise their liberty without any sense of responsibility." -- Margret Thatcher "Libertarians have one thing going for them that others lack: they are in tune with reality. Human beings are all that really count and libertarians know that. A man and his wife drinking coffee at the kitchen table, an old woman warming herself by the fire, a child playing in the mud: these are the only reasons governments should exist. All the giant industries and superhighways, all the wonderful technology and fabulous medical knowledge, everything that seems to stand so loftily above us is only there to serve these people and their desires. One of these days, people are going to understand what is real and what is illusion and that is the day when anarchy will triumph." Men, women, of every nation, every race and condition: how much longer are you going to let yourselves be used? When are you going to tell your rulers, "Enough!" and claim the right to live your own lives? -- Allen Thornton I never submitted the whole system of my opinions to the creed of any party of men whatever in religion, in philosophy, in politics, or in anything else where I was capable of thinking for myself. Such an addiction is the last degradation of a free and moral agent. -- Thomas Jefferson, letter to Francis Hopkinson, March 13, 1789 They [the clergy] believe that any portion of power confided to me, will be exerted in opposition to their schemes. And they believe rightly; for I have sworn upon the altar of god, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man. But this is all they have to fear from me: and enough, too, in their opinion. -- Thomas Jefferson to Dr. Benjamin Rush, Sept. 23, 1800 I will not attack your doctrines nor your creeds if they accord liberty to me. If they hold thought to be dangerous - if they aver that doubt is a crime, then I attack them one and all, because they enslave the minds of men. -- Robert Ingersoll (The Ghosts) It is our responsibility as scientists, knowing the great progress which comes from a satisfactory philosophy of ignorance, the great progress which is the fruit of freedom of thought, to proclaim the value of this freedom; to teach how doubt is not to be feared but welcomed and discussed; and to demand this freedom as our duty to all coming generations. -- Richard Feynman ("What Do You Care What Other People Think?") ..And this I believe: that the free, exploring mind of the individual human is the most valuable thing in the world. And this I would fight for: the freedom of the mind to take any direction it wishes, undirected. And this I must fight against: any idea, religion or government which limits or destroys the individual. -- John Steinbeck in "East of Eden" "I detest what you say, but I will defend to my death your right to say it." -- Voltarie "I detest what you write, but I would give my life to make it possible for you to continue to write." -- Voltaire, in a letter to M. le Riche, Feb. 6, 1770. According to George Seldes' 'The Great Thoughts', "It was not Voltaire, but his biographer, S.G. Talentyre in 'The Friends of Voltaire', who originated the famous remark, 'I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.'" "I know but one freedom, and that is the freedom of the mind." -- Antoine de Saint-Exupery "The right to be let alone is indeed the beginning of all freedom." -- Supreme Court Justice William Orville Douglas "It is clear that thought is not free if the profession of certain opinions makes it impossible to earn a living." -- Bertrand Russell "Liberty don't work as good in practice as it does in speeches." -- Will Rogers I'm not sure which upsets me more: that people are so unwilling to accept responsibility for their own actions, or that they are so eager to regulate everyone else's. ------------------------------------------------------------------**** Abundance: I think that today, in many ways, we've become confused about what real abundance is. In reducing it to something that can be measured in abstract economic terms, we've substituted a concept of abundance for the experience of it. -- Laurence G. Boldt At every level of our lives, the assumption of scarcity, not abundance, threatens to deform our attitudes and our actions. -- Parker J. Palmer ------------------------------------------------------------------**** Politics: Government: Love your country, but never trust its government. -- Robert A. Heinlein. The shock of discovering that most of the power in the world is held by ignorant and greedy people can really bum you out at first; but after you've lived with it a few decades, it becomes, like cancer and other plagues, just another problem that we will solve eventually if we keep working at it. -- Robert Anton Wilson Anarchism is founded on the observation that since few men are wise enough to rule themselves, even fewer are wise enough to rule others. -- Edward Abbey "The fact is that the average man's love of liberty is nine-tenths imaginary, exactly like his love of sense, justice and truth. He is not actually happy when free; he is uncomfortable, a bit alarmed, and intolerably lonely. Liberty is not a thing for the great masses of men. It is the exclusive possession of a small and disreputable minority, like knowledge, courage and honor. It takes a special sort of man to understand and enjoy liberty -- and he is usually an outlaw in democratic societies." -- H.L. Mencken, Baltimore Evening Sun, February 12, 1923 So long as men worship the Caesars and Napoleons, Caesars and Napoleons will arise to make them miserable. -- Aldous Huxley ... just because the universe is indifferent to our struggle doesn't mean that our government ought to be. -- Eric Boyd, on the CoV mailing list "To wage a war for a purely moral reason is as absurd as to ravish a woman for a purely moral reason." -- H.L. Mencken This country will not be a good place for any of us to live in unless we make it a good place for all of us to live in. -- Theodore Roosevelt [speaking about politicians] "If he is a smart and enterprising fellow, which he usually is, he quickly discovers there that hooey pleases the boobs a great deal more than sense. Indeed, he finds that sense really disquiets and alarms them - that it makes them, at best, intolerably uncomfortable, just as a tight collar makes them uncomfortable, or a speck of dust in the eye, or a the thought of Hell. The truth, to the overwhelming majority of mankind, is indistinguishable from a headache." -- H.L. Mencken lecture at Columbia University January 4, 1940 The ultimate end of any ideology is totalitarianism. Today, the religious right and the academic left seem to be in some kind of competition to brutalize the gene pool. As agents of homogenization, both sides are committed to institutionalized mediocrity. They want to re-create the world in their image, and re-create society to fit the contours of their fears. -- Tom Robbins If X is the population of the United States and Y is the degree of imbecility of the average American, then democracy is the theory that X x Y is less than Y. -- H. L. Mencken "Augustus was sensible that mankind is governed by names; nor was he deceived in his expectation, that the senate and people would submit to slavery, provided they were respectfully assured that they still enjoyed their ancient freedom." -- Edward Gibbon Chapter 3, The Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire "All over the world there were rulers with titles like the Exalted, the Supreme, and Lord High Something or Other. Only in one small country was the ruler elected by the people, who could remove him whenever they wanted -- and they called him the Tyrant. "The Ephebians believed that every man should have the vote*. [*provided that he wasn't poor, foreign, nor disqualified by reason of being mad, frivolous, or a woman] Every five years someone was elected to be Tyrant, provided he could prove that he was honest, intelligent, sensible, and trustworthy. Immediately after he was elected, of course, it was obvious to everyone that he was a criminal madman and totally out of touch with the view of the ordinary philosopher on the street looking for a towel. And then five years later they elected another one just like him, and really it was amazing how intelligent people kept on making the same mistakes." -- Terry Pratchett, _Small Gods_ If people let government decide what foods they eat and what medicines they take, their bodies will soon be in as sorry a state as are the souls of those who live under tyranny. -- Thomas Jefferson AUTHORITARIANISM is the tiny, unnatural wire that reaches out to connect one person's brain with another person's muscles. LIBERTARIANISM is the statement of a political principle. As John Hospers described it: "a philosophy of personal liberty - the liberty of each person to live according to his own choices, provided that he does not attempt to coerce others and thus prevent them from living according to their choices. Libertarians hold this to be an inalienable right of man; thus, libertarianism represents a total commitment to the concept of individual rights." It is a political philosophy, concerned with the appropriate use of force. It asks one question: Under what conditions is the use of force justified? And it gives one answer: only in response to the prior use of force. This political principle is implemented through the social institution of ANARCHY. Life-as-it-could-be is a territory we can only study by first creating it. -- Kevin Kelly "As with the Christian religion, the worst advertisement for Socialism is its adherents." -- George Orwell TOTALITARIANISM The deliberate use of institutionalized coercion. "There never did, there never will, and there never can exist a parliament, or any description of men, or any generation of men, in any country, possessed of the right or the power of binding and controlling posterity to the 'end of time,' or of commanding for ever how the world shall be governed, or who shall govern it; and therefore, all such clauses, acts, or declarations, by which the makers of them attempt to do what they have neither the right nor the power to do, nor the power to execute, are in themselves null and void. Every age and generation must be as free to act for itself, in all cases, as the ages and generations which preceded it. The vanity and presumption of governing beyond the grave, is the most ridiculous and insolent of all tyrannies... Every generation is, and must be, competent to all the purposes which its occasions require. It is the living, and not the dead, that are to be accommodated." -- Thomas Paine, Rights of Man Law is what government builds to assure its perpetuity. STATISM: The opposite of libertarianism is statism, the principle that it is proper for the community (or a selected subgroup thereof) to compel the behavior of its individual members. This political principle is implemented through the social institution of government. GOVERNMENT: The strongest gang of aggressors in a particular area at a particular time. In old times, every Stoic was a Stoic, but in Multiculturalism where is the Multiculturalist? -- Richard Brodie's translation of R.W. Emerson http://www.brodietech.com/rbrodie/emsr21.htm The Wave of Society Society is a wave. The wave moves onward, but the water it's made of does not. The same molecule does not rise from the trough to the peak. Its unity is only perceived. The people who make up a nation today die next year, and their experience dies with them. -- Richard Brodie's translation of R.W. Emerson http://www.brodietech.com/rbrodie/emsr22.htm It seems as likely that a single large nation-state may evolve. How else to keep and enforce order among competing standards, methods of organization, and means of doing business? As any system, computer system or social system, becomes more complex, the need to have a centrally controlled architecture becomes more critical. -- unknown [true? false? WHY?] Another way to organize complex systems involves intrinsic order, where the actions of many separate parts "create" order from their interactions. Examples include biological evolution and free markets (i.e. Adam Smith's invisible hand). According to information theory centralized authority leads to easier centralized control, intrinsic order leads to more robust systems. Real life systems usually include elements of both styles. The internet is a good example with roots in the military and evolution over time to a more de-centralized organization. -- Jbaker@halcyon.com The West won the world not by superiority of its ideas or values or religion (to which few members of other civilizations were converted) but rather by its superiority in applying organized violence. Westerners often forget this fact; non-Westerners never do. -- Samuel P. Huntington "Information is the currency of democracy" -- Thomas Jefferson "We will add your biological and technological distinctiveness to our own. Your culture will adapt to service us. Resistance is futile. We are the Borg." -- The Borg `peace comes from the barrel of a gun.' "If you would understand politics, study evolution first." -- H. T. Watcher Government is not Reason. It is not Eloquence. It is Force. Like Fire, it is a Dangerous Servant and a Fearful Master. -- Thomas Paine "Anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job." Anarchism is the philosophy that favors a free society organized along lines of voluntary cooperation, individual liberty, and mutual aid. "Society exists only as a mental concept; in the real world there are only individuals. -- Charley Reese Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable. -- John F. Kennedy "A universe with finite access to resources and more than one independent actor cannot reach political utopia." -- Damien R. Sullivan. It is the fundamental theory of all the more recent American law ... that the average citizen is half-witted, and hence not to be trusted to either his own devices or his own thoughts. -- H.L. Mencken A totally "fool-proof" society is a fool producing society -- Zhahai Stewart 166. Therefore two tasks confront those who hate the servitude to which the industrial system is reducing the human race. First, we must work to heighten the social stresses within the system so as to increase the likelihood that it will break down or be weakened sufficiently so that a revolution against it becomes possible. Second, it is necessary to develop and propagate an ideology that opposes technology and the industrial society if and when the system becomes sufficiently weakened. And such an ideology will help to assure that, if and when industrial society breaks down, its remnants will be smashed beyond repair, so that the system cannot be reconstituted. The factories should be destroyed, technical books burned, etc. -- The UnaBomber, http://www.soci.niu.edu/~critcrim/uni/uni.txt "The ideal tyranny is that which is ignorantly self-administered by its victims. The most perfect slaves are, therefore, those which blissfully and unawaredly enslave themselves." -- Dresden James The voter-choice-analogy that resonates with me goes a little sumthin' like this: You're riding in a car. You are not driving, nor can you speak directly to the driver. The car has a stereo with two preset stations (sometimes three). You get to choose which button to push, or better yet, you and the other passengers get to put to a vote the question of which preset radio-station to listen to. Turning off the radio is not an option, and any claim that the act of pushing one of the two buttons has no impact on the course the car takes will get you denounced as an irresponsible nihilist who is just making excuses for the fact that he's too lazy to push either button. -- KMO "They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." -- Benjamin Franklin, Historical Review of Pennsylvania, 1759. "Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the government's purposes are beneficent... The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well meaning but without understanding." -- Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis I have never been able to conceive how any rational being could propose happiness to himself from the exercise of power over others. -- Thomas Jefferson Oppression is often made possible by a new technological advance--sometimes as dramatic as the introduction of farming, sometimes as apparently trivial as the stirrup. Whenever a new meme makes it possible for some individuals to get an edge over others, exploitation is sure to follow. (...) We cannot be free unless we learn to protect ourselves from other people's ambitions, and unless we refrain from exploiting others. -- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi "Silence is the ultimate weapon of power." -- Charles deGualle If guns are outlawed then only outlaws will have guns. "What do you think would happen if everyone just went and did whatever they wanted to do?" - "Complete fulfillment of one's being?" - "Well... yes, but we adults call that anarchy." -- Non Sequitor 7/13/97 Politics is like coaching a football team. You have to be smart enough to understand the game but not smart enough to lose interest. What influence, in fact, have ecclesiastical establishments had on society? In some instances they have been seen to erect a spiritual tyranny on the ruins of the civil authority; on many instances they have been seen upholding the thrones of political tyranny; in no instance have they been the guardians of the liberties of the people. Rulers who wish to subvert the public liberty may have found an established clergy convenient auxiliaries. A just government, instituted to secure and perpetuate it, needs them not. -- James Madison (from Memorial and Remonstrance against Religious Assessments, 1785) "What is an anarchist? One who, choosing, accepts the responsibility of choice." -- Ursula K. LeGuinn, 'The Day before the Revolution' In the future days, which we seek to make secure, we look forward to a world founded upon four essential human freedoms. The first is freedom of speech and expression -- everywhere in the world. The second is freedom of every person to worship God in his own way -- everywhere in the world. The third is freedom from want... The fourth is freedom from fear. -- President Franklin D. Roosevelt 1882-1945 Address to Congress, 6 Jan. 1941 "Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice. Tolerance in the face of tyranny is no virtue." -- Barry Goldwater Don't think of it as `gun control', think of it as `victim disarmament'. If we make enough laws, we can all be criminals. "Taking my gun away because I might shoot someone is like cutting my tongue out because I might yell `Fire!' in a crowded theater." -- Peter Venetoklis "I hold it, that a little rebellion, now and then, is a good thing, and as necessary in the political world as storms in the physical." -- Thomas Jefferson, Letter to James Madison, January 30, 1787 "The state calls its own violence `law', but that of the individual `crime'" -- Max Stirner "Today, we need a nation of Minutemen, citizens who are not only prepared to take arms, but citizens who regard the preservation of freedom as the basic purpose of their daily life and who are willing to consciously work and sacrifice for that freedom." -- John F. Kennedy "It is contended by many that ours is a Christian government, founded upon the Bible, and that all who look upon that book as false or foolish are destroying the foundation of our country. The truth is, our government is not founded upon the rights of gods, but upon the rights of men. Our Constitution was framed, not to declare and uphold the deity of Christ, but the sacredness of humanity. Ours is the first government made by the people for the people. It is the only nation with which the gods have nothing to do. And yet there are some judges dishonest and cowardly enough to solemnly decide that this is a Christian country, and that our free institutions are based upon the infamous laws of Jehovah." -- Robert G. Ingersoll A man who has nothing which he is willing to fight for, nothing which he cares about more than he does about his personal safety, is a miserable creature who has no chance of being free, unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself. -- John Stuart Mill, writing on the U.S. Civil War in 1862 The penalty that good men pay for not being interested in politics is to be governed by men worse than themselves. -- Plato Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their consciences. -- C. S. Lewis The people cannot delegate to government the power to do anything which would be unlawful for them to do themselves. -- John Locke, "A Treatise Concerning Civil Government" Non-cooperation with evil is as much a duty as cooperation with good. -- Mohandas Ghandi ------------------------------------------------------------------**** Law: Jonathan Swift had no problem with questioning the "law" concept. He wrote in Gulliver's Travels: "There was another point which a little perplexed him... I had said, that some of our crew left their country on account of being ruined by 'law'... but he was at a loss how it should come to pass, that the 'law' which was intended for 'every' man's preservation, should be any man's ruin. Therefore he desired to be further satisfied what I meant by 'law,' and the dispensers thereof... because he thought nature and reason were sufficient guides for a reasonable animal, as we pretended to be, in showing us what we ought to do, and what to avoid... I said there was a society of men among us, bred up from their youth in the art of proving by words multiplied for the purpose, that white is black, and black is white, accordingly as they are paid. To this society all the rest of the people are slaves." Justice is incidental to law and order. -- J. Edgar Hoover When buying and selling are controlled by legislation, the first things to be bought and sold are legislators. -- P. J. O'Rourke There's no way to rule innocent men. The only power government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren't enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws. -- Ayn Rand When you're dealing with the subtleties and complexities of human relationships, law is an extremely blunt instrument. -- Martha Minow Cornelius Tacitus once said, "The more corrupt the State the more numerous the laws." When common sense and compassion are in such violent conflict with the law, then the LAW is wrong and must be changed. -- Kay Lee ------------------------------------------------------------------**** Love: The course of true love never did run smooth. -- Shakespeare A coward is incapable of exhibiting love; it is the prerogative of the brave. -- Mahatma Gandhi Is it right to wait for her, forsaking every other... Love is not just looking at each other, it's looking away in the same direction -- Antonie de SaintExupery ******* The greatest gift we can give one another is rapt attention to one another's existence. -- Sue Atchley Ebaugh ******* I hold this to be the highest task of a bond between two people: that each should stand guard over the solitude of the other. For, if it lies in the nature of indifference and of the crowd to recognize no solitude, then love and friendship are there for the purpose of continually providing the opportunity for solitude. And only those are the true sharings which rhythmically interrupt periods of deep isolation ... -- Rainer Maria Rilke Love is a learnable skill "She kissed me. Me. She did. She does. She will. It cannot die until I do. What need I more than this? How wonderful the world is." Love is consensual mutual exploitation. -- David McFadzean An open ear is the only believable sign of an open heart. -- David Augsburger Oh, the comfort, the inexpressible comfort of feeling safe with a person; having neither to weigh thoughts nor to measure words but to pour them all out, just as it is, chaff and grain together, knowing that a faithful hand will take and sift them, keeping what is worth keeping, and then, with the breath of kindness, blow the rest away. -- George Eliot Love is an ideal thing; marriage is a real thing. A confusion of the real with the ideal never goes unpunished. -- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe A beautiful woman can make any man do what she wants and often will. Only choose in marriage a woman whom you would choose as a friend if she were a man. -- Joseph Joubert The ultimate test of a relationship is to disagree but hold hands. -- Alexander Penney Life has taught us that love does not consist in gazing at each other but in looking outward together in the same direction. -- Antoine de Saint-Exupery To love is good: love being difficult. For one human being to love another: that is perhaps the most difficult of all our tasks, the ultimate, the last test and proof, the work for which all other work is but preparation. For this reason young people, who are beginners in everything, cannot yet know love: they have to learn it. With their whole being, with all their forces, gathered close about their lonely, timid, upward-beating heart, they must learn to love. But learning-time is always a long, secluded time, and so loving, for a long while ahead and far on into life, is--solitude, intensified and deepened loneliness for him who loves. Love is at first not anything that means merging, giving over, and uniting with another (for what would a union be of something unclarified and unfinished, still subordinate--?), it is a high inducement to the individual to ripen, to become something in himself for another's sake, it is a great exacting claim upon him, something that chooses him out and calls him to vast things. "It is by not always thinking of yourself, if you can manage it, that you might somehow be happy. Until you make room in your life for someone as important to you as yourself, you will always be searching and lost ..." -- Richard Bach, _The Bridge Across Forever_ To be happy with a man you must understand him a lot and love him a little. To be happy with a woman you must love her a lot and not try to understand her at all. Helen Rowland (1875-1950), U.S. journalist. A Guide to Men, "Fourth Interlude" (1922). "Little do men perceive what solitude is, and how far it extendeth. For a crowd is not company, and faces are but a gallery of pictures, and talk but a tinkling cymbal, where there is no love." -- Francis Bacon In the arithmetic of love, one plus one equals everything, and two minus one equals nothing. -- Mignon McLaughlin "Dreams are what love is made of." A kiss is a lovely trick designed by nature to stop speech when words become superfluous. -- Ingrid Bergman "Swedenborg teaches us that love makes us free, and I can bear witness to its power of lifting us out of the isolation to which we seem condemned. When the idea of an active, all controlling love lays hold of us, we become masters, creators of good, helpers of our kind. It is as if the dark had sent forth a star to draw us to heaven. We discover in ourselves many undeveloped resources of will and thought. Checked, hampered, failing again and again, we rise above the barriers that bound and confine us, our lives put on serenity and order." -- Hellen Keller "This is the monstruosity in love, lady, that the will is infinite and the execution confined, that the desire is boundless and the act a slave to limit." -- William Shakespeare Troilus, Troilus and Cressida, Act III, scene ii Though time is only loaned in finite flow, Until we die, our love is ours to grow. -- Gary Boone Love is like an hourglass: as the heart fills, the brain empties. -- a Frenchman if you love something set it free if it comes back to you it is yours if it doesn't then it was never meant to be. "I can live without money, but I cannot live without love." -- Judy Garland ------------------------------------------------------------------**** Advice: (on how to live) General: Eat right and exercise, Stay calm, philosophize. Let your sense of humor in, You don't always have to win. -- Gunars K. Neiders If you want to test your memory, try to recall what you were worrying about one year ago today. -- Rotarian (given the difficulty of this task, what does that imply about worrying?) There is no question that to survive, and especially to survive in a complex society, it is necessary to work for external goals and to postpone immediate gratifications. But a person does not have to be turned into a puppet jerked about by social controls. The solution is to gradually become free of societal rewards and learn how to substitute for them rewards that are under one's own powers. This is not to say that we should abandon every goal endorsed by society; rather, it means that, in addition to or instead of the goals others use to bribe us with, we develop a set of our own. -- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi Doing more of what doesn't work doesn't work. -- Nathaniel Branden If you're only contributing to others out of fear or guilt, I would suggest reorienting toward selfish fulfillment until you are feeling good enough to spill over... -- Richard Brodie richard@brodietech.com, on the level-3 list * Fulfill painful obligations as soon as possible. * Schedule errands and minor chores together rather than separately. * Do difficult things before easy things. * Avoid petty disagreements, and do not become upset when others forment them. * Make minor decisions quickly, and put them out of your mind. * In general, do not concern yourself with trivia. * Refuse, politely but decisively, to accept involvement's that would distract you from the purposes you value. * Seek advice from experts, but otherwise avoid projects whose success depends on the charity or competence of others. * Work much and regularly, but rest and exercise as much and as regularly as you work. * Ensure that every important activity receives a large and uninterrupted period of time. * Sell, give away, or otherwise dispose of your television set. * Keep a personal file. * Keep a record of your progress by days, weeks and months. -- Robert Grudin The Nine Laws of God * Distribute being * Control from the bottom up * Cultivate increasing returns * Grow by chunking * Maximize the fringes * Honor your errors * Pursue no optima: have multiple goals * Seek persistent disequilibrium * Change changes itself -- Kevin Kelly, _Out of Control_ It's a funny thing about life; if you refuse to accept anything but the best, you very often get it. -- W. Somerset Maugham Pain is inevitable, suffering is optional "Paul substituted faith in Christ for the Christlike life." -- Walter Kaufmann (Professor of Philosophy, Princeton) "You have no responsibility to live up to what other people think you ought to accomplish." -- Richard Feynman Live fast, freeze young, and leave a reanimatible corpse. -- Robert J. Bradbury , on the extropians mailing list "We Lutherans have gathered like eagles around the carcass of cheap grace, and there we have drunk of the poison which has killed the life of following Christ. The word of cheap grace has been the ruin of more Christians than any commandment of works." -- Bonhoeffer, Dietrich, The Cost of Discipleship, p. 44 "Every habit and faculty is preserved and increased by its corresponding actions: The habit of walking makes us better walkers, regular running makes us better runners. It is the same regarding matters of the soul. Whenever you are angry, you increase your anger; you have increased a habit and added fuel to fire. "If you don't want an agry temper, then don't feed the habit. Give it nothing to help its increase. Be quiet at first and reckon the days in which you have not been angry. "I used to be angry every day; now ever other day; then every third and fourth day." As time goes on, the habit is first weakened and is then eventually overridden by a wiser response. -- Epictetus, "The Art of Living," (A New Interpretation by Sharon Lebell) I need to take an emotional breath, step back, and remind myself who's actually in charge of my life. -- Judith Knowlton To forget one's purpose is the commonest form of stupidity. -- Friedrich Nietzsche Dare to risk public criticism. -- Mary Kay Ash Work like you don't need the money, Love like you've never been hurt, And dance like no one's watching. There is only one success - To be able to spend your life in your own way. -- Christopher Morley ... There's no elevator to success. You have to take the stairs. You must have long range goals to keep you from being frustrated by short range failures. -- Charles C. Noble "If I say that it would be disobedience to God to 'mind my own business,' you will not believe that I am serious. If on the other hand I tell you to let no day pass without discussing goodness and all the other subjects about which you hear me talking, and that examining both myself and others is really the very best thing that a man can do, and that life without this sort of examination is not worth living, you will be even less inclined to believe me. Nevertheless, that is how it is." -- "The Apology" in Plato, THE LAST DAYS OF SOCRATES (London: Penguin, 1954),71. "Everyone was fooled except Obebe, who was old and wise and did not believe in river devils, and the witch doctor who was old and wise and did not believe in them either, but realized that they were excellent things for his parishioners to believe in." -- Edgar Rice Burroughs, "Tarzan and the Ant Men" The past is an illusion. You must learn to live in the present and accept yourself for what you are now. What you lack in flexibility and agility you must make up with knowledge and constant practice. -- Bruce Lee It is the law of human life, as certain as gravity; to live fully, we must learn to use things and love people...not love things and use people. -- Maria Montessori "Don't compromise yourself. You are all you got." -- Janis Joplin "Love is like playing the piano. First you must learn to play by the rules, then you must forget the rules and play from your heart." -- unknown If you have an important point to make, don't try to be subtle or clever. Use a pile driver. Your past is not your potential. In any hour you can choose to liberate the future. -- Marilyn Ferguson We must have the courage to believe that the world we have dreamed will one day be made manifest and that what we do as individuals makes a difference. We must have the courage to reject the idea of settling for work that is destructive to human happiness, or even indifferent to it. We must have the patience to view the movement toward life's work as a lifelong unfolding process, not something we can do in a week, a month, a year, or even several years, but something that takes a deep commitment and the patience to see it through. -- Laurence B. Boldt ******* Let us not look back in anger or forward in fear, but around in awareness. -- James Thurber ******* "To the persevering mortal," spoke Zoroaster, "the blessed Immortals are swift." -- Richard Brodie's translation of R.W. Emerson http://www.brodietech.com/rbrodie/emsr18.htm The flower that follows the sun does so even on cloudy days. -- Robert Leighton (1611-1684) Our lives improve only when we take chances -- and the first and most difficult risk we can take is to be honest with ourselves. -- Walter Anderson Enjoy things, 'cuz life goes by too fast Always be happy and keep smilling, 'cuz it's what makes life fun. Feeling grateful or appreciative of someone or something in your life actually attracts more of the things that you appreciate and value into your life. -- Northrup Christiane "There's only us, there's only this Forget regret or life is yours to miss No other road, no other way No day but TODAY." Jonathan Larson, RENT (1996) How do I work? I grope. -- Albert Einstein "Every day men are squelching their instincts, their desires, their impulses, their intuitions. One has to get out of the fucking machine he is trapped in and do what he wants to do. But we say, 'No, I have a wife and children, I'd better not think of it.' That is how we commit suicide every day. It would be better if a man did what he liked to do and failed than to become a successful nobody." -- Henry Miller andy's theory on self-esteem was as follows: you can always tell when you feel good enough about yourself when you can say, "i am happy to be me! there is no one else i would rather be!" For most poor dumb brainwashed women marriage is the climatic experience. For men, marriage is a matter of efficient logistics: the male gets his food, bed, laundry, TV, pussy, offspring and creature comforts all under one roof, where he doesn't have to dissipate his physic energy thinking about them too much. Then he is free to go out and fight the battles of life, which is what existence is all about. But for a woman, marriage is surrender. Marriage is when a girl gives up the fight, walks off the battlefield and from then on, leaves the truly interesting and significant action to her husband, who has bargained to take care of her. What a sad, bum, deal. Women live longer than men because they haven't been living. Better blue-in-the-face dead of a heart attack at fifty than a healthy seventy-yr-old widow who hasn't had a piece of life's action since girlhood". -- Tom Robbins "Even Cowgils get the Blues" Never permit a dichotomy to rule your life, a dichotomy in which you hate what you do so you can have pleasure in your spare time. Look for a situation in which your work will give you as much happiness as your spare time. -- Edward L. Bernay "When you reach the end of your rope, tie a knot in it and hang on." -- Thomas Jefferson "Just trust yourself, then you will know how to live." -- Goethe Everything in excess! To enjoy the flavor of life, take big bites. Moderation is for monks. -- Heinlein "How many cares one loses when one decides not to be something, but to be someone." -- Coco Chanel "It does all of us good occasionally to have a long, steady look at our real selves, and ask if we are nice to know and what we are doing about improvements. Personality takes you far in this world. My father could get anything out of anybody because he had such infinite charm and tact. Once he said to me "I wasn't born this way, you know. I thought it was worth cultivating." -- Morris Mandel Rest not! Life is sweeping by; go and dare before you die. Something mighty and sublime, leave behind to conquer time. -- Goethe (1749-1832) ------------------------------------------------------------------**** Advice: Little things: (are important) If a man is called a streetsweeper, he should sweep streets even as Michelangelo painted, or Beethoven composed music, or Shakespeare wrote poetry. He should sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will pause to say, here lived a great streetsweeper who did his job well. -- Martin Luther King, Jr. Don't be afraid to give your best to what seemingly are small jobs. Every time you conquer one it makes you that much stronger. If you do the little jobs well, the big ones will tend to take care of themselves. -- Dale Carnegie ******* When we take things for granted, we take them away from *ourselves.* -- Hyperface , on the level-3 list ******* To sit down at your desk in the morning and know that you are taking up the work of a thousand mornings, to write knowing that tomorrow's work can redeem any imperfection in today's -- these realizations produce cheer and confidence in and of themselves. -- Robert Grudin A man might search his life away for something meaningful -- success perhaps. But joy is in doing the thing that's needed at the moment, and doing it well and without fear and with something like love." -- Lance Weller It is good to have an end to journey toward; but it is the journey that matters, in the end. -- Ursula K. Le Guin "Don't do things half-assed. If a thing is worth doing at all, it's worth doing as well as you can possibly do it. Pick out something you think is worthwhile and do it or work at it with passion. Do it with all your might." -- Hugh Young ------------------------------------------------------------------**** Advice: You MUST do: that which you think you cannot (carpe diem) You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You must do the thing which you think you cannot do. -- Eleanor Roosevelt To the degree you are clear about your purpose, you will be motivated to break through whatever walls are between you and the goodies. -- Richard Brodie richard@brodietech.com, on the CoV mailing list Don't stop at the tears; go through to the truth. -- Natalie Goldberg When I dare to be powerful, to use my strength in the service of my vision, then it becomes less and less important whether I am afraid. -- Audre Lorde It is not because things are difficult that we do not dare, it is because we do not dare that they are difficult. -- Seneca It isn't the burdens of today that drives people mad. It is the regrets over yesterday and the fear of tomorrow. Regret and fear are twin thieves who rob us today. So, stop pacing the aisles and counting the miles. Instead, climb more mountains, eat more ice cream, go barefoot more often, swim more rivers, watch more sunsets, laugh more, cry less. Life must be lived as we go along. -- Robert J. Hastings God likes you less for staying home and doing nothing than he does for you going out and maybe getting into a little trouble. -- Douglas Coupland In any moment of decision the best thing you can do is the right thing, the next best thing is the wrong thing, and the worst thing you can do is nothing. -- Theodore Roosevelt Sometimes our most violent feeling of dissatisfaction comes at a point where, if we are just willing to push on and push through, the most delightful feeling of joy and fulfillment is just on the other side. The trick is not to run away from that feeling, but rather to use it as a signpost pointing the way to personal growth. -- Richard Brodie The way to build self-confidence is to start doing things. Things you're sure you can do, like walking to the icebox for another beer, won't improve matters any, so the way to build self-confidence is to start doing things you're not sure you can do. Like flirting with strangers. Like baking your own bread. Like painting a picture. Like moving to the Yukon. Whatever it is, the trick is: stop thinking about it. Do it. Seize the day and get started and stay with it, and things will get easier and easier from here. -- Paul Williams One must learn by doing the thing. For though you think you know it, you have no certainty until you try. -- Sophocles There is no moment like the present. The man who will not execute his resolutions when they are fresh upon him can have no hope from them afterwards: they will be dissipated, lost, and perish in the hurry and scurry of the world, or sunk in the slough of indolence. -- Maria Edgeworth The important thing is this: to be able at any moment to sacrifice what we are for what we could become. -- Charles DuBois Don't wait. The time will never be just right. -- Napoleon Hill Vision without action is merely a dream. Action without vision just passes the time. Vision with action can change the world. -- Joel Barker "...We get accustomed to our clothes, to carrying ourselves or acting in particular ways. We get too comfortable. We do out thing and our thing becomes routine. We eat the same things, buy from the same stores, go to the same bars, have the same days. There is no magic in this. Magic happens when we do it anyway. The times when we say fuck it and test the fantasy. Magic happens when we know we risk making complete fools of ourselves, but we don't care. Magic happens through fantasies, when you define the world. When you do it anyway... -- Gillian White "Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover." -- Mark Twain Be the revolution. -- Love and Rockets Some people bounce off the bumpers of life, like a pinball with no volition of its own; others are able to assess the factors that are affecting them, learn how to control these factors and thereby take control of their lives. It is an unfortunate fact of life on Earth today that the overwhelming majority of people are like that pinball -- they are born into the world, randomly roll through the chutes of education, bounce off an occupation or two, watch video for a while and then roll down into that final hole. This is our lot unless we can learn to develop some kind of individual autonomy or sense of Will. -- Philip H. Farber Action may not always bring happiness; but there is no happiness without action. -- Benjamin Disraeli One doesn't discover new lands without consenting to lose sight of the shore for a very long time. -- Andre Gide I chose and my world was shaken. So what? The choice may have been mistaken, the choosing was not. You have to move on. -- Stephen Sondheim ******* In Walt Kelly's immortal words, "We have met the enemy, and he is us." ******* ******* For quite some time, misdirected, misguided and a very poor creature, I read to lift my spirits; to perhaps instill in my soul the likes of that which I could not instill in myself. Countless days I have wandered, and most likely, countless more I will wander, without purpose or much reason. I can read all day. I can better myself through someone else's wisdom, someone else's pain and someone else's freedom. But forever and until the end of time, until I find my own wisdom, pain and freedom, I would still find myself a veritable prisoner of the words I read and the life I lead. -- Lance Arthur http://www.afterdinner.com/pbot/_archive/_tantalus/love.html ******* You don't have to be a fantastic hero to do certain things; to compete. You can be just an ordinary person, sufficiently motivated to reach challenging goals. The intense effort, the giving of everything you've got, is a very pleasant bonus. -- Sir Edmond Hillary The pursuit of a goal brings order in awareness because a person must concentrate attention on the task at hand and momentarily forget everything else. These periods of struggling to overcome challenges are what people find to be the most enjoyable times of their lives. -- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi "Behold the turtle. He makes progress only when he sticks his neck out. " -- James Bryant Conant Our chief want in life is somebody who shall make us do what we can. -- Ralph Waldo Emerson "Only those who risk going to far can possibly find out how far one can go." -- T. S. Eliot Inertia is a force that works against you when you feel like doing something but you're doing nothing. But if you seize the day and start doing something, then inertia works with you, it keep you going till the job is done. -- Paul Williams The first step is the hardest. -- Marie De Vichy-Chamrond "Whatever you do will be insignificant, but it is very important that you do it." -- Mahatma Gandhi Take a chance. Spin the wheel. Roll the dice. Pick a card. All you have to lose is everything you are, and all you have to win is the world. -- Andrew, www.kantor.com People are always blaming their circumstances for what they are. I don't believe in circumstances. The people who get on in this world are the people who get up and look for the circumstances they want, and, if they can't find them, make them. -- George Bernard Shaw ******* Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness, concerning all acts of initiative (and creation). There is an elementary truth the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then providence moves too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one's favor all manner of unforeseen incidents and meetings and material assistance which no man could have dreamed would have come his way. Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it. Begin it now. -- Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe ******* Most of our obstacles would melt away if, instead of cowering before them, we should make up our minds to walk boldly through them. -- Orison Swett Marden Get up sluggard. There'll be enough sleep in the grave. -- Shakespeare I guess that one of the most important things I've learned is that nothing is ever completely bad. Even cancer. It has made me a better person. It has given me courage and a sense of purpose I never had before. But you don't have to do like I did... wait until you lose a leg or get some awful disease, before you take the time to find out what kind of stuff you're really made of. You can start now. Anybody can. -- Terry Fox ------------------------------------------------------------------**** Advice: How to achieve Contentment: Release control: True happiness is to enjoy the present, without anxious dependence upon the future, not to amuse ourselves with either hopes or fears but to rest satisfied with what we have, which is sufficient, for he that is so wants nothing. The great blessings of mankind are within us and within our reach. A wise man is content with his lot, whatever it be, without wishing for what he has not. -- Seneca Blessed is he who expects nothing, for he will never be disappointed. -- Benjamin Franklin The secret of success is making your vocation your vacation. -- Mark Twain Happiness in this world, when it comes, comes incidentally. Make it the object of pursuit, and it leads us a wild-goose chase, and is never attained. Follow some other object, and very possibly we may find that we have caught happiness without dreaming of it. -- Nathaniel Hawthorne "As long as people continue to want more and more, their greed will be like a fire which needs constant fueling. Whatever is put in it will be burnt up and still the fire goes on and on. The only way to stop it, is to find contentment. Only contentment will stop the fires of desire and greed from growing." -- Ringu Tulku, A Guide to Tibetan Buddhist Practice "Contentment consists not in adding more fuel, but in taking away some fire: not in multiplying of wealth, but in subtracting men's desires." -- Thomas Fuller [H]appiness consists not (as modern practices imply) in the simplification and curtailment of work coupled with the amplification of leisure, but rather in work as a significant and humane activity. The elusive component of dignity and pleasure, which we bemoan as absent from modern life and tend to seek in countless fads and distractions, may well reside in labor itself. -- Robert Grudin it makes no difference if we find what we think we are looking for so long as we do not forego what there is to find -- Michael McNeilley When I grip the wheel too tight, I find I lose control. -- Steve Rapson It is up to us to give ourselves recognition. If we wait for it to come from others, we feel resentful when it doesn't, and when it does, we may well reject it. -- Bernard Berkowitz There is hope for any man who can look in a mirror and laugh at what he sees. -- M&F 3/92 "Solitude in youth is painful because the art of living comfortably with it has not yet been learned; it is usually only in maturity that solitude becomes delicious. At one time, whenever life was confusing and my mind lacked direction, I immediately went to knowledgeable people for advice, but I have since learned that the answers were usually within me all the while. Now when I am perplexed, I seek seclusion and, in the eloquence of silence, I just wait for the replies to arrive. And they do. -- Eric Sloane ------------------------------------------------------------------**** Nature of life: There are two things people want more than sex and money... recognition and praise. -- Mary Kay Ash The Buddha: "Life is suffering" What you are will show in what you do. -- Thomas A. Edison ...anything can be used addictively, whether it be a substance (like alcohol) or a process (like work). This is because the purpose or function of an addiction is to put a buffer between ourselves and our awareness of our feelings. An addiction serves to numb us so that we are out of touch with what we know and what we feel. -- Anne Wilson Schaef A day without laughter is a day wasted." -- Charlie Chaplin "I create the experience of love by giving it, not by getting it." -- Richard Brodie [P]eople must belong to a tribe; they yearn to have a purpose larger than themselves. We are obligated by the deepest drives of the human spirit to make ourselves more than animated dust, and we must have a story to tell about where we came from, and why we are here. -- Edward O. Wilson We invest a great deal of attention in those who are close to us, and thus they become indispensable to our sense of who we are. Especially in societies where fewer material possessions are available, ties with others are the central, defining components of the self. -- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi Some things matter and some things don't. Which things are which depends equally on what THEY are, and who YOU are. -- Joe E. Dees Some of us find it as hard to choose solitude as to choose dislocation or disillusionment because solitude removes us from the collective life that often reinforces our comforting illusions. -- Parker J. Palmer A society that gives to one class opportunities for leisure and to another the burdens of work dooms both classes to spiritual sterility. -- Lewis Mumford Our minds fall into patterns of thinking. Our bodies fall into patterns of movement-- familiar responses. This makes the world a less scary place. It is our defense against the unknown. -- Paul Williams Commitment is a by-product of involvement. You must take your first steps in the dark. -- Robert Grudin The rate at which a person can mature is directly proportional to the embarrassment he can tolerate. -- Doug Engelbart "You won't enjoy the experience unless you're prepared to participate" -- M. Seymour Broadly speaking, human beings may be divided into three classes: those who are billed to death, those who are worried to death and those who are bored to death." -- Winston Churchill (British diplomat) All the memories are of stopping and staying awhile. I realize that I have driven too fast through life, Carrying in my baggage too much impatience and apprehension, Missing too many chances and passing too many people in the dust. -- Charles Kuralt "The critical points are that those working in a structure have some part in creating it--that it be useful and meaningful in their lives--and that the structure never become "just the way it is." Structures, even at their best, are never "the way it is," but only limited vehicles for the expression of use and meaning. When they out live either their use or their meaning, structures ought to be dissolved. The sad truth is that today, far too many have little, if any, input on the structures they work with; they experience their work as neither useful nor meaningful, but "just the way it is." -- Laurence G. Boldt, Zen and the Art of Making a Living A good life is one inspired by love and guided by knowledge. -- Bertrand Russell We act as if comfort and luxury were the chief requirements of life, when all that we need to be happy is something to be enthusiastic about. -- John Schaefer "You're not being asked to believe it," said Dr. Robert. "The real thing isn't a proposition; it's a state of being. We don't teach our children creeds or get them worked up over emotionally charged symbols. When it's time for them to learn the deepest truths of religion, we set them to climb a precipice and then give them four hundred milligrams of revelation. Two firsthand experiences of reality, from which any reasonably intelligent boy or girl can derive a very good idea of what's what." -- Aldous Huxley, _Island_ "I don't want to get to the end of my life and find that I lived just the length of it. I want to have lived the width of it as well." -- Diane Ackerman There is a time in every man's education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better, for worse, as his portion; that though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given to him to till. -- Ralph Waldo Emerson I am convinced, both by faith and experience, that to maintain one's self on the earth is not a hardship but a pastime--if we live simply and wisely. -- Henry David Thoreau Seriousness is truly a disease. We need giggles and shudders and risk takers. -- Rex Steven Sikes The mind is its own place, and in itself Can make a heav'n of hell, a hell of heav'n. -- John Milton _Paradise Lost_ When we live in illusion, denying reality, resisting the inevitable, we live in a tension that drains us of energy without our even knowing it. So if we try to gain life by denying death, the paradoxical result is that we become lifeless. -- Palmer J. Parker A minute's success pays the failure of years. -- Robert Browning Poverty is not a mortgage on the labor of others - misfortune is not a mortgage on achievement - failure is not a mortgage on success - suffering is not a claim check, and its relief is not the goal of existence - man is not a sacrificial animal on anyone's altar nor for anyone's cause - life is not one huge hospital. -- Ayn Rand, "Apollo 11," The Objectivist When we draw back from action, we are often motivated not by humility but by fear of risk. We risk so many things when we act: taking a fall, failing to achieve a goal, appearing incompetent, evoking criticism or competition or resistance or anger, or simply being ignored. But most of all, we risk exposing ourselves--selves at once strong and fragile, known and unknown--to the scrutiny of the world and, sometimes less mercifully, to the scrutiny of ourselves. The greatest risk in action is the risk of self-revelation, and that is also action's greatest joy. -- Palmer J. Parker Hegel said the ultimate tragedy is not the struggle of an easily recognized good against a clearly loathsome evil. Tragedy, he said, is the battle between two forces, both of which are good, a battle in which only one can win. Nature has woven that struggle into the superorganism. Superorganism, ideas, and the pecking order--these are the primary forces behind much of human creativity and earthly good. They are the holy trinity of the Lucifer Principle. -- Howard Bloom, The Lucifer Principle The truth that many people never understand until it is too late, is that the more you try to avoid suffering, the more you suffer, because smaller and more insignificant things begin to torture you in proportion to your fear of being hurt. -- Thomas Merton Sometimes I wonder how different my life might have been without their intervention--but the question is meaningless. *It couldn't have been any other way.* Everyone is manipulated; everyone is a product of their times. *And vice versa.* Whatever the unchangeable future holds, I'm sure of one thing: *who I am* is still a part of what always has, and always will, decide it. I can ask for no greater freedom than that. And no greater responsibility. -- Greg Egan "It is not a story of brilliant acheivement, heroic deeds, or noble sacrifice. It is a story of blind stumbling and chance discovery, of groping in the dark and refusing to admit the light. It is a story replete with obscurantism and prejudice, of sound judgment often eclipsed by loyality to tradition, and of reason long held subservient to custom. In short, it is a human story. -- Tobias Dantzig, _Number: The Language of Science_, 1930 You seem to be assuming that there is such a thing as a 'diversion' which, though voluntary, is different in a significant way from any other interesting activity. I don't think that's so. Unless one is in a compulsive state of mind, or in some sort of psychological loop or bind etc., a thing is interesting (or diverting, or attractive, etc.) if and only if it is contributing to one's growth as a person. -- David Deutsch , on the TCS list Time is the coin of your life. It is the only coin you have, and only you can determine how it will be spent. Be careful lest you let other people spend it for you. -- Carl Sandburg ******* The years forget our errors and forgive our sins, but they punish our inaction with living death. -- Robert Grudin ******* ******* People say that what we're all seeking is a meaning for life. I don't think that's what we're really seeking. I think that what we're really seeking is an experience of being alive, so that our life experiences on the purely physical plane will have resonances within our innermost being and reality, so that we can actually feel the rapture of being alive. -- Joseph Campbell ******* Probably the happiest period in life most frequently is in middle age, when the eager passions of youth are cooled, and the infirmities of age not yet begun; as we see that the shadows, which are at morning and evening so large, almost entirely disappear at midday. -- Thomas Arnold ******* "The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation" -- Henry David Thoreau, _Walden_, 1854. ******* ******* I found this message in a bottle.... I suppose I really feel `every man is an island,' and that we're all lobbing badly worded messages in fragile bottles into the sea, hoping our knowledge of a language we just learned, the fragility of the paper, and the motion of nearby currents will take the message to the people we want and that they'll be lucky enough to read it as we intended. Perhaps a bit depressing, but I read Lovecraft as a child. :) -- Alex williams ******* A sobering thought: what if, at this very moment, I am living up to my full potential? -- Jane Wagner ******* There is a fountain of youth: it is your mind, your talents, the creativity you bring to your life and the lives of the people you love. When you learn to tap this source, you will truly have defeated age. -- Sophia Loren ******* Listen to the mustn'ts, child Listen to the don'ts Listen to the shouldn'ts, the impossibles, the won'ts Listen to the never haves, then listen close to me... Anything can happen, child Anything can be. -- Shel Silverstein This is something Bandler said at the Meta-Master: you have to be able to notice something before you can control or change it. -- Sandworm, http://www.altfeld.com/mastery/misc/irc-03-05.html And I do this too from time to time -- we ALWAYS are operating in the world with less information than there is in "reality". Because we naturally delete, distort, and generalize the information coming in.... we have to operate with "impoverished" models of reality. -- Jonathan, http://www.altfeld.com/mastery/misc/irc-06-28-98.html Nothing determines who we will become so much as those things we choose to ignore. -- Sandor McNab That is the paradox of theatre -- Spontaneous human action within a determined narrative. -- Stephen Atkins on the CoV mailing list What does it mean to be alive? Are we merely like Shakespeare's poor actor, each with our own "hour upon the stage, to fret and strut, and be heard no more"? And if there is nothing worth dying for, then for what can it be said that we live? -- http://www.voicenet.com/~grassie/Fldr.Articles/time.html I submit to you that if a man hasn't discovered something he will die for, he isn't fit to live. -- Martin Luther King Jr. We should all be obliged to appear before a board every five years and justify our existence... on pain of liquidation. -- George Bernard Shaw To travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive, and the true success is to labour. -- Robert Louis Stevenson, VI. _El Dorado_ Three passions, simple but overwhelmingly strong, have governed my life: the longing for love, the search for knowledge, and unbearable pity for the suffering of mankind. -- Bertrand Russell, Autobiography 75. In primitive societies life is a succession of stages. The needs and purposes of one stage having been fulfilled, there is no particular reluctance about passing on to the next stage. A young man goes through the power process by becoming a hunter, hunting not for sport or for fulfillment but to get meat that is necessary for food. (In young women the process is more complex, with greater emphasis on social power; we won't discuss that here.) This phase having been successfully passed through, the young man has no reluctance about settling down to the responsibilities of raising a family. (In contrast, some modern people indefinitely postpone having children because they are too busy seeking some kind of "fulfillment." We suggest that the fulfillment they need is adequate experience of the power process -- with real goals instead of the artificial goals of surrogate activities.) Again, having successfully raised his children, going through the power process by providing them with the physical necessities, the primitive man feels that his work is done and he is prepared to accept old age (if he survives that long) and death. Many modern people, on the other hand, are disturbed by the prospect of death, as is shown by the amount of effort they expend trying to maintain their physical condition, appearance and health. We argue that this is due to unfulfillment resulting from the fact that they have never put their physical powers to any use, have never gone through the power process using their bodies in a serious way. It is not the primitive man, who has used his body daily for practical purposes, who fears the deterioration of age, but the modern man, who has never had a practical use for his body beyond walking from his car to his house. It is the man whose need for the power process has been satisfied during his life who is best prepared to accept the end of that life. -- The UnaBomber, http://www.soci.niu.edu/~critcrim/uni/uni.txt All life, day to day and century to century, is a succession of pride and humility, humility leading to greater awareness, greater awareness leading to greater achievement, great achievement leading to pride, pride breeding blindness, lack of awareness, imbalance, downfall and a slow return of humility... -- Paul Williams "And my soul is the arena where these two armies have clashed and met.." "All the world's a stage and most of us are desperately unrehearsed." -- Sean O'Casey "For every man the world is as fresh as it was at the first day, and as full of untold novelties for him who has the eyes to see them." -- Thomas Henry Huxley, A Liberal Education [1868] I WILL CHOOSE I will choose what enters me, what becomes flesh of my flesh. Without choice, no politics, no ethics lives. I am not your cornfield, not your uranium mine, not your calf for fattening, not your cow for milking. You may not use me as your factory. Priests and legislators do not hold shares in my womb or my mind. This is my body. If I give it to you I want it back. My life is a non-negotiable demand. -- Marge Piercy Out, out, brief candle! Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player That struts and frets his hour upon the stage And then is heard no more. It is a tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing. -- William Shakespeare _Macbeth_, 1606 The changes in our lives must come from the impossibility to live otherwise than according to the demands of our conscience...not from our mental resolution to try a new form of life. -- Leo Tolstoy "Realistic" people who pursue "practical" aims are rarely as realistic or practical in the long run as dreamers who pursue their dreams. -- Hans Selye Never mistake knowledge for wisdom. One helps you make a living; the other helps you make a life. -- Sandra Carey A ship in the harbor is safe, but that's not what ships are for. -- John Shedd I think sexuality is at the core of everyone's being. Everyone's in a different state of denying it. -- Madonna A person often meets his destiny on the road he took to avoid it. -- Jean La Fontaine "I find that the harder I work, the more luck I seem to have." -- Thomas Jefferson Ideals are like stars: you will not succeed in touching them with your hands, but like the seafarer on the desert of waters, you choose them as your guides, and following them you reach your destiny. -- Carl Schurz I suggest that the only books that influence us are those for which we are ready, and which have gone a little farther down our particular path than we have yet gone ourselves. -- E. M. Forster T.H. Huxley: "Suppose it were perfectly certain that the life and fortune of every one of us would, one day or other, depend upon his winning or losing a game at chess. Don't you think that we should all consider it to be a primary duty to learn at least the names and the moves of the pieces; to have a notion of a gambit, and a keen eye for all the means of giving and getting out of check? Yet it is a very plain and elementary truth, that the life, the fortune, and the happiness of every one of us, and, more or less, of those who are connected with us, do depend upon our knowing something of the rules of a game infinitely more difficult and complicated than chess. It is a game which has been played for untold ages, every man and woman of us being one of the two players in a game of his or her own. The chess-board is the world, the pieces are the phenomena of the universe, the rules of the game are what we call the laws of Nature. The player on the other side is hidden from us. We know that his play is always fair, just and patient. But also we know, to our cost, that he never overlooks a mistake, or makes the smallest allowance for ignorance. To the man who plays well, the highest stakes are paid, with that sort of overflowing generosity with which the strong shows delight in strength. And one who plays ill is checkmated - without haste, but without remorse." P A N D O R A Furious at seeing, among men, the fire that he had determined to withhold from them, Zeus concocted a gift tailor-made for men. All the gods contributed to the design of the gift, which was the counterpart, the reverse, of the stolen fire: it would burn men, make them pine away, and do so not with flames but with strain, trouble, and anxiety. This gift was Woman, named Pandora, "gift of all the gods." She appears in the myth as the first woman and the ancestor of the female species. Until that moment, men lived without women. They arose directly out of the earth, which produced them all by herself, like crops. They knew nothing of birth by begetting nor of the old age and death that went along with it. They disappeared into a state of peace similar to sleep, still just as young as they were in the first days of their lives. The Woman was man's double and his opposite. The male was going to have to plow her to hide his seed within her womb if he wanted to have children, just as he had to till the earth to hide the grain within it if he wanted to have wheat, and just as he had to hide the seed of fire in the hollow of a fennel stalk if he wanted to kindle it on the altar. So Zeus molded this Woman as a lure, a deep trap from which there was no escape. On the outside, she looked like an immortal goddess; irresistible grace and charm radiated from her beauty. On the inside, along with lying and deceit, Hermes inserted the soul of a bitch and the temperament of a thief. Divine in looks, human in speech and in her role as legitimate wife and mother, bestial in her insatiable appetites for sex and food, the appetites of a bitch, Woman summed up in her person all the contrasting elements of what it means to be human. She was evil, but a likable evil clothed in stirring beauty, a "kakon kalon," the kind of evil one can neither do without nor endure. If you marry her, her belly eats you out of house and home and lands you in poverty in your own lifetime. But if you do not marry and lack a female belly to receive your seed and nurture the embryo, you have no children to carry on your line, and as you cross the threshold of death, you are all alone. With Woman, good and evil, like the divine and the bestial, are merged and confused. -- "Sacrifice in Greek Myths: I. Prometheus," Greek and Egyptian Mythologies, compiled by Yves Bonnefoy (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1992), p. 123. Life, if thou knowest how to use it, is long enough. -- Seneca (B.C. 3-65 A.D.) "The lessons of life amount not to wisdom but to scar tissue and callus." -- Wallace Stegner Stephen King on an understanding ear Taken from Different Seasons, The Body, Page 289 The most important things are the hardest things to say. They are the things you get ashamed of, because words diminish them - words shrink things that seemed limitless when they were in your head to no more than living size when they're brought out. But it's more than that, isn't it? The most important things lie too close to wherever your secret heart is buried, like landmarks to a treasure your enemies would love to steal away. And you may make revelations that cost you dearly only to have people look at you in a funny way, not understanding what you've said at all, or why you thought it was so important that you almost cried while you were saying it. That's the worst, I think. When the secret stays locked within not for want of a teller, but for want of an understanding ear. However mean your life, meet it and live it, do not shun it and call it hard names. It is not so bad as you are. It looks poorest when you are richest. The fault-finder will find faults in the paradise. Love your life, poor as it is. You may perhaps have some pleasant, thrilling, glorious hours, even in a poorhouse. The setting sun is reflected from the windows of the almshouse as brightly as from the rich man's abode; the snow melts before its door as early in the spring. I do not see but a quiet mind may live as contentedly there, and have as cheering thoughts, as in a palace. -- Henry David Thoreau, _Walden_ or _Life in the Woods_ "We are here to add we can to, not to get what we can from, Life." -- Sir William Osler "Good friends, good books and a sleepy conscience: this is the ideal life. (The conviction of the rich that the poor are happier is no more foolish than the conviction of the poor that the rich are.)" -- Mark Twain(Samuel Clemens) "Far and away the best prize that life offers is the chance to work hard at work worth doing." -- Theodore Roosevelt "Life is not so bad if you have plenty of luck, a good physique and not too much imagination." -- Christopher Isherwood "The whole idea of interviews is in itself absurd. One cannot answer deep questions about what one's life was like; one writes novels about it." -- Anthony Powell "Life is a gamble at terrible odds, if it were a bet, you would not take it. " -- Tom Stoppard "Life is nothing but a competition to be the criminal rather than the victim." -- Bertrand Russell "Life is a foreign language; all men mispronounce it." -- Christopher Morley "All you need in this life is ignorance and confidence, and then success is sure." -- Mark Twain (1835-1910) "Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards." -- Soren Kierkegaard "Life is a long lesson in humility." -- James M. Barrie "Life is divided into the horrible and the miserable." -- Woody Allen "Life is full of misery, loneliness, and suffering - and it's all over much too soon." -- Woody Allen Life: "A pilgrimage to the intangible" ------------------------------------------------------------------**** Life as Adventure: Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. Life is either a daring adventure, or nothing. -- Helen Keller "There is so much in the world for us all if we only have the eyes to see it, and the heart to love it, and the hand to gather it to ourselves; so much in men and women, so much in art and literature, so much everywhere in which to delight and for which to be thankful." -- L.M. Montgomery We live in a wonderful world that is full of beauty, charm and adventure. There is no end to the adventures that we can have if only we seek them with our eyes open. -- Jawaharlal Nehru It's only when we truly know and understand that we have a limited time on earth - and that we have no way of knowing when our time is up, we will then begin to live each day to the fullest, as if it was the only one we had. -- Elisabeth Kubler-Ross "Insisting on perfect safety is for people who don't have the balls to live in the real world." -- Mary Shafer, NASA Ames Dryden We love because it is the only true adventure. -- Nikki Giovanni "We must learn to reawaken and keep ourselves awake, not by mechanical aids, but by an infinite expectation of the dawn, which does not forsake us in our soundest sleep. I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestionable ability of man to elevate his life by a conscious endeavor. It is something to be able to paint a particular picture, or to carve a statue, and so to make a few objects beautiful; but it is far more glorious to carve and paint the very atmosphere and medium through which we look, which morally we can do. To affect the quality of the day, that is the highest of arts. Every man is tasked to make his life, even in its details, worthy of the contemplation of his most elevated and critical hour." -- Henry David Thoreau, _Walden_ or _Life in the Woods_ "Relationship is a high-wire act. To the left is the irretrievable past -- your personal history, your previous relationships, your triumphs and your grief, the momentum which mechanically seeks to repeat itself, your helplessness. To the right is the uncontrollable future -- your expectations and fears, a thousand desires yet unfulfilled, fading dreams, your hopelessness. That is perhaps why Buddhist practices are called the Middle Way: a balancing of the heart and mind to enable unimpeded forward movement. Lean too far to the left and we become lost in guilt, anger, fear, self-protection, and cleverness. Lean too far to the right and we disappear into romantic fantasy, superstition, magic thinking, and a self-punishing sentimentality. The tightrope is the present moment, this very instant in which we attempt to maintain some balance between aspects of the underdream. When the balance is perfect, grace and disgrace dissolve equally into unconditioned love." Why are we reading, if not in hope of beauty laid bare, life heightened and its deepest mystery probed? . . . . Why are we reading if not in hope that the writer will magnify and dramatize our days, will illuminate and inspire us with wisdom, courage, and the possibility of meaningfulness, and will press upon our minds the deepest mysteries, so that we may feel again their majesty and power? What do we ever know that is higher than that power which, from time to time, seizes our lives, and reveals us startlingly to ourselves as creatures set down here bewildered? Why does death so catch us by surprise, and why love? We still and always want waking. We should amass half dressed in long lines like tribesmen and shake gourds at each other, to wake up; instead we watch television and miss the show. -- Annie Dillard, _The Writing Life_, Ch. 5 ------------------------------------------------------------------**** NLP: (neurolinguistic programming) And I do this too from time to time -- we ALWAYS are operating in the world with less information than there is in "reality". Because we naturally delete, distort, and generalize the information coming in.... we have to operate with "impoverished" models of reality. -- Jonathan, http://www.altfeld.com/mastery/misc/irc-06-28-98.html NLP: Defined as the study of the structure of subjective experience. Meta-Program: A level of mental programming that determines how we sort, orient to, and chunk our experiences. -- Jonathan, http://www.altfeld.com/mastery/misc/irc-11-26.html SYNESTHESIA -- two driver modalities in the context of the experience -- kalie, http://www.altfeld.com/mastery/misc/irc-12-30.html Synesthesia is the combination of two or more representational systems as concurrent elements of an experience, either in the moment or in memory. -- Jonathan, http://www.altfeld.com/mastery/misc/irc-12-30.html Usually you just need [Conditions --> Result] ==> Implication, for a well-formed belief. -- Jonathan, http://www.altfeld.com/mastery/misc/irc-12-14.html its one of the 3 things we do when we modify our understandings of reality [...] DISTORT, DELETE, & GENERALIZE. -- Jonathan, http://www.altfeld.com/mastery/misc/irc-12-14.html The presup is that there are no unreasonable goals, just unreasonable time-frames. -- Jonathan, http://www.altfeld.com/mastery/misc/irc-12-14.html "When people use 'Just' it means that they're right up at the edge of their internal model... face pressed up against the glass... And that's the glass wall you want to throw the brick through..." -- Bandler (NLP material) "Hey Debbie..this is Bob..I thought I'd give it one last shot at getting a chance to talk. I've learned one lesson, living in (insert your city or part of the country...since I live in L.A., I say L.A!) L.A. my whole life, and that's that beauty is common... but people with a great attitude..a great energy..a great outlook on life are rare..and they're worth working to get to know. And I think that's an understanding that goes BOTH ways. So if you can find your own reasons to call me, my number is 555-5512." -- Ross Jeffries Close #4: I have an intuition..and I don't know if you can imagine this as I describe it..that when we get a chance to talk without time pressures or interruptions...we'll really enjoy each other's company..and I'm wondering if there's a number where you feel comfortable having me call you. -- Ross Jeffries so if you tell a isomorphic metaphor, the listener may know just what you are metaphoring about. But if you tell a homomorphic one, the listener may not *directly* identify it... -- tranzpupy, http://www.altfeld.com/mastery/misc/irc-05-14.html When you IMAGINE a good feeling... do you get a real one? -- Jonathan, http://www.altfeld.com/mastery/misc/irc-06-11.html I can remember chewing on my crib railing as a child. I know what it tastes like (bitter and dusty dry), I can feel the smooth paint under my fingers, and the way the wood indents under my teeth, and the sound that makes, and the pressure of my jaws when I chew on it -- tangram, http://www.altfeld.com/mastery/misc/irc-06-11.html "when you imagine your ideal employee, the person you know is right for this job (point to self), I'm wondering what you see" -- Dan_26, http://www.altfeld.com/mastery/misc/irc-01-20.html Inflection -- what gets emphasized or analog-marked... -- Jonathan, http://www.altfeld.com/mastery/misc/irc-12-30.html Image streaming, supposedly will increase an IQ 1 point for every 80 minutes of doing it. Essentially, this entails stating verbally and out loud in very rich sensory detail everything you are aware of noticing (stream of consciousness). This is done from a meta position. i.e. I am aware that I am aware of noticing... -- mike92@ix.netcom.com (Brian R. Wilcox) http://www.nlp.com/NLP/random/genius.htm The Meta-Model specifics: Deletion: (1) Simple Deletion - statement with missing or deficient info (2) Comparative Deletion - Something that’s a LOT more frequently seen (3) Lack of Referential Index - And what you were saying earlier is absolutely right (4) Unspecified Verb -- This one I leave as a challenging example. DISTORTION: (1) Nominalization - Its shoddy epistemology, but its an example! (2) Cause / Effect -- and if I give an example here it might cause you to think of others, (3) Mind Reading - This one's cool, I know you guys will like this one (4) Complex Equivalence - This one is a little different, thus Clinton's polls are rising. If I blush, it means they know I'm thinking about Sex! (5) Lost Performative - They always talk about this one first. And they say its a good one. Generalization: (1) Universal Quantifiers! -- Always/Never, All/None (2) Modal Operators of Necessity/Possibility -- I just CAN'T go on here... (3) Presuppositions -- This one is a little trickier and after you've enjoyed going through some examples, then we'll move on -- my [Eric Boyd] abstraction from http://www.altfeld.com/mastery/misc/irc-01-28.html ------------------------------------------------------------------**** Emotion: People are like knives they tear at my soul.. curved blades of contradiction and rage Happiness is when I suspend my freaking out about the perpetually loud and sharp sound of cracking ice under my feet! -- Isabelle Blasio "Hate is an emotion too precious to be given out to just anyone. Like love, only the worthy receive it." -- A Witch, Ireland Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there wondering, fearing, Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before. -- Edgar Allen Poe Some people come into our lives, leave footprints on our hearts, and we are never the same. The Last Word In Lonesome Is "me" "'You have been my friends,' replied Charlotte, 'that in itself is a tremendous thing.'" -- E.B. White And apathy takes the appeal of a drug -- a defense against these increments of angst. -- Ann Marie Caffrey http://www.ice.net/~nehring/slacker/ar2.htm Positive emotions like joy, hope, and love, should be treated like rare, delicate flowers: it takes daily care and nurturing to keep them alive, and just the right balance of soil, sun, and watering to make them bloom. -- Thought A Day, http://www.thoughtaday.com, July 20/98 Perhaps I know best why it is man alone who laughs; he alone suffers so deeply that he had to invent laughter. -- Friedrich Nietzsche "The longest journey you will ever take is the 10 inches between your head and your heart." I am a writer who came from a sheltered life. A sheltered life can be daring as well. For all serious daring starts from within. -- Eudora Welty Ah, women. They make the highs higher and the lows more frequent. -- Friedrich Nietzsche "But friendship is precious, not only in the shade, but in the sunshine of life; and thanks to a benevolent arrangement of things, the greater part of life is sunshine." -- Thomas Jefferson There is only one way to achieve happiness on this terrestrial ball, And that is to have either a clear conscience, or none at all. -- Ogden Nash "in order to climb into the depths one does not need to travel very far; no, for that you do not need to abandon your immediate and accustomed environment." -- Ludwig Wittgenstein Angst: The feeling that, to other people, you are just a flesh speed-bump in the parking lot of life. "Close Your Eyes, for Your Eyes will only tell the Truth......" ..."Such giddiness of heart and brain Comes seldom save from rage and pain"... from "Christabel," Coleridge "Passionate hatred can give meaning and purpose to an empty life." -- Eric Hoffer The heart deceives, because it is never anything but the expression of the mind’s miscalculations . . . I don’t know what the heart is, not I: I only use the word to denote the mind’s frailties. Marquis de Sade (1740-1814), French author. Dolmancé, in Philosophy in the Bedroom, "Dialogue the Fifth" (1795). "The heart of man is black by nature" -- Alexis Massey, AKA "Pandora" "Absence diminishes mediocre passions and increases great ones, as the wind blows out candles and fans fire." -- La Rochefoucauld "Feeling lurks in that interval of time between desire and its consummation." -- Huxley (which one?) "It is cruel to console another for a sorrow a man has not himself experienced." -- Fernando de Zarate "The only antidote to mental suffering is physical pain." -- Karl Marx ------------------------------------------------------------------**** Friendship: The truth is friendship is every bit as sacred and eternal as marriage. -- Katherine Mansfield "The greatest good you can do for another is not just to share your riches but to reveal to him his own." -- Benjamin Disraeli The greatest happiness is the joy of being together. My friend is like the covers on my bed that keep me warm at night. To know someone here or there with whom you feel there is understanding in spite of differences or thoughts expressed--that can make this earth a garden. -- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe We all want to share our experience, serve, and bring our own special message to others--but what we want most, with both individuals and groups, is the richness of simply sharing one another's presence. -- Lee Glickstein We human beings crave deep, genuine experiences of one another. These experiences are the most compelling, entertaining, enlivening, and uplifting things that can happen in our lives. -- Lee Glickstein The glory of friendship is not the outstretched hand, nor the kindly smile, nor the joy of companionship; it is the spiritual inspiration that comes to one when he discovers that someone else believes in him and is willing to trust him with his friendship. -- Ralph Waldo Emerson "A friend is someone who knows the song in your heart, and can sing it back to you when you have forgotten the words." "A friend is one who believes in you when you have ceased to believe in yourself." "Don't walk in front of me, I may not follow. Don't walk behind me, I may not lead. Walk beside me and be my friend." -- Albert Camus "A hug is worth a thousand words. A friend is worth more." "Whoever says that Friendship is easy has obviously never had a friend!" -- Bronwyn Polson "The only reward of virtue is virtue; the only way to have a friend is to be one." -- Ralph Waldo Emerson "What sunshine is to flowers, smiles are to humanity. They are but trifles, to be sure but, scattered along life's pathway, the good they do is inconceivable." "Friendship is love with wings." -- Anonymous "Friendship: a building contract you sign with laughter and break with tears." "You can make more friends in two months by becoming interested in other people than you can in two years by trying to get other people interested in you." -- Dale Carnegie ------------------------------------------------------------------**** What is a Man: The Great Riddle! Is he not a body, that from toil doth he bring forth sustenance? Is he not a heart, that from anguish doth he glean understanding? Is he not a mind, that from choas doth he wrest order? And is he not yet more than this, that from emptiness doth he harvest creation? Think well upon this, for this be thine only key to the great riddle. Crusaders of the Dark Savant, Game by Wizardry "What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us." -- Oliver Wendell Holmes One definition of man is "an intelligence served by organs." -- Ralph Waldo Emerson Man is an intelligence, not served by, but in servitude to his organs. -- Aldous Huxley "Now, as this rose is a true rose to begin with, this nightingale always a true nightingale, so I am not for the first time a true man when I fulfil my calling, live up to my destiny, but I am a 'true man', from the start. My first babble is the token of the life of a 'true man', the struggles of my life are the outpourings of his force, my last breath is the last exhalation of the force of the 'man'. The true man does not lie in the future, an object of longing, but lies, existent and real, in the present. Whatever and whoever I may be, joyous and suffering, a child or an old man, in confidence or doubt, in sleep or in waking, I am it, I am the true man." -- Max Stirner Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power. -- Abraham Lincoln Why, look you now, how unworthy a thing you make of me! You would play upon me; you would seem to know my stops; you would pluck out the heart of my mystery; you would sound me from my lowest note to the top of my compass: and there is much music, excellent voice, in this little organ; yet cannot you make it speak. 'Sblood, do you think I am easier to be played on than a pipe? Call me what instrument you will, though you can fret me, yet you cannot play upon me. -- HAMLET, Act 3 scene 2 ******* An institution is the lengthened shadow of one man: the Reformation of Luther; Methodism of Wesley; Scipio, Milton called "the height of Rome." All history resolves itself very easily into the biography of a few bold and true people. -- http://www.brodietech.com/rbrodie/emsr10.htm ******* "No man is an island entire of itself; every man is a piece of the Continent, a part of the main...Any man's death diminishes me because I am involved in Mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee." -- John Donne _Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions_ (1624). Human nature is one thing, but /humanity's/ nature is another" -- Douglas Hostadter, Metamagical Themas Once, during an interview for a summer job in college, I was asked to describe myself in one word. "Every human brain," he says, "is born not as a blank tablet (a tabula rasa) waiting to be filled in by experience but as 'an exposed negative waiting to be slipped into developer fluid.' You can develop the negative well or you can develop it poorly, but either way you are going to get precious little that is not already imprinted on the film. The print is the individual's genetic history, over thousands of years of evolution, and there is not much anybody can do about it." -- E.O. Wilson And then sometimes I think the people to feel saddest for are people who once knew what profoundness was, but who lost or became numb to the sensation of wonder -- people who closed the doors that lead us into the secret world -- or who had the doors closed for them by time and neglect and decisions made in times of weakness. -- Douglas Coupland The seven ages of man: spills, drills, thrills, bills, ills, pills, wills. -- Richard J. Needham Celebrity-worship and hero-worship should not be confused. Yet we confuse them every day, and by doing so we come dangerously close to depriving ourselves of all real models. We lose sight of the men and women who do not simply seem great because they are famous but are famous because they are great. -- Daniel Boorstin Trapped in our defensiveness we can't imagine there's a difference between self-honesty and self-flagellation. -- Paul Williams Someone can present me with a iron-clad logical argument to the that working counter to the expansion of consciousness will get me more money, pussy, fame, power, rhetorical finesse, and health, but that would, for me, be no argument in favor abandoning my axiom. Valuing consciousness, for me, is not a means to an end. There's no point in evaluating whether it's the best way to get me where I want to go. It's not where I'm going; it's who I am. -- KMO, on the Virus mailing list "I am a rock! I am an i-i-is-land! and a rock feels no pain! and an island never cries! When wisdom and intelligence are born, The great pretense begins. The Nine Personality Types of the Enneagram Type 1: The Reformer. The rational, idealistic type. Type 2: The Helper. The caring, nurturing type. Type 3: The Motivator. The adaptable, success-oriented type. Type 4: The Artist. The intuitive, reserved type. Type 5: The Thinker. The perceptive, cerebral type. Type 6: The Loyalist. The committed, security-oriented type. Type 7: The Generalist. The enthusiastic, productive type. Type 8: The Leader. The powerful, aggressive type. Type 9: The Peacemaker. The easygoing, accommodating type. ******* It's not because we think they're cool. It's not because they have major issues with authority or a good hairstyle. It's because they have the freedom of mind and realization of self which allows them to stand outside the compromised expectations the rest of us attach to ourselves in response to adversity. -- Alexis Massey [Pandora] http://www.pbot.com/_archive/_pandora/cool.html ******* For a man to achieve all that is demanded of him he must regard himself as greater than he is. -- Johann von Goethe Get a guru in here to tell people this: That they're not leaning willow trees, but can and must detach themselves. That with a little self-trust, new powers will appear. That a human being is the word of God made into flesh, born to heal nations, and that the moment he acts from himself, tossing the laws, the books, idols and customs out the window, we stop pitying him and start to thank and admire him. That teacher will restore the life of man to splendor and go down in history. -- Richard Brodie's translation of R.W. Emerson http://www.brodietech.com/rbrodie/emsr17.htm "The man who is always worrying whether or not his soul would be damned generally has a soul that isn't worth a damn." -- Oliver Wendell Holmes Me, too. Do you remember _Brave New World_? There were two alpha males. One was confident, beautiful, and popular...but he felt the need for something more. The other was shorter, weaker, and antisocial...people whispered about him, suspecting that something had gone wrong during his gestation. Both were dissatisfied. One was dissatisfied with the world of experience. The other was dissatisfied with himself, but expressed it as a hatred of everything around him. If you are truly one of the former, then I envy you. I am one of the latter. -- Reed Konsler konsler@ascat.harvard.edu, on the TCS mailing list Bernard Shaw remarked that "the only man who behaves sensibly is my tailor; he takes my measure anew each time he sees me, whilst all the rest go on with their old measurements and expect them to fit me." "A woman is like a tea bag: you never know how strong she is until she gets into some hot water." -- Eleanor Roosevelt We must abandon the commonsense notion that the monsters we meet within ourselves are enemies to be destroyed. Instead, we must cultivate the hope that they can become companions to be embraced, guides to be followed, albeit with caution and respect. For only our monsters know the way down to that inner place of unity and wholeness; only these creatures of the night know how to travel where there is no light. -- Parker J. Palmer There are too many people; and too few human beings -- Robert Zand There are two types of people: those who come into a room and say, "Well, here I am!" and those who come in and say, "Ah, there you are." -- Frederick L. Collins To be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting. -- e. e. cummings When we are really honest with ourselves we must admit our lives are all that really belong to us. So it is how we use our lives that determines the kind of men we are. -- Cesar Chavez "If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous, he will not bite you. This is the principle difference between a dog and a man." -- Mark Twain (1835-1910) Most people live, whether physically, intellectually or morally, in a very restricted circle of their potential being. They _make use_ of a very small portion of their possible consciousness, and of their soul's resources in general, much like a man who, out of his whole bodily organism, should get into a habit of using and moving only his little finger. Great emergencies and crises show us how much greater our vital resources are than we had supposed. -- William James (1842-1910) What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us. -- Oliver Wendell Holmes Man is condemned to be free; because once thrown into the world, he is responsible for everything he does. -- Jean-Paul Sartre From his cradle to his grave a man never does a single thing which has any first and foremost object but one--to secure peace of mind, spiritual comfort, for himself. -- Mark Twain, _What_is_Man_ "Placed on this isthmus of a middle state, A being darkly wise, and rudely great; With too much knowledge for the Skeptic side, With too much weakness for the Stoic's pride, He hangs between; in doubt to act or rest; In doubt to deem himself a God, or Beast; In doubt his Mind or Body to prefer; Born but to die, and reas'ning but to err; Alike in ignorance, his reason such, Whether he thinks too little or too much; Chaos of Thought and Passion, all confus'd; Still by himself abus'd, or disabus'd; Created half to rise, and half to fall; Great lord of all things, yet a prey to all; Sole judge of Truth, in endless Error hurled; The Glory, the Jest, and the Riddle of the world!" "Is man no more than this? Consider him well. Thou owest the worm no silk, the beast no hide, the sheep no wool, the cat no perfume. Ha! here's three on's are sophisticated. Thou art the thing itself: unaccommodated man is no more but such a poor, bare, forked animal as thou art." King Lear, Act III, Scene iv THE BURIED LIFE But often, in the world's most crowded streets, But often, in the din of strife, There rises an unspeakable desire After the knowledge of our buried life; A thirst to spend our fire and restless force In tracking out our true, original course; A longing to inquire Into the mystery of this heart which beats So wild, so deep in us--to know Whence our lives come and where they go. -- Matthew Arnold. Empedocles on Etna, and Other Poems. London: B. Fellowes, 1852. B-11 2384 Fisher Rare Book Library (Toronto) http://library.utoronto.ca/www/utel/rp/poems/arnold8.html Scoundrels are predictable, but you are a man of honor and that frightens me. -- Glory Road by Heinlein Take care of your body with steadfast fidelity. The soul must see through these eyes alone, and if they are dim, the whole world is clouded. -- Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe A stranger recognizing Picasso, asked him why he didn't paint pictures of people "the way they really are." Picasso asked the man what he meant by "the way they really are," and the man pulled out his wallet a snapshot of his wife as an example. Picasso responded: "Isn't she rather small and flat? "The excitement of a poet is his vision, and the words. These are not the man himself. Those who talk with a poet are bewildered by his ordinariness and the poet is hurt by their reaction, because he too thought he was more than he is." -- Ivo Cutler in Private Habits I would rather suffer defeat than have cause to be ashamed of victory. -- Quintus Curtius "What a piece of work is a man! how noble in reason! how infinite in faculity! in form and moving how express and admirable! in action how like an angel! in apprehension how like a god! the beauty of the world! the paragon of animals!" Hamlet, Act II, scene ii ("And yet, to me, what is this quintessence of dust? man delights not me; no, nor woman neither, though by your smiling you seem to say so") Mankind has an advantage over artificial intelligence in that he possesses intellect, which he can perfect and exercise by means of contemplation; he has the power to understand, to decide upon the proper direction of his progress, and to move towards perfection. King Lear: "what art thou?" Kent: "A man, sir" King Lear: "What dost thou profess? What wouldst thou with us?" Kent: "I do profess to be no less than I seem; to serve him truly that will put me in trust; to love him that is honest; to converse with him that is wise and says little; to fear judgement; to fight when I cannot choose, and to eat no fish." King Lear, Act I, scene iv "Well, well! Why, have you any discretion? have you any eyes? do you know what a man is? Is not birth, beauty, good shape, discourse, manhood, learning, gentleness, virtue, youth, liberality, and such like, the spice and salt that season a man?" Pandarus, Troilus and Cressida, William Shakespeare Act I, scene ii "... thyself upon thyself! The common curse of mankind, folly and ignorance, be thine in great revenue!" -- William Shakespeare Thersites, Troilus and Cressida, Act II, scene ii "The savage in man is never quite eradicated." -- Henry David Thoreau be a man -- be courageous; not show fear man of honour -- a man whose word can be trusted separate the men from the boys -- find those who are truly virile, competent, etc. knight -- a military follower or attendant, esp. of a lady as her champion in a war or tournament - a man devoted to the service of a woman, cause, etc. knight errant (paladin)-- a medieval knight wandering in search of chivalrous adventures; a man of a chivalrous or quixotic nature. I pledge: My head to clearer thinking, My heart to greater loyalty, My hands to larger service and My health to better living, for my Club, my Community, my Country and my World. -- intro pledge to every 4H meeting "Every man alone is sincere. At the entrance of a second person, hypocrisy begins ." -- Ralph Waldo Emerson "The strongest man in the world is he who stands alone." -- Henrik Ibsen "Women and God are the two rocks on which a man must either anchor or be wrecked." -- Fredrick Robertson "No man is free who is not master of himself." -- Epictetus "It is with books as with men: a very small number play a great part, the rest are lost in the multitude." -- Voltaire "Whenever two men meet there are really six people present. There is each man as he sees himself, each man as the other sees him, and each man as he really is." -- William James "The fact that man knows right from wrong proves his intellectual superiority to other creatures; but the fact that he can do wrong proves his moral inferiority to any creature that cannot." -- Mark Twain(Samuel Clemens), What Is Man?(1906) "A man's women folk, whatever their outward show of respect for his merit and authority, always regard him secretly as an ass, and with something akin to pity. His most gaudy sayings and doings seldom deceive them; they see the actual man within, and know him for a shallow and pathetic fellow. In this fact, perhaps, lies one of the best proofs of feminine intelligence, or, as the common phrase makes it, feminine intuition." -- Mencken "A man's life is interesting when he has failed: It's a sign that he tried to surpass himself." -- George Clemenceau "A gentleman is one who doesn't demand a lady prove that she is." Reading maketh a full man; conference a ready man; and writing an exact man. -- Francis Bacon (1561-1626) "Man is the only animal that laughs and weeps; for he is the only animal that is struck with the difference between what things are and what they might have been. " -- William Hazlitt "Men heap together the mistakes of their lives, and create a monster they call Destiny." -- John Oliver Hobbes "Not all those who know their minds know their hearts as well." -- Francois duc la Rochefoucauld "We are all alike, on the inside." -- Mark Twain "One machine can do the work of fifty ordinary men. No machine can do the work of one extraordinary man." -- Elbert Hubbard John Steinbeck, Sweet Thursday @ 23, on discontent Where does discontent start? You are warm enough, but you shiver. You are fed, yet hunger gnaws you. You have been loved, but your yearning wanders in new fields. And to prod all these there's time, the bastard Time. The end of life is now not so terribly far away--you can see it the way you see the finish line when you come into the stretch--and your mind says, "Have I worked enough? Have I eaten enough? Have I loved enough?" All of these, of course, are the foundation of man's greatest curse, and perhaps his greatest glory. "What has my life meant so far, and what can it mean in the time left to me?" And now we're coming to the wicked, poisoned dart: "What have I contributed in the Great Ledger? What am I worth?" And this isn't vanity or ambition. Men seem to be born with a debt they can never pay no matter how hard they try. It piles up ahead of them. Man owes something to man. If he ignores the debt it poisons him, and if he tries to make payments the debt only increases, and the quality of his gift is the measure of the man. "A mans duty is to act, however he who acts must also suffer." -- Sophocles "A child becomes an adult when he realizes that he has a right not only to be right but also to be wrong." -- Thomas Szasz "A wise man can see more from the bottom of a well than a fool can from a mountain top ." "Man know thyself," "As a man thinketh, so is he," "Man is the eyes, ears, and mouthpiece of God," "The kingdom of heaven lies within," "Man is the master of his own destiny," Man is what he believes. -- Anton Chekhov So, no less frustrated but far more sedate about things in general, I sit and type onto my glowing screen once again. Another new year cometh. Funny how hard it is to be perfect, isn't it? Still, it's something to shoot for. I found myself, today, looking out at the gray wet skies outside my window and realizing, all at once, that my dreams were dead. It didn't make me sad. It didn't make me feel anything at all. Maybe that's the sad part. But I always thought that my talent would take me somewhere. That my ability to be creative and artistic, my "way with words", my smarts, my whatever - that these things would be magically recognized in and of themselves as worthwhile. And of course they will never be, because it is only product and not potential that matters. And I am afraid of failure, so I seldom try. I am afraid that my potential is not as great as I might think it is, and if I were to try to accomplish something it would prove once and for all that all the darker beliefs that keep me where I am are true, and in that way - in that self-limiting fear - they are. So stupid. But I realized, like a truth forever denied, that I will never be different from what I am. No magic will happen. I am afraid of it. Funny how hard it is to be perfect, isn't it? -- Lance Arthur, www.glassdog.com "It is not the critic who counts, nor the man who points how the strong man stumbled or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena; whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly...who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, and spends himself in a worthy cause; who, at best, knows the triumph of high achievement; and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat." -- Theodore Roosevelt, 1910 ------------------------------------------------------------------**** Poetry: She is the verse that lies unspoken, she is the words he cannot say. -- Greg Betts, The Queens Journal Reader, feb/98 I need to listen, but I can't, and I know why, The man in me, the sinful heart, must learn to die. -- Shawn Williams We are the flow, we are the ebb. We are the weavers; we are the webb. -- Shekinah Mountainwater A hacker sent e-mail To a colleague offshore: "This isn't the Land of the Free anymore. They tap every phone line; They read all the mail. The spooks make this country An open-air jail. We're under surveillance At all times, it seems. Are they tapping our toilets? Are they scanning our dreams?" Then a notice appeared On his monitor screen From an NSA agent: "We can see what you mean." -- John Lungless "She has a lovely voice. When we walk together I am not always sure what we are talking about. I am listening to the gong: she strikes it with one idea, then another. She holds it high in her throat. There is music and there is the idea that rides in her voice like in a boat. They sail away on the air. My ears chase them around trying to find out what she has said with her beautiful voice." -- Steven Jesse Bernstein There is every reason to give up (and I mean give up) and as many reasons to hold on tight. Personal reasons and those we share. We are together in our struggle against lonesomeness, and alone in our struggles against the world. I know it looks the other way around, but it's not. Matter of fact, if we knew that altogether, at once, there would be more reasons to hold on than to give up. As it is it's just even. Why we are still here is a mystery. We hold on and threaten to let go play with the idea of letting go as though it is really really important, whereas it is small potatoes -- hanging on and letting go. One way there are more people fighting lonesomeness, and the other way there is one less person fighting the world. Either way it is something to gossip about, to keep our jaws and tongues working with. Maybe that's the mystery: the need to gossip. I put the paper in the typewriter and type. I hold on so I can do this. And I think of our common struggle, of suicide as treason. Still, I may turn out to be a coward or just tired or not interested. These are some of the reasons why people give up let go cash in. You can understand. I put more paper in the typewriter and type more pick up the telephone and gossip eat four slices of bread with margarine, call the typing a poem the gossip friendship claim that the bread and margarine have satisfied my hunger. These are some of the reasons why I continue to hold on. You can understand. "Reasons You Can understand" by Steven J. Bernstein (from the book _More Noise, Please!_ ) In the depth of your hopes and desires lies your silent knowledge of the beyond; And like seeds dreaming beneath the snow your heart dreams of spring. Trust the dreams, for in them is hidden the gate to eternity. -- Kahlil Gibran Once upon a time There was a little boy And he went outside. -- favorite poem of Harry Partch, http://www.corporeal.com/hprvrb_1.html Poetry is the most encompassing of all of our endeavors, for in its carefully charted verses are all of the plots and courses of our great journey. Our passions, our joys, our sorrows, our loves and pains, our idle trifles and our most sublime understandings are ruled in poetry's lines of thought, straits of reason, and seas of emotion. It is our most expressive artifice, constructed with great effort to flow effortlessly, crafted with perfect care to provoke carelessly, composed of feet and figures to embody in words our most abstract ideas and tender feelings. It is all that we are and all that we dream to be. As Shakespeare Said; "Thy beauty is like a white dove that marchest amongst black crows," For no cage was ever made to hold a creature such as he, No chain was ever forged to bind the wind. And when I think upon all the scars he left on me, The cruelest are the ones I bear within. Dream, scheme, go ahead and loosen that social fabric seam. Spread intelligence as wings and fly high beyond the blanket of sky. -- chiploeber@telis.org (Tom Loeber), on the CoV mailing list You can't be free unless you live for freedom You can't be free unless you live for freedom and let go of greed and the need to acquire like a slow burning fire, you are foolish to feed "Like our shadows Our wishes lengthen as the sun declines." -- Edward Young In a friendship We're free to expose, Parts of ourselves Nobody else knows. But the thing that sustains it And sets it apart, Is not something spoken It's a bond of the heart. True friends are rare In a lifetime two or three, I'm so glad it happened Between you and me! Begin your journey slowly. Tread only where you know. The path you take is deadly. the reward may be heavenly, But is it worth the risk? Can you raise your fist And shake it in the face Of fear, only to find its place Is really inside of you? You'll have to follow through Once you walk down that road. Never allowed to stop or hold Back even for a second. Along the way you might find That it's harder than you thought. That all the tools you brought; Your love, your anger, your pride; Have caused the dream to die. Will you falter? Will you stop? No. You've been caught, Stuck in the molten tar. And you'll have to go very far Before it ever let's you go. Only then can you show, and only then can you say, I will be free someday. I'm being torn up inside By feelings I don't understand I want to share them with someone But I don't think I can All the dreams I used to have Are shattered beyond repair And everyone I tell this to Doesn't seem to really care

I live inside my secluded zone And watch the people play Soon I think I'll be free I wait for that glorious day There's no return to what I used to be Changed forever is what I am I want to be like all of you But I don’t think I can Love works in ways that are wondrous and strange, These is nothing in life That love cannot change -

Love is unselfish understanding and kind, Love sees with the heart and not with the mind. An undeniable thirst Exists inside of me Infinite and vast It took you for me to see That all I really want That all I really need Exists inside of you Impossible to achieve No tears of mine will help Nor any poet's creed Nothing but my wish Nothing but my soul's dream No one knows The rage I feel No one knows What makes me real No one shares The hurt I hide No one cares About my lies No one sees My pain inside No one grieves When I cry No one shows Love for me No one knows Where I've been No one seems To notice at all No one deems It's my time to fall Best Friend I am my own best friend and I Despair the need for more than my Own steps upon this narrow walk Around the unrelenting clock That beating shadow, pushing me Toward my dimming destiny And should I ever hesitate I hear it mock our crueler fate Your hands to touch, your eyes to see Your fragrance, taste, and melody All must be sensed! I cannot block Sensations in me as you talk Nor can I to cruel time deny That I do need you more than I. -- Gary Boone When we our better see bearing our woes, We scarcely think our miseries our foes. Who alone suffers suffers most i' the mind, Leaving free things and happy shows behind: But then the mind much sufferance doth o'erskip, When grief hath mates, and bearing fellowship -- Edgar, King Lear (Shakespeare) Lear: "Thou think'st 'tis much that this contentious storm Invades us to the skin: so 'tis to thee; But where the greater malady is fix'd The lesser is scarce felt. Thou 'ldst shun a bear, But if thy flight lay toward the raging sea Thou'ldst meet the bear i' the mouth. When the mind's free The body's delicate: the tempest in my mind Doth from my senses take all feeling else Save what beats there. ..." -- King Lear, Act III, scene iv To be, or not to be: that is the question: Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, Or to take arms against a sea of troubles, And by opposing end them? To die: to sleep; No more; and by a sleep to say we end The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks That flesh is heir to, 'tis a consummation Devoutly to be wish'd. To die, to sleep; To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub; For in that sleep of death what dreams may come When we have shuffled off this mortal coil, Must give us pause: there's the respect That makes calamity of so long life; For who would bear the whips and scorns of time, The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely, The pangs of despised love, the law's delay, The insolence of office and the spurns That patient merit of the unworthy takes, When he himself might his quietus make With a bare bodkin? who would fardels bear, To grunt and sweat under a weary life, But that the dread of something after death, The undiscover'd country from whose bourn No traveller returns, puzzles the will And makes us rather bear those ills we have Than fly to others that we know not of? Thus conscience does make cowards of us all; And thus the native hue of resolution Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought, And enterprises of great pith and moment With this regard their currents turn awry, And lose the name of action -- Hamlet When in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes I all alone beweep my outcast state and trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries and look upon myself and curse my fate. Wishing me like to one more rich in hope featured like him, like him with friends possessed desiring this man's art and that man's scope with what I most enjoy contented least. Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising happily I look upon thee and then my thoughts like to a lark at break of day arising from sullen earth sings hymns at heaven's gate. For thy sweet love remembered such wealth brings that then I scorn to change my state with kings. Loving in Truth Loving in truth, and fain in verse my love to show, That she, dear she, might take some pleasure of my pain: Pleasure might cause her read, reading might make her know, Knowledge might pity win, and pity grace obtain, I sought fit words to paint the blackest face of woe, Studying inventions fine, her wits to entertain: Oft turning others' leaves to see if thence would flow Some fresh and fruitful showers upon my sun-burn'd brain. But words came halting forth, wanting Invention's stay, Invention, Nature's child, fled step-dame Study's blows, And others' feet still seem'd but strangers in my way. Thus great with child to speak, and helpless in my throes, Biting my trewand pen, beating myself for spite, Fool, said my Muse to me, look in thy heart and write. -- Philip Sidney (1554-1586) How quickly a memory becomes nothingness It falls And describes in its slow arc the passage of time One cannot understand it One cannot stop it To live is to lose all you have known -- Rune Suicide Softly, slowly, quietly i crawl the distance to look beyond the ledge and wonder if it could possibly hurt as much as this -- © 1996 Amy Snell MY BODY bears the markings so MY BRAIN will not feel the pain that sears MY SPIRIT.....understand me.... -- © Sally Fraley Beautiful girl, centre my world Tell me how you feel Is it love, is it joy Is any of it for real? -- © Quinton Molnar Into My Life Incomplete. A black void I could not escape. Wishful. Struggling to control that which is without shape. Aching. Crying, salty tears flowing, unable to anticipate. Hoping. Undeserving but with a thirst I could not slake. Waiting. Always believing in the Lady of the Lake. Meeting. Needful, we help and then make a date. Unbelievable. You have that which I don't, what I fake. Love. Two halves, complete. A chance which I take. Together, we drive away the dark and with the dawn, wake. -- © Mark Lewis Grieving When thoughts of you come to my mind, My eyes fill up with tears. And sadness tears my heart apart, With loneliness, then fear. I realize what you meant to me, I know that love is real. Because of how I feel towards you, I grieve and always will. -- Kelly Ann Carter Admiration of Beauty I love the way you parade yourself in the morning and at night. When the early sun streams in and before you douse the light. Your nakedness before me is just too hard to ignore. The perfection of your form was created to allure. Your youthful shapely breasts, so firm and so inviting. The gracious curve of your thighs, so soft and so exciting. The golden curls around a lovely face that makes my senses reel And those ruby lips that sweetly smile and mine alone should feel.

There like a queen you reign, the girl across the street. Watched through my window pane, hoping one day that we'll meet. But a creature of such beauty would turn away her head Than look upon the likes of me, a cripple confined to his bed. -- Bob Ollier though there's a proper time for even this once when I knew I couldn't, wouldn't act I confessed only that I was afraid and in that word, a trap, a trap I laid for myself because in response was the question 'why?' and caught in a corner by my own honesty I had to tell the truth -- Tom Brinck A gaudy dress and gentle air May slightly touch the heart, But it's innocence and modesty That polishes the dart.

'Tis this in Nelly pleases me, 'Tis this enchants my soul For absolutely in my breast She reigns without control. -- Robert Burns ------------------------------------------------------------------**** Aging: Fifty: The process of maturing is an art to be learned, an effort to be sustained. By the age of fifty you have made yourself what you are, and if it is good, it is better than your youth. -- Marya Mannes The lowest ebb is the turn of the tide. -- Longfellow (1819-1892) "Growing old is like being increasingly penalized for a crime you haven't committed." -- Anthony Powell The man who views the world at fifty the same as he did at twenty has wasted thirty years of his life. -- Muhammad Ali "An old man is twice a child." -- Shakespeare What a man knows at fifty which he didn't know at twenty is, for the most part, incommunicable. -- Adlai Stevenson, II A man is not learned because he talks much. A man is not an elder because his head is grey. He is "old-in-vain". Old age is not so bad when you consider the alternatives. -- Maurice Chevalier "Two causes, the abbreviation of time and the failure of hope, will always tinge with a browner shade the evening of life." -- Edward Gibbon Death is not the greatest loss in life. The greatest loss is what dies inside us while we live. -- Norman Cousins The single thing that most distinguishes the older man from the younger is the knowledge that people can see through his act. This embarrassing enlightenment suddenly makes him realize that there's really not much point in pretending to be what he is not. With this knowledge comes the possibility for peace of mind. -- "Richard Brodie" , on the Virus mailing list Not to be born at all Is best, far best that can befall, Next best, when born, with least delay To trace the backward way. For when youth passes with its giddy train, Troubles on troubles follow, toils on toils, Pain, pain for ever pain; And none escapes life's coils. Envy, sedition, strife, Carnage and war, make up the tale of life. Last comes the worst and most abhorred stage Of unregarded age, Joyless, companionless and slow, Of woes the crowning woe. -- Sophocles, Oedipus at Colonus I know a lot of men who are healthier at age fifty than they have ever been before, because a lot of their fear is gone. -- Robert Bly Everyone has talent at twenty-five. The difficulty is to have it at fifty. -- Edgar Degas At 20 years of age the will reigns; at 30 the wit; at 40 the judgment. -- Benjamin Franklin Forty is the old age of youth, fifty is the youth of old age. --Victor Hugo Old age is no place for sissies. -- Bette Davis "The older I get, the less I regret my mistakes, and the more I regret my missed opportunities." -- Marshal Osman's philosophy professor ------------------------------------------------------------------**** Proverbs: On the understanding of proverbs: "The simplest rudiment of mystical experience would seem to be that deepened sense of the significance of a maxim or formula which occasionally sweeps over one. "I've heard that said all my life," we exclaim, "but I never realized its full meaning until now."" -- William James The truth is lived, not taught. -- Hermann Hesse "Opportunities multiply as they are seized." -- Sun Tzu "Proper Professional Prior Preperation Prevents a Piss Poor Performace". Yudkowsky's Third Threat: "Attempting to suppress a technology only inflicts more damage." An old error is more popular than a new truth. -- German Proverb We choose our joys and sorrows long before we experience them. -- Kahlil Gibran I hear, and I forget. I see, and I remember. I do, and I understand. -- Chinese proverb To stumble is not to fall, but to move forward faster. -- African Proverb "Saints fly only in the eyes of their disciples." -- Hindu proverb One kind word can warm three winter months. -- Japanese proverb You can fix the problem or you can fix the blame. Not both. -- Japanese proverb "Heroism consists in hanging on one minute longer." -- Norwegian proverb Preconceived notions are the locks on the door to wisdom -- Merry Browne 'He who sleeps on the floor cannot fall out of bed.' -- Turkish proverb Convictions cause convicts. "If one who knows the all is lacking in himself, he is utterly lacking." -- Jesus, Gospel of Thomas #67 The diamond cannot be polished without friction, nor the man perfected without trials. -- Chinese Proverb "When the sword of rebellion is drawn, the sheath should be thrown away." -- English Proverb. No matter how far you have gone on a wrong road, turn back. -- Turkish proverb "Normal is almost never optimal." "The sinning is the best part of repentance." -- Arabic Proverb "Keep It Simple Smarty" (KISS) "The believer is happy; the doubter is wise." -- Hungarian proverb "Call on God, but row away from the rocks." -- Indian proverb Ubi dubium ibi libertas: Where there is doubt, there is freedom -- Latin proverb "Hold a true friend with both your hands." -- Nigerian Proverb Remember - strong and bitter words indicate a weak cause. "You must be the change you wish to see in the world." -- Gandhi There is only one happiness in life, to love and be loved. -- George Sand "A proverb is a short sentence based on long experience." -- Miguel de Cervantes "Be not afraid of growing slowly, be afraid only of standing still." -- Chinese proverb "A closed mind is like a closed book; just a block of wood." -- Chinese proverb "He who asks is a fool for five minutes, but he who does not ask remains a fool forever." -- Old Chinese saying "Even a clock that does not work is right twice a day." --Polish proverb "Learning is a treasure that will follow its owner everywhere." -- Chinese proverb "Live your own life, for you will die your own death." -- Latin proverb "No one can see their reflection in running water. It is only in still water that we can see." -- Taoist proverb "Since the house is on fire let us warm ourselves." -- Italian proverb "A single conversation with a wise man is better than ten years of study." -- Chinese proverb "There is no pillow so soft as a clear conscience." -- French proverb "Turn your face to the sun and the shadows fall behind you." -- Maori proverb "Vision without action is a daydream. Action without vision is a nightmare." -- Japanese proverb "We never know the worth of water till the well is dry." -- French proverb "The whisper of a pretty girl can be heard further than the roar of a lion." -- Arab proverb "A coward dies a thousand deaths; a hero dies but one." We do not inherit the land, we borrow it from our children. -- Native American Proverb "If God lived on earth, people would break his windows." -- Jewish proverb "The eye does not see what the mind does not know" Don't be afraid your life will end; be afraid that it will never begin. -- Grace Hansen Rune's Rule: If you don't care where you are, you ain't lost. To have a good enemy, choose a friend; he knows where to strike. -- Diane de Pointers Once bitten, twice shy "Why, then, 'tis none to you; for there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so." -- Hamlet Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage. -- Anaias Nin ------------------------------------------------------------------**** Time: Any length of time is negligible- but some lengths accomplish more than others. And I can sense it - hanging in hyperspace, my time line, my span, my length. A definite start and finish. Dwarfed by eternity before and after, but distinct. My clock, my nemesis, my judge, my essence. ******* U - useless urgency. It will take as long as it takes to get our thoughts expressed. ******* Regretting wasted time is itself a waste of time, an unconscious strategy of evasion. -- Robert Grudin The coming event looms over us, the way a big wave looms over a little boat: and our days are dimmed by its shadow. The future can exert this force upon us, can totally suck the juice out of the present, turning it into something tense, dry, useless to memory. How can we enjoy or profit from such a transitional state? The practical answer is "Don't sit and wait; prepare." The subtler answer is that no period in life is more or less transitional than any other, had we only the power to understand each. -- Robert Grudin Time is like money, the less we have of it to spare the further we make it go. -- Josh Billings "The mind projects its joys and woes so powerfully onto the face of time that changes in mood can all but create new temporal worlds. The negative or painful emotions -- guilt, anger, envy, greed, etc. -- foster a sense of isolation in the present or fixation on some aspect of the past or future. The sunny emotions -- admiration, generosity, love, courage, etc. -- foster a sense of continuity, of time extended and shared. Calm people swim freely into the future and speak of it as if it were part of them. But those who are hopeless for reasons of age or grief or illness barely use the future tense at all; and for frightened people the future can shrink to almost nothing, can seem like the rippled surface of water between them and some menacing promontory. Opportunists live in a tiny glimmer of the present, intent like small predators on the next morsel or trap. Win or lose, time is for them is a straitened and barren dimension. But for happy people, at the opposite extreme, the present is so voluminous, so inclusive of the full self and so indivisibly coherent with past and future, that time in the usual sense does not pass for them at all. They are at one with the dynamics of nature: time's motion is implicit in their own. -- Robert Grudin, "Time and the Art of Living" Our sense of the slowness or speediness of time often depends on the size of the time-frame we happen to be considering. It is possible, for example, for us to be simultaneously amazed at the slowness of minutes and the speediness of years. Oddly enough, this pathetic double amazement bespeaks a single cause: our inability to make proper use of the present. For although minutes spent in boredom or anxiety pass slowly, they nonetheless add up to years which are void of memory. -- Robert Grudin "We're in such a hurry most of the time we never get much chance to talk. The result is a kind of endless day-to-day shallowness, a monotony that leaves a person wondering years later where all the time went and sorry that it's all gone." -- Robert M. Pirsig _Zen And The Art Of Motorcycle Maintenance_ "Nothing is a waste of time if you use the experience wisely." -- Rodin I must govern the clock, not be governed by it. -- Golda Meir "Reality is whatever refuses to go away when I stop believing in it. " -- Philip K. Dick "Time is a great teacher, but unfortunately it kills all its pupils." -- Hector Louis Berlioz "To divide one's life by years is of course to tumble into a trap set by our own arithmetic. The calendar consents to carry on its dull wall existence by the arbitrary timetables we have drawn up in consultation with those permanent commuters, Earth and Sun. But we, unlike trees, need grow no annual rings." -- Clifton Fadima ------------------------------------------------------------------**** RELIGION: Religion: Misc: General: "But how is one to determine what is pleasing to God? ... Whatever is unpleasant to man is pleasant to God. The test is the natural instinct of man. If there arises within one's dark recesses a hot desire to do this or that, then it is the paramount duty of a Christian to avoid doing this or that. And if, on the contrary, one cherishes an abhorrence of the business, then one must tackle it forthwith, all the time shouting 'Hallelujah!' A simple enough religion, surely - simple, satisfying and idiotic." -- H.L. Mencken "Smart Set" May, 1920 A definition for Fascism I got in one of my classes. We compared religion to fascism and, by the looks of this definition, there is not much difference... "A body of contemporary, change oriented thinking that denies any distinction between public and private, views the individual as indistinguishable from the social whole, uses extreme emotional appeal in pursuing converts to its doctrines, is anti-modern in perspective, and, above all, believes that some entity - the nation-state in 'generic' fascism, the Aryan race in Nazism - is the ultimate authority in all human affairs" -- http://copland.udel.edu/~symptom/antixian.html Religion is based, I think, primarily and mainly upon fear. It is partly the terror of the unknown and partly, as I have said, the wish to feel that you have a kind of elder brother who will stand by you in all your troubles and disputes. Fear is the basis of the whole thing - fear of the mysterious, fear of defeat, fear of death. Fear is the parent of cruelty, and therefore it is no wonder if cruelty and religion have gone hand in hand. It is because fear is at the basis of those two things. In this world we can now begin a little to understand things, and a little to master them by help of science, which has forced its way step by step against the Christian religion, against the churches, and against the opposition of all the old precepts. Science can help us to get over this craven fear in which mankind has lived for so many generations. Science can teach us, and I think our own hearts can teach us, no longer to look around for imaginary supports, no longer to invent allies in the sky, but rather to look to our own efforts here below to make this world a better place to live in, instead of the sort of place that the churches in all these centuries have made it. -- Bertrand Russell, Why I Am Not A Christian A religion, on its doctrinal side, can thus be defined as a system of general truths which have the effect of transforming character when they are sincerely held and vividly apprehended. -- Alfred North Whitehead http://www.magna.com.au/~prfbrown/whiteh_1.htm Society and language grew together. -- Alfred North Whitehead http://www.magna.com.au/~prfbrown/whiteh_1.htm "Religion is what the individual does with his own solitariness." -- Alfred North Whitehead http://www.magna.com.au/~prfbrown/whiteh_2.htm The topic of religion is individuality in community. -- Alfred North Whitehead http://www.magna.com.au/~prfbrown/whiteh_3.htm Idolatry is the necessary product of static dogmas. -- Alfred North Whitehead http://www.magna.com.au/~prfbrown/whiteh_4.htm Catch on fire with enthusiasm and people will come for miles to watch you burn. -- John Wesley "The four points of the compass are logic, knowledge, wisdom, and the unknown. Some do bow in that final direction. Others advance upon it. To bow before the one is to lose sight of the three. I may submit to the unknown, but never to the unknowable." -- Roger Zelazny, _Lord of Light_ So what of the followers, the true believers of Catholicism, Islam, Communism or any other Pistic religion? It is not they who are the evil. They are merely ignorant pawns in someone else's game. To attack them is to miss the point and create an unnecessary enemy. Even the bad apples are merely the symptom of a bad system. If we merely attack bad apples, we condemn ourselves to keep on doing so, like attacking criminals without addressing the causes of crime. To do so is to be short-sighted and ineffectual. It is the Pistic commitment to BELIEF, to the exclusion of evidence, that is at the root of the evil in our world. To believe to the exclusion of evidence is to create a schism between your understanding and your senses. This is nothing less than a breach of integration, and therefore a breach of integrity. Having done so, you leave yourself open to be used as a tool of whatever evil your leaders wish to commit. -- http://www.teleport.com/~jhjensen/gnosis/history.htm "The atheist bashes all religions whilst the theist bashes all but his own, upon which he lavishes great care in case it should come in contact with reality." -- Gully Foyle "In the infancy of new religions, the wise and learned commonly esteem the matter too inconsiderable to deserve their attention or regard. And when afterwards they would willingly detect the cheat, in order to undeceive the deluded multitude, the season is now past, and the records and witnesses, which might clear up the matter, have perished beyond recovery." -- David Hume, "Of Miracles" "There are no sects in geometry." -- Voltaire, Philosophical Dictionary, 1764 "[When a young person loses faith in his religion because he begins to study science and its methodology] it isn't that [through the obtaining of real knowledge that] he knows it all, but he suddenly realizes that he doesn't know it all." -- Richard P. Feynman, "The Meaning of It All," p. 36 "It was man who first made men believe in gods." -- Critias (480-403 B.C.E.) "That's why the religious people are so freaked out about the Internet, not because of the smut but because NO religion can stand up to access to information." -- Robert Carr, Lamprey Systems http://members.aol.com/lampreysys/index.html "In this very century, I prophesy, the century of scientific-critical Alexandrianism, of the great harvests, of the final formulations, a new element of inwardness will arise to overthrow the will-to-victory of science. Exact science must presently fall upon its own keen sword. First, in the 18th century, its methods were tried out, then, in the 19th, its powers, and now its historical role is critically reviewed. But from Skepsis there is a path to "second religiousness," which is the sequel and not the preface of the Culture. Men dispense with proof, desire only to believe and not to dissect." -- Spengler SUNDAY SERMON A technician, wrapped in a stiff, white smock, takes an albino rat from the big crate delivered just that morning, puts it in the God Model Box, leaves and locks the room. The box, with random corners and angles, is monitored by a ceiling mounted video camera. A switch mounted in one corner is well protected by spring wire traps, barriers and rat repellent. The switch delivers an electric shock when touched by the rat. The experiment lasts 24 hours or so, depending on the whim and will of the technician. If during that time, the rat sits on the switch for thirty or forty seconds, the technician will set it free in the field behind the fence. Otherwise, he will restrain the rat in a vice and slowly pull off its tail and its legs, one by one, then skin it and leave it to die slowly. Little is learned in this experiment either by the rat or the technician who is not at all surprised that none of rats ever perform the required task. But the technician does get to skin a lot of rats, and he likes to hear them squeal. Spirit is flesh actively pursuing its desires. -- Feral Ranter, http://deoxy.org/tenthese.htm "If all the achievements of scientists were wiped out tomorrow, there would be no doctors, but witch doctors, no transport faster than horses, no computers, no printed books, no agriculture beyond subsistence peasant farming. If all the achievements of theologians were wiped out tomorrow, would anyone notice the difference? Even bad achievements of scientists, the bombs, and sonar- guided whaling vessels *work*! The achievements of theologians don't do anything, don't affect anything, don't mean anything. What makes anyone think that "theology" is a subject at all?" -- Richard Dawkins, "The Emptiness of Theology", Op-Ed article in Free Inquiry, Spring 1998 "For that again, is what all manner of religion essentially is: childish dependency." -- Albert Ellis "The religions of the world are the ejaculations of a few imaginative men." -- Ralph Waldo Emerson "Religion is a magic device for turning unanswerable questions into unquestionable answers. -- Art Gecko, Primethyme 3, 128650 DPP http://members.xoom.com/gecko23/moo/pengcal.html The most preposterous notion that H.sapiens has ever dreamed up is that the Lord God of Creation, Shaper and Ruler of all the Universes, wants the saccharine adoration of His creatures, can be swayed by their prayers, and becomes petulant if He does not receive their flattery. Yet this absurd fantasy, without a shred of evidence to bolster it, pays all the expenses of the oldest, largest, and least productive industry in all history. -- Robert A Heinlein True myth may serve for thousands of years as an inexhaustible source of intellectual speculation, religious joy, ethical inquiry, and artistic renewal. The real mystery is not destroyed by reason. The fake one is. You look at it and it vanishes. You look at the Blonde Hero -- really look -- and he turns into a gerbil. But you look at Apollo, and he looks back at you. The poet Rilke looked at a statue of Apollo about fifty years ago, and Apollo spoke to him. "You must change your life," he said. When the true myth rises into consciousness, that is always its message. You must change your life. -- Ursula K. LeGuin ******* "I always have the feeling that the men who started religions were more open-minded than their followers and the institutions that determined how the words would be followed." -- Peter Gabriel, Music Express ******* To experience transcendence means to be removed--not from self and world, but from that hall of mirrors in which the two endlessly reflect and determine one another. -- Palmer J. Parker We must resist the popular tendency to think of transcendence as an upward and outward escape from the realities of self and world. Instead, transcendence is a breaking-in, a breathing of the Spirit of love into the heart of our existence, a literal in-spiration that allows us to regard ourselves and our world with more trust and hope than ever before. -- Palmer J. Parker ******* "Only a mile away from the shepherd and his flock was a goatherd and his herd. The merest accident of microgeography had meant that the first man to hear the voice of Om, and who gave Om his view of humans, was a shepherd and not a goatherd. They have quite different ways of looking at the world, and the whole of history might have been different. For sheep are stupid, and have to be driven. But goats are intelligent, and need to be led." -- Small Gods ******* Religions impose their dogmas, bend conscience under their laws, deny freedom of discussion and of judgment to their clients, and, in the name of God, proscribe all thought which they do not control, all liberty except the liberty to bow down and believe. -- Louis Jacolliot Roman Catholics claim, and evidently sincerely believe, that they engage in cannibalism in their "Holy Communion"; Mormons believe Native Americans are Hebrews; and I can't think of a single "cult" that believes anything crazier than most of the other major religions. I regard a "cult" as a religion small enough to be easily victimized by the authorities and a religion as a cult big enough to force the authorities to treat it with respect. And that is the only difference I can see. -- Robert Anton Wilson Pascal's wager is a sign of cowardice born out of a teleological valuation of truth. -- Jerry Pescadero Where men had once said 'Credo ut intelligam' (understanding can come only through belief), they now said 'Intelligo ut credam' (belief can come only through understanding) -- _The Day the Universe Changed_, James Burke, pg.53 Religion originates in an attempt to represent and order beliefs, feelings, imaginings and actions that arise in response to direct experience of the sacred and the spiritual. As this attempt expands in its formulation and elaboration, it becomes a process that creates meaning for itself on a sustaining basis, in terms of both its originating experiences and its own continuing responses. -- http://www.darc.org/connelly/religion1.html you can't be bothered with questions you can't be bothered with proof you can't be bothered with evidence you can't be bothered with truth so you live in your perfect world where everything is divine where all the trust is baseless and all the faith is blind -- Wall Nosek, Show Me Your god Or Shut, The Fuck, Up Mircea Eliade characterizes the sacred as that whose manifestation "ontologically founds the world," -- http://www.darc.org/connelly/religion1.html Karl Marx: "Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people." "The sacred is a mysterious manifestation of power and presence that is experienced as both primordial and transformative, inspiring awe and rapt attention. This is usually an event that represents a break or discontinuity from the ordinary, forcing a re-establishment or recalibration of perspective on the part of the experiencer, but it may also be something seemingly ordinary, repeated exposure to which gradually produces a perception of mysteriously cumulative significance out of proportion to the significance originally invested in it." -- Paul Connelly, "Definition of Religion and Related Terms" http://www.darc.org/connelly/religion1.html [belief] in many deities of which only one is to be worshipped. This is henotheism. -- http://www.religioustolerance.org/comp_rel.htm "Of all of the tyrannies that affect mankind, tyranny of religion is the worst." -- Thomas Paine In fact, no small portion of the blame for the current excessive self absorption lies at the feet of the proponents of the new mysticism. Anyone listening to New Age gurus, and modern Christian preachers, cannot miss the emphasis on the individual finding easy gratification, rather than sacrificing and selflessly laboring for a better world. Holistic philosophy is the perfect self-delusion for the spoiled brat of any age, all decked out in the latest fashion, who loves to talk about solving the problems of the world but has no intention of sweating a drop in achieving this noble goal. -- Mystical Physics: Has Science Found the Path to the Ultimate? Victor J. Stenger, To be published in Free Inquiry, Winter 1995-96 http://www.phys.hawaii.edu/vjs/www/mystic.txt Capra and his colleagues say they are putting a modern face on ancient Eastern philosophy. I say they are covering a noble edifice with graffiti. -- Mystical Physics: Has Science Found the Path to the Ultimate? Victor J. Stenger, To be published in Free Inquiry, Winter 1995-96 http://www.phys.hawaii.edu/vjs/www/mystic.txt "The idea of the sacred is quite simply one of the most conservative notions in any culture, because it seeks to turn other ideas -- uncertainty, progress, change -- into crimes." -- Salman Rushdie Gnosis (knowledge), represents the notion that to know something is to acquire a deeper understanding of the very essence of a thing by experiencing its "accidentals", that is, its external and material form. -- Christian Mendenhall, PhD, http://kali.murdoch.edu.au/~academy/articles/ jnode._FAITH._Phil_Morle_.847118000.0.html [P]eople must belong to a tribe; they yearn to have a purpose larger than themselves. We are obligated by the deepest drives of the human spirit to make ourselves more than animated dust, and we must have a story to tell about where we came from, and why we are here. -- Edward O. Wilson "My theology, briefly, is that the universe was dictated but not signed." -- Christopher Morley "Every person's concept of God is too small. Through humility we can begin to get into true perspective the infinity of God. This is the humble approach. It is also in humility that we learn from each other, for it makes us open to each other and ready to see things from the other's point of view and share ours with him freely. It is by humility that we avoid the sins of pride and intolerance and avoid all religious strife. Humility opens the doors to the realms of the spirit, and to research and progress in religion" (Templeton 1995, 3). JudeoChristianity has taught us a lot about community and social responsibility. Buddhism has taught us a great deal about the mind. Hinduism has taught us about the body. Nature religions have taught us about our connectedness with each other and the planet. The problem is not that religion induces triviality it is that it induces power and passion. Christianity also gave us the Inquisition. Buddhism produced the Kamikazi. Hinduism brought about the caste system and native spirituality seems to frequently lead to acts of sacrificial killing. I am by no means merely an apologist for religion I recognize that it, like science, has its shadow side. -- jpcrooks@indy.net (Patricia & John Crooks) Let's look at a definition of CHURCH: 1.It is derived from the Greek word kyros, which means power 2.A building for worship 3.The clergy or officialdom of a religious body 4.A body or organization of believers 5.A public divine worship The Cosmic Pyramid (or, historically, a chandelier) GOD Mind Design O r d e r C h a o s N o t h i n g Look... religion is the ultimate story-telling parable machine. -- Michael Hudson , on the CoV mailing list So when I say "Man is God", the question to me is not "Does it make anymore sense?", the question is "Does it make /as much/ sense?". Can Zero (or Virus, or the Extropians, or the Church of the Sub-Genius, etc.) provide what the traditional concept of God provides without becoming involved in the supernatural? If it can't, we're just like the flies in my little story. The ants are going to kill us off because they need the caterpillar nectar. That's why I think Hakeeb's scientist killed off logic in his personal life. Logic doesn't give her what she needs. -- David de Void dleeper@gte.net A religion is a system of beliefs and practices that gives (or intends to give) meaning to the lives of its followers. It is a system because the beliefs are interrelated and mutually supportive. -- David McFadzean Regarding meaning, those who recognize the "meaning" of life recognize that there is no "meaning". Joesph Campbell in addressing this question asks "what's the meaning of a flower" "Kid, I've flown from one side of this galaxy to the other. I've seen a lot of strange stuff, but I've never seen anything to make me believe there's one all-powerful force controlling everything. There's no mystical energy field that controls my destiny." Han Solo STAR WARS Man speaks to God. Says that he doesn’t want free will because with free will he can choose to do evil and therefore be cast forever to hell. This is a chance he doesn't want to take. He says to god that if he didn’t have free will then he would know that he could do whatever he wanted and it would not be a sin since he had never really chosen to do it. God responds thus; If I take away your free will because you choose to ask for it to be taken away, knowing that when it is you will commit evil without retribution. Then it will be your choosing to have no free will that is the sin. Man responds thus; Couldn’t you have never given me free will? At which time God disappears in a puff of logic and man, being so pleased with himself goes on to prove black is white and gets killed on a zebra crossing. -- Tony Hindle? And no war has been in which the name of God was not inscribed upon the bloody banners of the aggressor; assailants and defenders alike swamp high heaven with frantic and fatuous prayers to God to give victory to each against the other -- prayers which God has never heard or attended to, for God, as Napoleon cynically and truly said, "is always on the side of the heaviest guns" -- or of the deadliest poison-gas and most ruthless butchery of men. -- http://www.infidels.org/library/historical/ joseph_wheless/is_it_gods_word/chapter_01.html while the idealist in me strives every day to create a space in which color, gender, sexual preference and religion are no longer standards to judge by, but merely something insignificant, like what shirt I wore today. -- Alice L. Carroll {L8L8L8L8L8@aol.com}; http://www.fray.com/criminal/intentions/ [question to ponder: would you want to live in a society in which gender is as insignificant and the shirt you wore today?] A leader does not get up and say, "Friends, fellows, countrymen... I am fucking greedy! We need more territory, more slaves and more money! Let's invade some countries!" They bring religion in to manipulate the feeling of self worth that it provides. -- "John Aten" Differences between a cult and a religion (attributed to the Cult Information Service Inc.) Cult - - Deceit in recruitment - - Totalitarian society - - Destroys family unit - - Isolates membership - - Keeps non-believers out - - Intimidates critics Religion - - No deceit in recruitment - - Allows freedom of thought - - Promotes the family unit - - Does not isolate members - - Encourages participation - - Welcomes criticism "People think that epilepsy is divine simply because they don't have any idea what causes epilepsy. But I believe that someday we will understand what causes epilepsy, and at that moment, we will cease to believe that it's divine. And so it is with everything in the universe." -- Hippocrates, Developer of the Hippocratic Oath "Religious Displays, as distinct from religious beliefs, are submissive acts performed towards dominant individuals called gods. The acts themselves include various forms of body-lowering, such as kneeling, bowing, kowtowing, salaaming and prostrating; also chanting and rituals of debasement and sacrifice; the offering of gifts to the gods and the making of symbolic gestures of allegiance. The function of these actions is to appease the super-dominant beings and thereby obtains favours or avoid punishments. There is nothing unusual about this behaviour in itself. Subordinates throughout the animal world subject themselves to their most powerful companions in a similar way. But the strange feature of these human submissive actions, as we encounter them today, is that they are performed towards a dominant figure, or figures, who are never present in person. Instead they are represented by images and artifacts and operate entirely through agents called holy-men or priests. These middle-men enjoy a position of social influence and respect because some of the power of the gods rubs off on them. It is therefore extremely important to the holy-men to keep the worshippers permanently obedient to the super-dominant figures, and they do this in several ways." -- Desmond Morris, 'Manwatching: A Field Guide to Human Behaviour', 1977, Abrams, New York, pages 148-9 "One of the demands put upon the priests and holy-men is that they should provide impressive rituals. Nearly all religions include ceremonial procedures during which the followers of a particular deity can indulge in complex group activities. This is essential as a demonstration of the power of the gods--that they can dominate and command submissive behaviour from large numbers of people at one and the same time--and it is also a method of strengthening the social bonding in relation to the common belief. Since the gods are super-parents and super-leaders, they must necessarily have large houses in which to 'meet' with their followers. Anyone flying low over human settlements in a spacecraft and ignorant of our ways would notice immediately that in many of the villages and towns and cities there were one or two homes much bigger than the rest. Towering over the other houses, these large buildings must surely be the abodes of some enormous individuals, many times the size of the rest of the population. These--the houses of the gods--the temples, the churches and the cathedrals--are buildings apparently made for giants, and a space visitor would be surprised to find on closer examination that these giants are never at home. Their followers repeatedly visit them and bow down before them, but they themselves are invisible. Only their bell-like cries can be heard across the land. Man is indeed an imaginative species." -- Desmond Morris, "Religious Displays," 'Manwatching: A Field Guide to Human Behaviour', 1977, Abrams, New York, page 152. "Theologian: An uncommon individual who, though possessing finite abilities, has been called by God himself who, though possessing infinite abilities, requires the assistance of the former in explaining Himself to the rest of us. -- Translation: if God existed, theologians would be out of work." -- Rev. Donald Morgan The destiny of the world is determined less by the battles that are lost and won than by the stories it loves and believes in. -- Harold Goddard To be willing to suffer in order to create is one thing; to realize that one's creation necessitates one's suffering, that suffering is one of the greatest of God's gifts, is almost to reach a mystical solution to the problem of evil. -- J. W. Sullivan In coercive persuasion programs, the main attack is done through frequent and intense attempts to cause a person to reevaluate the most central aspects of their experience of self and their prior conduct in NEGATIVE ways. -- http://www.xs4all.nl/~fishman/fable.htm (talking about Scientology recruiting tactics, but applicable to Christians and their "sin" doctrine too) "THE ONLY WAY YOU CAN CONTROL PEOPLE IS TO LIE TO THEM. You can write that down in your book in great big letters. The only way you can control anybody is to lie to them." -- L. Ron Hubbard "If you really want to enslave people tell them that you are going to give them total freedom." (At the top of the Scientology grade chart of levels of initiate attainment at the OT 8 level is the benefit obtained from that level. At OT 8 it is written "Total Freedom.") -- L. Ron Hubbard In Booklet of the Scientology Professional Auditors Course (1982), states. "A very effective thought control technique could be worked out from Scientology which could be used to make individuals into WILLING slaves." (emphasis added) More from the words of L Ron Hubbard: "When someone enrolls consider he or she has joined up for the duration of the universe. Never permit an "open minded" approach .... If they're enrolled, they're aboard, and if they're aboard they're here on the same terms as the rest of us. Win or die in the attempt .... We're not playing some minor game in Scientology .... The whole agonized future of this planet, every Man, Woman, and Child on it, and your own destiny for the next endless trillions of years depends on what you do here and now with and in Scientology. This is a deadly serious activity. And if we miss getting out of the trap now, we may never again have another chance. "Religion is fundamentally opposed to everything I hold in veneration- courage, clear thinking, honesty, fairness, and above all, love of the truth." -- H.L. Mencken, "Autobiographical Notes" (1925) "I once knew an Episcopalian lady in Newport, Rhode Island, who asked me to design and build a doghouse for her Great Dane. The lady claimed to understand God and His Ways of Working perfectly. She could not understand why anyone should be puzzled about what had been or about what was going to be. And yet, when I showed her a blueprint of the doghouse I proposed to build, she said to me, "I'm sorry, but I never could read one of those things." "Give it to your husband or your minister to pass on to God," I said, "and, when God finds a minute, I'm sure he'll explain this doghouse of mine in a way that even you can understand." She fired me. I shall never forget her. She believed that God liked people in sailboats much better than He liked people in motorboats. She could not bear to look at a worm. When she saw a worm, she screamed. She was a fool, and so am I, and so is anyone who thinks he sees what God is Doing." -- "Cat's Cradle", by Kurt Vonnegut Jr. Brother will kill brother Spilling blood across the land Killing for religion Something I don't understand Fools like me, who cross the sea And come to foreign lands Ask the sheep, for their beliefs Do you kill on God's command? -- Megadeth, "Holy Wars...The Punishment Due" by Dave Mustaine "One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we've been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We're no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. it is simply too painful to acknowledge -- even to ourselves -- that we've been so credulous. (So the old bamboozles tend to persist as the new bamboozles rise.)" -- Carl Sagan, "The Fine Art of Baloney Detection" "Fundamentalism isn't about religion. It's about power." -- Salman Rushdie "Organized religion: The world's largest pyramid scheme." -- Bernard Katz "Religious persons often consider gambling to be a bad thing. It certainly causes a great deal of misery. But much of the badness of gambling consists in its refusal to face the odds and be guided by them; and in the matter of refusing to face the odds religion is a worse offender than gambling, and does more harm to the habits of reason. Religious belief is, in fact, a form of gambling, as Pascal saw. It does more harm to reason than ordinary gambling does, however, because it is more in earnest." -- Richard Robinson (1902-1996), Professor at Cornell and Oxford; 'An Atheist's Values' "Not only is there nothing to be gained by believing an untruth, but there is everything to lose when we sacrifice the indispensable tool of reason on the altar of superstition." -- Freedom From Religion Foundation "Suppose we've chosen the wrong god. Every time we go to church we're just making him madder and madder" -- Homer Simpson's version of Pascal's Wager, "The Simpsons" "Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's; and unto God the things that are God's; and unto human beings, what?" -- Stanislaw J. Lec "The civilization of man has increased just to the same extent that religious power has decreased. The intellectual advancement of man depends upon how often he can exchange an old superstition for a new truth. The church never enabled a human being to make even one of these exchanges; on the contrary, all her power has been used to prevent them. In spite, however, of the church, man found that some of his religious conceptions were wrong. By reading his Bible, he found that the ideas of his God were more cruel and brutal than those of the most depraved savage. He also discovered that this holy book was filled with ignorance, and that it must have been written by persons wholly unacquainted with the nature of the phenomena by which we are surrounded; and now and then, some man had the goodness and courage to speak his honest thoughts. In every age some thinker, some doubter, some investigator, some hater of hypocrisy, some despiser of sham, some brave lover of the right, has gladly, proudly and heroically braved the ignorant fury of superstition for the sake of man and truth. These divine men were generally torn in pieces by the worshipers of the gods. Socrates was poisoned because he lacked reverence for some of the deities. Christ was crucified by a religious rabble for the crime of blasphemy. Nothing is more gratifying to a religionist than to destroy his enemies at the command of God. Religious persecution springs from a due admixture of love towards God and hatred towards man." -- Robert G. Ingersoll, "The Gods", 1872 "Salvation through slavery is worthless. Salvation from slavery is inestimable." -- Robert G. Ingersoll, "The Gods", 1872 (now compare with Isa. 40:19) I agree that children (and people in general) need guidance, but why try to attach it to God? It was a good idea in the Dark ages, but the fact we are having this discussion shows that humans are now more than capable guiding each other. The Problem with God is that people are afraid to suggest that *he* may need guidance, and a guide who cannot take criticism is a dictator, however benevolent he may be. -- Nick "A mystic is a person who is puzzled before the obvious but who understands the nonexistent" -- Elbert Hubbard "Ministers say that they teach charity. That is natural. They live on hand-outs. All beggars teach that others should give." -- Robert G. Ingersoll "You never see animals going through the absurd and often horrible fooleries of magic and religion. Only man behaves with such gratuitous folly. It is the price he has to pay for being intelligent but not, as yet, quite intelligent enough." -- Aldous Huxley "Commonly, those who have professed the strongest motives of love of a God have demonstrated the deepest hatred toward human joy and liberty." -- E. Haldeman-Julius, "The Meaning Of Atheism" "People whose history and future were threatened each day by extinction considered that it was only by divine intervention that they were able to live at all. I find it interesting that the meanest life, the poorest existence, is attributed to God's will, but as human being become more affluent, as their living standard and style begin to ascend the material scale, God descends the scale of respectability at a commensurate speed." -- Maya Angelou, "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings", p. 101 "Neither in my private life nor in my writings, have I ever made a secret of being an out-and-out unbeliever." -- Sigmund Freud, letter to Charles Singer "The more the fruits of knowledge become accessible to men, the more widespread is the decline of religious belief." -- Sigmund Freud "If there were a god, there would be no need for religion. If there were not a god, there would be no need for religion." -- Ron Barrier, Rbargodnow@aol.com "Truth does not demand belief. Scientists do not join hands every Sunday, singing, "yes, gravity is real! I will have faith! I will be strong! I believe in my heart that what goes up, up, up must come down, down. down. Amen!" If they did, we would think they were pretty insecure about it." -- ex-preacher Dan Barker "There are ten church members by inheritance for every one by conviction." [Anonymous] "There are many extraordinary tales from antiquity, including women with snakes for hair, creatures whose gaze turns you to stone, creatures with equine bodies and human torsos, many accounts of people rising from the dead, lots of tales of magic, and numerous accounts of physical encounters with fantastic beings. Ancient people were a superstitious, scientifically primitive lot, and believed in many things that today we know are silly. I find it bizarre that so many people see nothing suspicious about the extraordinary or supernatural claims of the bible, yet don't hesitate to express disbelief in equally well documented claims of minotaurs, basilisks, and wizards." -- Scott Brown "Jesus Christ: A common exclamation indicating surprise, disgust, anger or bewilderment." -- Chaz Bufe, The American Heretic's Dictionary The greater your ignorance, the more evidence you have for the existence of God! "Fantastic doctrines (like Christianity or Islam or Marxism) require unanimity of belief. One dissenter casts doubt on the creed of millions. Thus the fear and hate; thus the torture chamber, the iron stake, the gallows, the labor camp, the psychiatric ward." -- Edward Abbey Surgeon General's Warning: Quitting Religion Now Greatly Increases the Chances of World Peace. Fundamentalism means never having to say "I'm wrong." Consider the ignorance of the average fundamentalist. Then realize that by definition fully half of them must be even dumber than that. The mind of the fundamentalist is like the pupil of the eye: the more light you pour on it, the more it will contract... "Fundamentalist, n. One in whom something is fundamentally wrong - most commonly lack of reasoning ability and vicious intolerance toward those not sharing the fundamentalist's delusions. Thus, fundamentalists are especially intolerant of those able to draw obvious conclusions from observed facts, those who refuse to seek shelter in comforting falsehoods, and those who wish to lead their own lives. Members of the fundamentalist subspecies known as "Slack-Jawed Drooling Idiots" have been known to give so much of their income to "electronic churches" that they subsist on Alpo at the end of the month. In herds, fundamentalists are about as useful to society as wandering bands of baboons brandishing machetes." -- Charles Bufe "The American Heretic's Dictionary" "Fundamentalists are like the fir trees in German forests: they cannot stand alone, and are only stable when crowded together, branches locked with those of their brothers. That is why we must always fear them, because they will always hate us for our individualism." -- Brent Yaciw, with inspirational regards to Jack M. Bickham Losing your faith is a lot like losing your virginity you don't realize how irritating it was 'til it's gone. "Religion is a major weapon in the war against reality." I count religion but a childish toy, And hold there is no sin but ignorance. -- Christopher Marlowe, _The Jew of Malta_ (c. 1592), prologue Superstition is the religion of feeble minds -- Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790) 'Do you know who made you?' 'Nobody, as I knows on,' said the child, with a short laugh, 'I `spect I grow`d' -- Harriet Beecher Stowe, _Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852), ch. 20 "This way for the lost city, This way for the lost people, This way for eternal suffering, All hope abandon, ye who enter here..." -- Dante "The blue sky is an illusion created by the sun to hide an infinite black void. When you die the worms eat your brains. There's no God to save you and Jesus Christ couldn't even save himself." -- David De Void "I find every sect, as far as reason will help them, make use of it gladly; and where it fails them, they cry out, 'It is a matter of faith, and above reason.'" -- John Locke "Strike me down, and I shall become more powerful than you can possibly imagine..." -- Obi Wan (Star Wars) "The Spirit is willing but the flesh is weak". All great truths begin as blasphemies. -- George Bernard Shaw If you really want to make a lot of money, start your own religion. -- L. Ron Hubbard "There is something feeble and a little contemptible about a man who cannot face the perils of life without the help of comfortable myths. Almost inevitably some part of him is aware that they are myths and that he believes them only because they are comforting. But he dare not face this thought! Moreover, since he is aware, however dimly, that his opinions are not real, he becomes furious when they are disputed." -- Bertrand Russell, _Human Society in Ethics and Politics_ "At one time it was believed that a race of men existed with their heads beneath their shoulders. Returning travelers from distant lands were asked about the wonderful people and all replied that they had not seen them. Oh, said the believers in the monsters, the men with the heads beneath their shoulders live in a country you did not visit. And so the monsters lived and flourished until all the world was known. We cannot know the universe. We cannot travel infinite distances, and so, somewhere in shoreless space there will always be room for gods and ghosts, for heaven and hell." -- Ingersoll's Works, Vol. 2, p. 480. But prayer is a debilitating mental exercise in which no one should ever be asked to participate. It makes one vulnerable to outside forces which are often inimical to one's interests, promotes sloth and laziness, advances a negative self-image, creates low self-esteem, fosters a belief in gaining something for nothing, generates escape rather than involvement, and activates reliance upon miraculous rather than this-worldly solutions to one's problems. -- Editor, Biblical Errancy (http://members.aol.com/darrwin2/bepart66.htm) From time to time, as we all know, a sect appears in our midst announcing that the world will very soon come to an end. Generally, by some slight confusion or miscalculation, it is the sect that comes to an end. -- G.K. Chesterton (1874-1936) Faith is a euphemism for prejudice and religion is a euphemism for superstition. -- Paul Keller, American rationalist To swallow and follow, whether old doctrine or new propaganda, is a weakness still dominating the human mind. -- Charlotte P. Gillman Give a man a fish, and you'll feed him for a day. Give him a religion, and he'll starve to death while praying for a fish. -- Timothy Jones Religion has not civilized man, man has civilized religion. -- Robert Green Ingersoll The world holds two classes of men: intelligent men without religion, and religious men without intelligence. -- Abu'l-Ala-Al-Ma'arri IF THE WORLD WERE A VILLAGE OF 100 PEOPLE 29 would be Christians 17 would have no religion 14 would be Moslems 13 would be Hindus 12 would be Buddhists 9 would be Confucian and Shinto 5 would be Animist 1 would be Jewish "Man is a credulous animal, and must believe something; in the absence of good grounds for belief, he will be satisfied with bad ones." -- Bertrand Russell "It is useless to attempt to reason a man out of a thing he was never reasoned into." -- Jonathan Swift "The great mass of people will more easily fall victim to a big lie than to a small one." -- Adolf Hitler Believers: "The sheep who beg to be fleeced and butchered, and who will battle to preserve their right to be victimized." "So far as religion of the day is concerned, it is a damned fake... Religion is all bunk." -- Thomas Edison Philosophy is questions that may never be answered. Religion is answers that may never be questioned. "It is an infantile superstition of the human spirit that virginity would be thought a virtue and not the barrier that separates ignorance from knowledge" -- Voltaire "All of the Universe is God playing a game, and each person is part of God. It's just that some people have gotten so involved in the game that they've forgotten they are actually part of God. The wisest people are the parts of God that remember what game he's playing." the word religion comes from the Latin "religare" which means to tie back, to fasten, or to bind. The word religion means "re-linking." "religion" denotes ritual and bondage When religion makes you act like a fool, it is a wrong religion... -- Heinlein Ralph Hodgson on ESP: "Some things have to be believed to be seen." "When the missionaries first came to Africa, they had the Bible and we had the land. They said, 'Let's pray.' We closed our eyes. When we opened them, the tables had been turned: We had the Bible and they had the land." -- Bishop Desmond Tutu "I am surrounded by priests who repeat incessantly that their kingdom is not of this world, and yet they lay their hands on everything they can get." -- Napoleon Bonaparte You forget that kids understand the power of "make believe", it's only adults that label such things as "crazyness" or "religion" or "irrationality" in order to dismiss them. -- Tim Rhodes Loving kindness is greater than laws; and the charities of life are more than all ceremonies. -- The Talmud "apocalypse" is Greek for "revelation of truth"! Religion, says Feuerbach, is self-estrangement. As Feurbach said, when illusion becomes sacred, truth is rejected as profane. In my own ritual sacrifices, I have burned objects of meaning and significance to me, including the original to one of the magical drawings I sent you a while back. The idea is to sacrifice, in the conventional sense of "giving up," something which is of value to me. It is also to remove the physical component of the object, leaving only the memory or Idea Space presence of the object intact. In my terms, this removal of the physical component makes the object "sacred", i.e., existing only on a level above the tangible and material world. -- Alan Moore Doubt is a pain too lonely to know that faith is his twin brother. -- Khalil Gibran (1883-1931) "Theory: when you have ideas. Ideology: when ideas have you." -- anonymous Person+delusion=psychosis. People+delusion=religion A religion is not responsible for the fools who believe in it. "All religions are founded on the fear of the many and the cleverness of the few." -- Stendahl Nothing more clearly show how little God esteems his gift to men of wealth, money, position and other worldly goods, than the way he distributes these, and the sort of men who are most amply provided with them. -- Jean De La Bruyere Pray, n. To ask that the laws of the universe be annulled on behalf of a single petitioner, confessedly unworthy. -- Ambrose Bierce "A myth is a religion in which no one any longer believes." -- James Feibleman "Reality is whatever refuses to go away when I stop believing in it. " -- Philip K. Dick "It's a vacuous answer . . . To say that 'God made the world' is simply a more or less sophisticated way of saying that we don't understand how the universe originated. A god, in so far as it is anything, is an admission of ignorance." -- Peter Atkins, British Association for the Advancement of Science 'What should I care if my neighbor believes in one god or a thousand? It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.' -- Thomas Jefferson BIERCE's definition of Religion: "a daughter of Hope and Fear, explaining to Ignorance the nature of the Unknowable." ------------------------------------------------------------------**** Religion: Against: "I condemn false prophets, I condemn the effort to take away the power of rational decision, to drain people of their free will--and a hell of a lot of money in the bargain. Religions vary in their degree of idiocy, but I reject them all. For most people, religion is nothing more than a substitute for a malfunctioning brain." -- Gene Roddenberry (1921-1991) creator of Star Trek "Religion supports nobody. It has to be supported. It produces no wheat, no corn; it ploughs no land; it fells no forests. It is a perpetual mendicant. It lives on the labors of others, and then has the arrogance to pretend that it supports the giver." -- Robert G. Ingersoll "I'm sickened by all religions. Religion has divided people. I don't think there's any difference between the pope wearing a large hat and parading around with a smoking purse and an African painting his face white and praying to a rock." -- Howard Stern (king of all media) "When a man has once brought himself to accept uncritically all the absurdities that religious doctrines put before him and even to overlook the contradictions between them, we need not be greatly suprised at the weakness of his intellect" -- Sigmund Freud: The Future of an Illusion "Our knowledge of the historical worth of certain religious doctrines increases our respect for them, but does not invalidate our proposal that they should cease to be put forward as the reasons for the precepts of civilization. On the contrary! Those historical residues have helped us to view religious teachings, as it were, as neurotic relics, and we may now argue that the time has probably come, as it does in any analytic treatment, for replacing the effects of repression by the results of the rational operation of the intellect... Religion is comparable to a childhood neurosis." -- Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) "I want the man bearing the cross to be _its_only_victim_." -- Eugene Vintras (1807-1875) "Religion to me has always been the wound, not the bandage." -- Dennis Potter "It is possible that mankind is on the threshold of a golden age; but, if so, it will be necessary first to slay the dragon that guards the door, and this dragon is religion." -- Bertrand Russell "I am most truly a protestant for I protest indifferently against all sects." -- Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Diary, January 31, 1889 ROONEY: "Did you really seriously worry about going to prison?" KEVORKIAN: "No! Never! Am I a criminal? The world knows I'm not a criminal! What are they trying to put me in jail for? You've lost common sense in this society because of religious fanaticism and dogma. You're basing your laws, and your whole outlook on natural life, on mythology! It won't work! That's why you have all these problems in the world. Name them -- India, Pakistan, Ireland. Name them! All these problems -- they're all religious problems!" -- Dr. Jack Kevorkian, with Andy Rooney on "60 Minutes" "It is becoming quite clear that religion is at the heart of so many civil wars and international struggles. People seem willing to kill, maim, torture and die for a religious or spiritual belief which moves them to believe that their source of the divine is the only source... Consider: In the name of God, a fatwa against Salman Rushdie. In the name of God, murder in the Balkans. In the name of God, the bombing of the World Trade Center. In the name of God, the siege at Waco, Texas. In the name of God, Hindus and Muslims kill each other in India. In the name of God, bloody warfare between Protestants and Catholics in Ireland. In the name of God, Shi'ites and Sunnis are at each other's throats in Iraq and Iran, as are Arabs and Jews in the Middle East. In the name of God, a doctor is murdered because he believed in a woman's right to choose. In the name of God, what is going on?" -- Shirley MacLaine, quoted in "2000 Years of Disbelief, Famous People with the Courage to Doubt", by James A. Haught, Prometheus Books, 1996 "The good, say the mystics of spirit, is God, a being whose only definition is that he is beyond man's power to conceive- a definition that invalidates man's consciousness and nullifies his concepts of existence... Man's mind, say the mystics of spirit, must be subordinated to the will of God... Man's standard of value, say the mystics of spirit, is the pleasure of God, whose standards are beyond man's power of comprehension and must be accepted on faith... The purpose of man's life... is to become an abject zombie who serves a purpose he does not know, for reasons he is not to question." -- Ayn Rand, _For the New Intellectual_ A society without religion is like a crazed psychopath without a loaded .45 "Organized Religion is like Organized Crime; it preys on peoples' weakness, generates huge profits for its operators, and is almost impossible to eradicate." -- Mike Hermann (hermann@cs.ubc.ca) "The act of bellringing is symbolic of all proselytizing religions. It implies the pointless interference with the quiet of other people." -- Ezra Pound "Many good souls protest against a destructive criticism of Christianity and demand a substitute. I do not feel any obligation to substitute a new god for the old ones. I should gladly let them all go. I do not approve of cancer, and yet I do not feel that I have no right to attack a quack who promises a false cure until I have no real cure to propose. As someone said: he who helps destroy the boll-weevil has done as constructive work as he who plants the seed." -- Rupert Hughes, "Why I Quit Going to Church" "Be born anywhere, little embryo novelist, but do not be born under the shadow of a great creed, not under the burden of original sin, not under the doom of Salvation." -- Pearl S. Buck, Advice to Unborn Novelists "When I look upon seamen, men of physical science, and philosophers, man is the wisest of all beings. When I look upon priests, prophets, and interpreters of dreams, nothing is so contemptible as man." -- Diogenes (412-323 B.C.E.) "Missionaries are perfect nuisances and leave every place worse than they found it." -- Charles Dickens "I suggest that the anthropomorphic god-idea is not a harmless infirmity of human thought, but a very noxious fallacy, which is largely responsible for the calamities the world is at present enduring" -- William Archer, 'Theology and War' I once believed in god. I got better. ...this would be the best of all possible worlds, if there were no religion in it. -- John Adams Letter to Thomas Jefferson, 1816 "Religion: just say `no'." -- Tim Smith ------------------------------------------------------------------**** Religion: Christianity: General: People everywhere want to know that everything's going to be all right when they die. They'll jump through all manner of hoops to believe it. I think it's ironic in a way, because I believe it's going to be all right anyway. All we have to do is learn to let go of that fear of death thing. It's kind of like a kid who's horrified at the idea of getting an injection, knowing that he has to get one tomorrow. Now, he can either bear that pain for a few minutes tomorrow and get on with his normal stuff until then; or he can expand the pain many times over by agonizing about it until then and *still* have to deal with the same few moments of pain. What I see the traditional teaching of Christianity to be doing is, in effect, trying to convince the kid that the injection's going to hurt *forever* unless he follows some dictum. In addition, it tells him that it's somehow *his fault* (by way of Eve) that it's going to hurt at all. -- Janis He regards Jesus as a charismatic exorcist healer, a preacher, a teacher and eschatological enthusiast, of which several are known in first-century Judea and Galilee. He considers Paul, not Jesus, the inventor of Christianity. -- http://infidels.org/infidels/newsletter/1999/april.html talking about Vermes "I think it is very beautiful for the poor to accept their lot, to share it with the passion of Christ. I think the world is being much helped by the suffering of the poor people." -- Mother Teresa, on poverty "I used to get really pissed off that my life was so dictated by when this Jesus guy was born and when he was dying every year. I felt really resentful that I couldn't get on with my own life because I was so busy with his." -- Tori Amos "From the earliest days Christianity has depicted life on this earth as so sad and vain that its value is indistinguishable from that of a damn. Then why cling to it? Simply because its vanity and unpleasantness are parts of the will of a Creator whose love for His creatures takes the form of torturning them. If they revolt in this world they will be tortured a million times worse in the next." -- H.L. Mencken, Baltimore Evening Sun, August 9, 1926 "People have suffered and become insane for centuries by the thought of eternal punishment after death. Wouldn't it be better to depend on blind matter (...) than by a god who puts out traps for people, invites them to sin, and allows them to sin and commit crimes he could prevent. Only to finally get the barbarian pleasure to punish them in an excessive way, of no use for himself, without them changing their ways and without their example preventing others from committing crimes." -- Baron d'Holbach, "Systeme de la Nature" (1770) "Martyrs have been sincere. And so have tyrants. Wise men have been sincere. And so have fools." -- E. Haldeman-Julius, "The Church Is a Burden, Not a Benefit, In Social Life" "There is one notable thing about our Christianity: bad, bloody, merciless, money-grabbing and predatory as it is - in our country particularly, and in all other Christian countries in a somewhat modified degree - it is still a hundred times better than the Christianity of the Bible, with its prodigious crime- the invention of Hell. Measured by our Christianity of to-day, bad as it is, hypocritical as it is, empty and hollow as it is, neither the Deity nor His Son is a Christian, nor qualified for that moderately high place. Ours is a terrible religion. The fleets of the world could swim in spacious comfort in the innocent blood it has spilt." -- Mark Twain, "Reflections on Religion" "I was indeed a prodigy of Early Impiety....There was a time when I believed in the story and the scheme of salvation, so far as I could understand it, just as there was a time when I believed there was a Devil....Suddenly the light broke through to me and I knew this God was a lie....I sensed it was a silly story long before I dared to admit even to myself that it was a silly story. For indeed it is a silly story, and each generation nowadays swallows it with greater difficulty....Why do people go on pretending about this Christianity?" -- H.G. Wells, quoted in "2000 Years of Disbelief, Famous People with the Courage to Doubt", by James A. Haught, Prometheus Books, 1996 "The Christian priesthood, finding the doctrines of Christ levelled to every understanding and too plain to need explanation, saw, in the mysticisms of Plato, materials with which they might build up an artificial system which might, from its indistinctness, admit everlasting controversy, give employment for their order, and introduce it to profit, power and pre-eminence. The doctrines which flowed from the lips of Jesus himself are within the comprehension of a child; but thousands of volumes have not yet explained the Platonisms engrafted on them: and for this obvious reason that nonsense can never be explained." -- Thomas Jefferson, letter to John Adams, July 5, 1814 "You are going to see again the child about which you read in the Terrible Judgment, that it was condemned to hell. See! it is a pitiful sight. The little child is in this red hot oven. Hear the fire! It beats its head against the roof of the oven. It stamps its little feet on the floor. You can see on the face of this little child what you see on the faces of all in hell * despair, desperate and horrible... This child committed very bad mortal sins, knowing well the harm of what it was doing, and knowing that hell would be the punishment. God was very good to this child. Very likely God saw that this child would get worse and worse, and would never repent, and so it would have to be punished much more in hell. So God, in His mercy, called it out of the world in its early childhood." -- from Tracts for Spiritual Reading, an officially approved Catholic Children's book. In his Approbation, William Meagher, Vicar-General of Dublin, states "I have carefully read over this Little Volume for Children and have found nothing whatever in it contrary to the doctrines of the Holy Faith; but on the contrary, a great deal to charm, instruct and edify the youthful classes for whose benefit it has been written." "I see a very dark cloud on America's horizon, and that cloud is coming from Rome." -- Abraham Lincoln "There are ten church members by inheritance for every one by conviction." -- Anonymous It is no accident that the symbol of a bishop is a crook, and the sign of an archbishop is a double-cross. "People in general are equally horrified at hearing the Christian religion doubted, and at seeing it practiced." -- Samuel Butler (1835-1902), English author. Samuel Butler's Notebooks (1951, p. 310) "The church lives on the fact that modern research about Jesus is not known amongst the public." -- Hans Konzelmann "The equal toleration of all religions...is the same as atheism. -- Pope Leo XIII, "Imortale Dei" "... believing in a God whom we cannot but regard as evil, and then, in mere terrified flattery calling Him 'good' and worshipping him is a still greater danger... The ultimate question is whether the doctrine of the goodness of God or that of the inerrancy of scripture is to prevail when they conflict. I think the doctrine of the goodness of God is the more certain of the two. Indeed, only that doctrine renders this worship of Him obligatory or even permissable." -- C. S. Lewis, in letter to John Beversluis "There is no possibility whatsoever of reconciling science and theology, at least in Christendom. Either Jesus arose from the dead or He didn't. If he did, then Christianity becomes plausible; if He did not, then it is sheer nonsense. I defy any genuine scientists to say that he believes in the Resurrection, or indeed in any other cardinal dogma of the Christian system." -- H.L. Mencken, "Prejudices" "The nearest I can make it out, 'Love your Enemies' means, 'Hate your Friends'." -- Benjamin Franklin "Improvement in religion is called building up and edification. Faith is then the ground floor, hope is up one pair of stairs. My dear beloved Jenny, don't delight so much to dwell in those lower rooms, but get as fast as you can into the garret; for in truth the best room in the house is charity. For my part I wish the house was turned upside down" -- Benjamin Franklin, 1758, to his sister, Mrs. Jane Mecom, Works, Vol. VII., p. 184 "Jesus Christ never commanded toleration as a motive for His disciples, and toleration is the antithesis of the Christian message." -- "The Southern Baptist Convention and Freemasonry" by James L. Holly, Page 30 "For narrowness and sectarianism, there is no equal to the Lord Jesus Christ" -- "The Southern Baptist Convention and Freemasonry" by James L. Holly, Page 40 "So let us be blunt: we must use the doctrine of religious liberty to gain independence for Christian schools until we train up a generation of people who know that there is no religious neutrality, no neutral law, no neutral education, and no neutral civil government. Then they will get busy in constructing a Bible-based social, political and religious order which finally denies the religious liberties of the enemies of God." -- Gary North, quoted in Albert J. Menendez, Visions of Reality: What Fundamentalist Schools Teach (Prometheus Books, 1993) "...I choose morality of independence based on reason rather than morality of obedience. Appreciate fully the ruthless consistancy of primary Christian virtues - such as humility, self sacrifice and a sense of sin - which, without exception, are geared to the destruction of man's inner sense of dignity, efficacy and personal worth. It is not accidental that Christianity regards pride as a major sin. A man of self-esteem is an unlikely candidate of the master-slave relationship that Christianity offers him. A man lacking in self-esteem, however, a man ridden with guilt and self-doubt, will frequently prefer the apparent security of Christianity over independence and find comfort in the thought that, for the price of total submissiveness, God will love and protect them. In exchange for obedience, Christianity promises salvation in an afterlife; but in order to elicit obedience through this promise, Christianity must convince men that they need salvation, that there is something to be "saved" from. Christianity has nothing to offer a happy man living in a natural, intelligible universe. If Christianity is to gain a motivational foothold, it must declare war on earlthly pleasure and happiness, and this, historically, has been the precise course of action." -- George H. Smith "The biblical concepts of sin and salvation are an integral part of Christian doctrine. Christianity first creates a problem (sin) and then offers a "solution" (salvation). This is not unlike the protection racket; you either buy "protection"--or else!" -- "Rev." Donald Morgan "What seems so right in the interest of toleration and its cousins-liberty, equality and fraternity-is actually one of the subtlest lies of the 'father of lies.'" -- "The Southern Baptist Convention and Freemasonry" by James L. Holly, Page 40 "You believe in a book that has talking animals, wizards, witches, demons, sticks turning into snakes, food falling from the sky, people walking on water, and all sorts of magical, absurd and primitive stories, and you say that _we_ are the ones that need help?" -- Dan Barker, "Losing Faith in Faith" "All diseases of Christians are to be ascribed to demons; chiefly do they torment freshly-baptized Christians, yea, even the guiltless new-born infants." -- Saint Augustine (354-430) "(But) in these torments endured by the faithful, Wendell Holmes had no part. To him it mattered not that Darwin made the Garden of Eden a myth and Jonah's whale a monster to frighten children... For Holmes the core had been taken out of Christian theology a generation ago, when the Unitarians disavowed the doctrine of original sin. Man lost his fear of hell-fire - and on that day gave back Christian doctrine to the preacher as irrelevant to life. After that, disbelief in Genesis I was a small thing. Wendall Holmes had achieved it without the least struggle. He was born to it." -- Oliver Wendell Holmes, from "Yankee From Olympus - Justice Holmes and His Family," 1945, by Catherine Drinker Bowen "The trinitarian believes a virgin to be the mother of a son who is her maker." -- Sir Francis Bacon, quoted in "2000 Years of Disbelief, Famous People with the Courage to Doubt", by James A. Haught, Prometheus Books, 1996] "You read the Bible in your own special ways you're fond of quoting certain things it says Mouth full of righteousness and wrath from above When do we hear about forgiveness and love?" -- Bruce Cockburn, "Gospel of Bondage" Ste Svetlana on Religion: "Jesus of Nazareth is a saint, too... even if he does have his own religion. After all, He didn't start all this Christianity crap -- He was framed!" Also, the radical religious right mantra "hate the sin, love the sinner" is full of phony self-righteousness. "Sin" is nothing more than undesirable behavior from a certain viewpoint, and behavior, like other of our actions, cumulatively make us who we are. We are the sum total of our actions. If you hate someone for who he or she is, it is hardly possible to pretend at the same time that you love him or her. What the mantra really means is that you love others for what you wish for them to become--molded in your own image of course--and cannot tolerate who they really are now. -- Jeffery Jay Lowder and James Still, http://www.infidels.org/infidels/feedback/1998/november.html "The Ten Commandments are for lame brains. The first five are solely for the benefit of the priests and the powers that be; the second five are half truths, neither complete nor adequate." -- Robert Heinlein, Ira Johnson in "To Sail Beyond the Sunset" "I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians, Your christians are so unlike your christ" -- Mahatma Gandhi "I hope I live to see the day, when, as in the early days of our country, we won't have any public schools. The churches will have taken them over again and Christians will be running them. What a happy day that will be!" -- Rev. Jerry Falwell, America Can Be Saved, (1979) "AIDS is the wrath of a just God against homosexuals. To oppose it would be like an Israelite jumping in the Red Sea to save one of Pharoah's chariotters." -- Jerry Falwell "[Fundamentalists] never wonder why, if herpes is sent by 'god' to scourge "adulterers," whooping cough and measles weren't purposely created to lambaste children." -- Fred Woodworth "The idea that religion and politics don't mix was invented by the Devil to keep Christians from running their own country." -- Rev. Jerry Falwell In spite of centuries wasted in preaching God's omnipotence, his omnipotence is contradicted by every Christian judgment and every Christian prayer. -- George Santayana "What kind of a god would crucify his own son?" -- Firesign Theatre What a f iend we have in Jesus! "Only under two suppositions does prayer- that custom of earlier ages that has not yet completely died out- make any sense: it would have to be possible to induce or convert the divinity to a certain course of action, and the person praying would himself have to know best what he needed, what was truly desirable for him. Both presuppositions, assumed true and established by custom in all other religions, are however denied precisely by Christianity; if it nonetheless adheres to prayer in the face of its belief in an omniscient and all-provident rationality in God which renders prayer at bottom senseless and, indeed, blasphemous- in this it once again demonstrates its admirable serpent cunning; for a clear commandment 'Thou Shalt Not Pray' would have led Christians into unchristianity through boredom." -- Nietzsche, _The Wanderer and his Shadow_, passage 74 "The statement that God created man in his own image is ticking like a time bomb in the foundations of Christianity." -- Arthur C. Clarke "On the whole, I do not find Christians, outside of the catacombs, sufficiently sensible of conditions. Does anyone have the foggiest idea what sort of power we so blithely invoke? Or, as I suspect, does no one believe a word of it? The churches are children playing on the floor with their chemistry sets, mixing up a batch of TNT to kill a Sunday morning. It is madness to wear ladies' straw hats and velvet hats to church; we should all be wearing crash helmets. Ushers should issue life preservers and signal flares; they should lash us to our pews. For the sleeping god may wake someday and take offense, or the waking god may draw us out to where we can never return." - Annie Dillard, from Teaching a Stone to Talk, 1982. It's forgotten the message & worships the creeds. -- The The's "Armageddon Days are Here Again", _Mind_Bomb_ "Religious liberty is merely endured until the opposite can be carried into effect without peril to the Catholic Church." -- Bishop O'Conner of Pittsburg Better sleep with a sober cannibal than a drunken Christian. -- Herman Melville, in Moby Dick What Jesus said to the Pharisees all those years ago applies equally well to Christians today: "Woe to you! You travel over land and sea to win a single convert, and when he becomes one, you make him twice as much a son of hell as you are!" (Matt 23:15). -- Kevin Solway, http://www.ozemail.com.au/~bsolway/poison.html Jesus says, "Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men." Mediocrity (Christianity) takes him at his word and sets up a man-fishery for profit. And this man-fishery is a godly enterprise, the stock-holders in this company can appeal to words of scripture for backing. They can go tranquilly to meet the judgement, saying "We have accomplished thy word, we have fished for men." -- Kierkegaard Christianity [...]: their "peace" involves an intense hatred of whatever threatens it. -- http://www.ozemail.com.au/~bsolway/poison.html So, when Adam and Eve were in the Garden of Eden, if you go for all these fairy tales, that evil woman convinced the man to eat the apple, but the apple came from the Tree of Knowledge. And the punishment that was then handed down, the woman gets to bleed and the guy's got to go to work, is the result of a man desiring, because his woman suggested that it would be a good idea, that he get all the knowledge that was supposedly the property and domain of God. So, that right away sets up Christianity as an anti- intellectual religion. You never want to be that smart. If you're a woman, it's going to be running down your leg, and if you're a guy, you're going to be in the salt mines for the rest of your life. So, just be a dumb fuck and you'll all go to heaven. That's the subtext of Christianity. -- Frank Zappa My earlier views at the unsoundness of the Christian scheme of salvation and the human origin of the scriptures, have become clearer and stronger with advancing years and I see no reason for thinking I shall ever change them. -- Abraham Lincoln in a letter to Judge J.S. Wakefield, after the death of Willie Lincoln Brother Christian I'd have no complaint if Brother Christian would just stay In his own church, or his own house, to worship his own way; But out into the marketplace he feels obliged to go Despising everything in sight and telling people so. (Chorus) And he's just another bully, when he pushes folks around; He's a bigger, badder bully--I don't want him in my town! I don't care what his reasons are for stomping you and me; But by his works I know him--and this is tyranny. -- Fish, Leslie There is considerably more proof that Elvis has been abducted by space aliens than there is proof that Jesus Christ rose from the dead. -- Rohan Oberoi (ro11@crux2.cit.cornell.edu) on alt.atheism > If a historical Jesus existed (and I don't see any reason why the > myth wouldn't be based on a real person), he was probably born in > April. This is when the Romans collected taxes in Bethlehem which > is why Mary and Joseph were there and had trouble finding a place > to stay. -- David McFadzean It's also when lambs are born. -- Eva-Lise Carlstrom , on the CoV mailing list Of course, the Religious Right claim they are not trying to hurt anyone. They use phrases like, "We must love the sinner but hate the sin." But as Einstein said and Christ demonstrated, "You cannot simultaneously say that you love someone and use your power against them." -- Elory, http://www.elroy.com/ehr/gay.html And hereafter, when [Christians] laugh at the Jewish superstition of a scape-goat, let them bear in mind that more sensible and intelligent people may laugh in turn at their superstitious doctrine of a scape-God. . . .The blood of a God must atone for the sins of the whole human family . . . Somebody must pay the penalty in blood, somebody must be slaughtered for every little foible or peccadillo or moral blunder into which erring man may chance to stumble while upon the pilgrimage of life, while journeying through the wilderness of time, even if a God has to be dragged down from his throne in heaven, and murdered to accomplish it. Nothing less will mitigate the divine wrath. . . . Whose soul - possessing the slightest moral sensibility - does not inwardly and instinctively revolt at such a doctrine? -- Kersey Graves Placebo - A pill or other preparation containing no medication and administered to humor a patient; from the Latin Vespers of the Office of the Dead; literally: 'I shall be pleasing or acceptable.' The Catholic Eucharist is a placebo sacrament, in that it is merely an inactive symbol of the primordial Element in communion - the entheogenic plant or potion. -- http://www.deoxy.org/def/placebo.htm (The Age of Entheogens & The Angel's Dictionary by Jonathan Ott) "The Christian enmity (of entheogens) is easy to explain. Since the Christians were promulgating a religion in which the core mystery, the holy sacrament itself, was conspicuous by its absence, later transmogrified by the smoke and mirrors of the Doctrine of Transubstantiation into a specious symbol, an inert substance, a placebo entheogen, the imposture would be all-too-evident to anyone who had known the blessing of ecstasy, who had access to personal religious experiences. Thus a concerted attack on the use of sacred inebriants was mounted, and the supreme heresy was to presume to have any direct experience of the divine, not mediated by an increasingly corrupt and politicized priesthood. The Pharmacratic Inquisition was the answer of the Catholic Church to the embarrassing fact that it had taken all the religion out of religion, leaving an empty and hollow shell with no intrinsic value or attraction to humankind, which could only be maintained by hectoring, guilt-mongering and plain brute force." -- Jonathan Ott http://www.deoxy.org/tcrime.htm "Whatever the early Christians suffered, it was not as the Church asserts, because of the new gospel they preached, but because of the old absurdity they resurrected - belief in literal mythology." -- Lloyd Graham kaiyros, the eternal time of the Divine in the moments of communion. The name Michael literally means "Who's like (the) God?" in Hebrew - A rhetorical question used for the praise of God. "He goes on about the wailing and gnashing of teeth. It comes in one verse after another, and it is quite manifest to the reader that there is a certain pleasure in contemplating the wailing and gnashing of teeth, or else it would not occur so often." -- Bertrand Russell, _Why I Am Not a Christian_ Julius Wellhausen "Jesus was not a Christian; he was a Jew. He did not preach a new faith." Dear Dennis.... Letter #549 in (Issue 128 of August, 1993) states that Abraham has a servant place his hand under Abraham's thigh to take an oath, but this does not refer to his penis. The thigh actually refers to Abraham's testicles or testes, which are the most important part of a man taking a vow because he swears on his progeny. Testes are so important that they are parts of words like testimony, testify, testament, Old Testament, and New Testament. None of my several reference books on the Bible mention this, probably from embarrassment because Christians have always had difficulty dealing with sex. -- _Biblical Errancy_ http://members.aol.com/darrwin2/bepart63.htm "You aren't an accident. You weren't mass produced. You aren't an assembly-line product. You were deliberately planned, specifically gifted, and lovingly positioned on this planet by the Master Craftsman." -- Max Lucado Think of the egotism of a man who believes that an infinite being wants his praise! "For god so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten son, that whosoever would believe in him would believe in anything." "God so loved the world that he made up his mind to damn a large majority of the human race." -- Robert G. Ingersoll God hated the world so much that he sent his only son so that whoever does not believe in him will perish and be denied eternal life. "God had to kill himself to appease himself, so that he wouldn't have to roast us (his beloved creations) alive for all eternity, except that he didn't really die." -- Unknown, capsule description of Christianity "In blasphemy indeed are those that say God is Christ the son of Mary." (Sura 5:17 in the Koran). "They do blaspheme who say: God is Christ the son of Mary.... Whoever joins other gods with God, God will forbid him in the Garden, and Fire will be his abode. There will for the wrongdoers be no one to help. They do blaspheme who say: God is one of three in a Trinity: for there is no God except One God. IF they desist not from their word (of blasphemy), verily a grievous penalty will befall the blasphemers among them. Why turn they not to God, and seek His forgiveness?...Christ the son of Mary was no more than an apostle." (Sura 5:72-75). (Muslim perspective) "...And no philosophy, sadly, has all the answers. No matter how assured we may be about certain aspects of our belief, there are always painful inconsistencies, exceptions, and contradictions. This is true in religion as it is in politics, and is self-evident to all except fanatics and the naive. As for the fanatics, whose number is legion in our own time, we might be advised to leave them to heaven. They will not, unfortunately, do us the same courtesy. They attack us and each other, and whatever their protestations to peaceful intent, the bloody record of history makes clear that they are easily disposed to restore to the sword. My own belief in God, then, is just that -- a matter of belief, not knowledge. My respect for Jesus Christ arises from the fact that He seems to have been the most virtuous inhabitant of Planet Earth. But even well-educated Christians are frustrated in their thirst for certainty about the beloved figure of Jesus because of the undeniable ambiguity of the scriptural record. Such ambiguity is not apparent to children or fanatics, but every recognized Bible scholar is perfectly aware of it. Some Christians, alas, resort to formal lying to obscure such reality." -- Steve Allen "A survey of hotel bills from last year's National Religious Broadcasters Association convention found that 80 percent of them watched an X-rated movie in the privacy of their rooms. Just doing a little research on the enemy, we suppose." _Reason_, October 1989 "The very concept of sin comes from the bible. Christianity offers to solve a problem of its own making! Would you be thankful to a person who cut you with a knife in order to sell you a bandage?" -- Dan Barker, "Losing Faith in Faith" "It should be made clear that in order to live a Christian life, any Christian must be able to discriminate and hate, because that's what the bible says." -- Bernhard Kuiper, Colorado Springs pastor "Optimism is the faith that leads to achievement. Nothing can be done without hope." -- Helen Keller Hence the reason of the churchly maxim: Disce primum quod credendum est -- "Learn first of all what is to be believed." "I want the man bearing the cross to be its only victim." -- Eugene Vintras (1807-1875) Oh, Christianity is very odd, I'll grant you that. -- Cathy, It is astounding (well not really) how a sinner is so quick to point out the sins of other people, thereby exempting themselves from blame. Like a child that has broken a lamp tells his mommy (or Daddy!) on his sister that spilled her milk, a man can prove he's self-righteous by condemning others with a make-believe quality like Original Sin. -- Kristee They had offended the Deity in some way. We know what the offense was, without looking; that is to say, we know it was a trifle; some small thing that no one but a god would attach any importance to. It is more than likely that a Midianite had been duplicating the conduct of one Onan, who was commanded to "go into his brother's wife" -- which he did; but instead of finishing, "he spilled it on the ground." The Lord slew Onan for that, for the lord could never abide indelicacy. The Lord slew Onan, and to this day the Christian world cannot understand why he stopped with Onan, instead of slaying all the inhabitants for three hundred miles around -- they being innocent of offense, and therefore the very ones he would usually slay. For that had always been his idea of fair dealing. If he had had a motto, it would have read, "Let no innocent person escape." You remember what he did in the time of the flood. There were multitudes and multitudes of tiny little children, and he knew they had never done him any harm; but their relations had, and that was enough for him: he saw the waters rise toward their screaming lips, he saw the wild terror in their eyes, he saw that agony of appeal in the mothers' faces which would have touched any heart but his, but he was after the guiltless particularly, then he drowned those poor little chaps. "And the Son of God died, which is immediately credible because it is absurd. And buried he rose again, which is certain because it is impossible." -- Tertullian, c. 160 C.E. And the Son of God died; it is by all means to be believed, because it is absurd. And He was buried and rose again; the fact is certain because it is impossible." "After Jesus Christ we have no need of speculation, after the Gospel no need of research. When we come to believe, we have no desire to believe anything else; for we begin by believing that there is nothing else which we have to believe... -- Tertullian Pilate said unto him: Art thou a king, then? Jesus answered him: Thou sayest that I am a king; for this cause was I born and am come, that every one that is of the truth should hear my voice. Pilate saith unto him: What is truth? Jesus saith unto him: Truth is of heaven. Pilate saith: Is there not truth upon earth? Jesus saith unto Pilate: Thou seest how that they which speak the truth are judged of them that have authority upon earth. -- Gospel of Nicodemus, III 2 http://wesley.nnc.edu/noncanon/gospels/gosnic.htm The Nazarene is he who reveals what is hidden. Christ has everything in himself - man, angel, mystery, and the Father. -- Gospel of Phillip http://wesley.nnc.edu/noncanon/gospels/gosphil.htm "Strange...a God who could make good children as easily as bad, yet preferred to make bad ones; who made them prize their bitter life, yet stingily cut it short; mouths Golden Rules and forgiveness multiplied seventy times seven and invented Hell; who mouths morals to other people and has none himself; who frowns upon crimes yet commits them all; who created man without invitation, then tries to shuffle the responsibility for man's acts upon man, instead of honorably placing it where it belongs, upon himself; and finally with altogether divine obtuseness, invites this poor, abused slave to worship him!" -- Mark Twain "Recently I was reading somewhere or other [about] an Italian curio-dealer who attempted to sell a 17th century crucifix to J.P. Morgan. [I]nside it was concealed a stiletto. What a perfect symbol of the Christian religion." -- George Orwell "Christianity teaches you to love your enemies. If you love your enemies, what value does that place on love?" -- Marilyn Manson "... an absurd problem came to the surface: 'How COULD God permit that [crucifixion of Jesus Christ]!' ... the deranged reason of the little community found quite a frightfully absurd answer: God gave his Son for forgiveness, as a SACRIFICE . . . The SACRIFICE FOR GUILT, and just in its most repugnant and barbarous form -- the sacrifice of the innocent for the sins of the guilty! What horrifying heathenism!" -- Friedrich Nietzsche "The Christian god can be easily pictured as virtually the same as the many ancient gods of past civilizations. The Christian god is a three headed monster; cruel, vengeful and capricious. If one wishes to know more of this raging, three headed beast-like god, one only needs to look at the caliber of the people who say they serve him. They are always of two classes: fools and hypocrites." -- Thomas Jefferson, in a letter to his nephew, Peter Carr "The Bible tells us to be like God, and then on page after page it describes God as a mass murderer. This may be the single most important key to the political behavior of Western Civilization." -- Robert Anton Wilson, "Right Where You Are Sitting Now" "What a queer thing is Christian salvation! Believing in firemen will not save a burning house; believing in doctors will not make one well, but believing in a savior saves men. Fudge!" -- Lemuel K. Washburn, 'Is The Bible Worth Reading And Other Essays' "Christianity makes suffering contagious." -- Friedrich Nietszche "Christian doctrine was shredded to pieces by biblical scholars in the 18th and 19th centuries, but the information didn't get out to the bulk of people beyond the academic world. With the Information Age, this will all change." -- Farrell Till, 'The Skeptical Review' "No sooner had Jesus knocked over the dragon of superstition then Paul boldly set it on its legs again in the name of Jesus." -- George Bernard Shaw "Buddha says: 'Do not flatter your benefactor!' Repeat this saying in a Christian church: right away it clears the air of everything Christian!" -- Nietzsche God is by definition the holder of all possible knowledge, it would be impossible for him to have faith in anything. Faith, then, is built upon ignorance and hope. -- Steve Allen (More Steve Allen, on the Bible Religion & Morality) "The account shows, however, that the gods dreaded education and knowledge then just as they do now. The church still faithfully guards the dangerous tree of knowledge, and has exerted in all ages her utmost power to keep mankind from eating the fruit thereof. The priests have never ceased repeating the old falsehood and the old threat: "Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die." From every pulpit comes the same cry, born of the same fear: "Lest they eat and become as gods, knowing good and evil." For this reason, religion hates science, faith detests reason, theology is the sworn enemy of philosophy, and the church with its flaming sword still guards the hated tree, and like its supposed founder, curses to the lowest depths the brave thinkers who eat and become as gods." -- Robert G. Ingersoll, "The Gods", 1872 "The terrible religious wars that inundated the world with blood tended at least to bring all religion into disgrace and hatred. Thoughtful people began to question the divine origin of a religion that made its believers hold the rights of others in absolute contempt. A few began to compare Christianity with the religions of heathen people, and were forced to admit that the difference was hardly worth dying for. They also found that other nations were even happier and more prosperous than their own. They began to suspect that their religion, after all, was not of much real value." -- Robert G. Ingersoll, "The Gods", 1872 "For many years I have exhorted you in vain, with gentleness, preaching, praying and weeping. But according to the proverb of my country, 'where blessing can accomplish nothing, blows may avail.' We shall rouse against you princes and prelates who, alas, will arm nations and kingdoms against this land...and thus blows will avail where blessings and gentleness have been powerless." -- St. Dominic, to the heretical Albiginses, Encyclopedia Brittanica "The Christian religion not only was at first attended with miracles, but even at this day cannot be believed by any reasonable person without one." -- David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, 1748 "Take from the church the miraculous, the supernatural, the incomprehensible, the unreasonable, the impossible, the unknowable, the absurd, and nothing but a vacuum remains." -- Ingersoll's Works, Vol. 1, p. 285 "It is scandalous that any modern, intelligent, well-educated person should believe in Christianity." -- Delos B. McKown, Ph.D., U.S. professor, philosopher, author, Former clergyman "...I couldn't but surmise that the devil, looking at the cruel wars that Christianity has occasioned, the persecutions, the tortures Christian has inflicted on Christian, the unkindness, the hypocrisy, the intolerance, must consider the balance sheet with complacency. And when he remembers that it has laid upon mankind the bitter burden of the sense of sin that has darkened the beauty of the starry night and cast a baleful shadow on the passing pleasures of a world to be enjoyed, he must chuckle as he murmurs: give the devil his due." -- W. Somerset Maughman, "The Razor's Edge" Original Sin: This is often called the "Fortunate Fall," at least in literary circles. The religious conviction for some is that this demonstrates that God gave us free will. My mother (also an oddball Christian like me) puts another spin on it: she says that the knowledge of good and evil came *after* the eating of the fruit. Since Eve knew not what she was doing before eating the apple, Mom contends that this was not "A Gift of Free Will" from God, but "the imposition of the necessity of choice." -- John Williams, on the TCS mailing list A sin [original sin] without volition is a slap at morality and an insolent contradiction in terms: that which is outside the possibility of choice is outside the province of morality. If a man is evil by birth, he has no will, no power to change it; if he has no will, he can be neither good nor evil; a robot is amoral. To hold, as man’s sin, a fact not open to his choice is a mockery of morality. To hold man’s nature as his sin is a mockery of nature. To punish him for a crime he committed before he was born is a mockery of justice. To hold him guilty in a matter where no innocence exists is a mockery of reason. -- Ayn Rand _Atlas Shrugged_, 1957 "It is possible to pay another man's debts on his behalf, but it is not possible to make a guilty man innocent by suffering in his place." -- Carl Lofmark, 'What is the Bible?' "Anyone who can worship a trinity and insist that his religion is a monotheism can believe anything... just give him time to rationalize it." -- Robert A. Heinlein, "JOB: A Comedy of Justice" "Faith will survive all superstitions, compelling men to think in terms of their own destiny and the responsibility they themselves have in forging that destiny. No one explains how declarations that are manufactured out of whole cloth, that have absolutely no predictive content and therefore no demonstrable connection with our lives as we live them day by day, are supposed to serve as a guide for planning our future. What such declarations do is to condition every nervous system that takes them seriously that it is perfectly sane to ignore the world in which we live, and to live instead in a world of pure fantasy. The man who is willing to accept the doctrine of Christian faith is one who is willing to relinquish all hope of knowing the truth. He accepts all, doubts never, vegetates. He is a slave, a hollow shell into which others can pour all manner of stupidities. Having a conscience, being honest, are empty phrases for him, as he has relinquished his own right to think and is acting only because others are acting through him. He refuses to be honest with himself, no longer talks things over with himself, no longer meditates, contemplates; he only absorbs like a sponge, without discrimination. If he has convictions, they are metamorphized and petrified lies, and not even his own lies but those of colleagues, priests, and politicians who want to use him. If to accept blindly, without the play of reason, is faith, it follows then that what the world needs is not more faith, but more people who think with their own heads and not with the heads of others." -- Chester Dolan, "Holy Daze: Coming to Grips with "Religion," the Holy Daze of Humanity." MOPAH Publications "The inability or unwillingness to hate makes a person worthless. If we do not hate detestable things, the quality of our character is suspect. The Bible commands that we hate." -- H. A. (Buster) Dobbs, Editor of Firm Foundation magazine and Church of Christ preacher, from the June 1994 issue. "Nowhere is there an account or portrait of Christ laughing... he is always stern, serious and as gloomy as a prison guard. Never does one see him laughing until tears appear in his eyes like the roly-poly squint-eyed Buddha guffawing with arms upraised..." -- I.R. "I believe the spreading of Catholicism to be the most horrible means of political and social degradation left in the world." -- Charles Dickens "If you're not a born-again Christian, you're a failure as a human being." -- Jerry Falwell "AIDS is not just God's punishment for homosexuals; it is God's punishment for the society that tolerates homosexuals." -- Rev. Jerry Falwell, 1993 "To sum up (or I shall be pursuing the infinite), it is quite clear that the Christian religion has a kind of kinship with folly in some form, though it has none at all with wisdom. If you want proofs of this, first consider the fact that the very young and the very old, women and simpletons, are the people who take the greatest delight in sacred and holy things, and are therefore always found nearest the altars, led there doubtless solely by their natural instinct. Secondly, you can see how the first great founders of the faith were great lovers of simplicity and bitter enemies of learning. Finally, the biggest fools of all appear to be those who have once been wholly possessed by zeal for Christian piety. They squander their possessions, ignore insults, submit to being cheated, make no distinction between friends and enemies, shun pleasure, sustain themselves on fasting, vigils, tears, toil and humiliations, scorn life and desire only death - in short, they seem to be dead to any normal feelings, as if their spirit dwelt elsewhere than in their body. What else can that be but madness? And so we should not be surprised if the apostles were thought to be drunk on new wine, and Festus judged Paul to be mad." -- Erasmus, 'Praise of Folly' "Life in Lubbock, Texas, taught me two things: One is that God loves you and you're going to burn in hell. The other is that sex is the most awful, filthy thing on earth and you should save it for someone you love." -- Butch Hancock Examples of how Christianity makes a difference in someone's life? It is a fraud which wastes people's time, energy and money. It demands the unquestioning acceptance of absurd, contradictory and ultimately false claims, which inflict psychological torment and prevent people from understanding the world around them. It belittles human knowledge and glorifies gullibility. It convinces people that they are guilty sinners, inducing mental anguish. It tells people to be afraid of their thoughts, which causes neurosis. It declares that unbelievers are evil and deserve to be tortured for eternity, which breeds intolerance for people of other religions and non-theists. It convinces people to put their hopes in prayer, which doesn't work. Some parents have let their children die in agony rather than seek medical help because of this. -- Mike, http://members.aol.com/bbu84/biblicalstupidity/responses2.htm#Why Jesus Christ: Imaginary Playmate to Millions of Adults! "Today, Jesus' name is used to divide us, to make us intolerant, bigoted, hateful. There is nowhere Jesus could be born today were he would feel comfortable. Jesus is being betrayed by the people who claim to believe in him." -- F. Forrester Church, Unitarian minister and author of 'God and Other Famous Liberals', quoted in Life Magazine, Dec. 1994 "Jesus" issue "Gilles de Rais supposedly sodomized, mutilated, and murdered more than 700 children. At his trial he told of his usual procedure of sexually assaulting boys, cutting open their chests and burying his face in their lungs, and opening their abdomens and handling their intestines. He also confessed to necrophilia with the dismembered bodies and to attempted intercourse with a fetus he cut out of a pregnant woman. At his trial de Rais REPENTED, and the bishop of Nantes WAS FORCED TO RECEIVE HIM BACK INTO THE CHURCH." -- 'Bodies Under Siege' p.9-10 "This whole Christian theology thing is that god came down to experience life through his son. Well, how's he experiencing life if he doesn't get laid? Give me a break. And why would he not get laid, as he created the apparatus in the first place?" -- Tori Amos, interview in 'Vox', May, 1994, by Steve Maline The day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus by the Supreme Being as his father, in the womb of a virgin, will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter. -- Thomas Jefferson, 1823 There is on earth among all dangers no more dangerous thing than a richly endowed and adroit reason, especially if she enters into spiritual matters which concern the soul and God. For it is more possible to teach an ass to read than to blind such a reason and lead it right; for reason must be deluded, blinded, and destroyed." -- Martin Luther "Faith must trample underfoot all reason, sense and understanding, and whatever it sees it must put out of sight, and wish to know nothing but the word of God." -- Martin Luther quoted in Walter Kaufmann's Critique of Religion and Philosophy, pages 305-307. "Men have broad and large chests, and small narrow hips, and more understanding than women, who have but small and narrow breasts, and broad hips, to the end they should remain at home, sit still, keep house, and bear and bring up children." -- Martin Luther, Table Talk "Even though they grow weary and wear themselves out with child-bearing, it does not matter; let them go on bearing children till they die, that is what they are there for." -- Martin Luther, Works 20.84 "The woman who is truly Spirit-filled will want to be totally submissive to her husband...This is a truly liberated woman. Submission is God's design for women." -- Beverly LaHaye, "The Spririt-Controlled Woman" "But why are Paul's commands not followed to-day? Why are not the words, sister, mother, daughter, wife, only names for degradation and dishonor? Because men have grown more honorable than their religion, and the strong arm of the law, supported by the stronger arm of public sentiment, demands greater justice than St. Paul ever dreamed of. Because men are growing grand enough to recongize the fact that right is not masculine only, and that justice knows no sex. And because the church no longer makes the laws. Saints have been retired from the legal profession. I can't recall the name of a single one who is practicing law now. Have any of you ever met a saint at the bar? Women are indebted to-day for their emancipation from a position of hopeless degradation, not to their religion nor to Jehovah, but to the justice and honor of the men who have defied his commands. That she does not crouch to-day where St. Paul tried to bind her, she owes to the men who are grand and brave enough to ignore St. Paul, and rise superior to his God." -- Helen H. Gardener "The word and works of God is quite clear, that women were made either to be wives or prostitutes." -- Martin Luther, Works 12.94 "Die verfluchte Huhre, Vernunft." (The damned whore, Reason). -- Martin Luther "God does not work salvation for ficticious sinners. Be a sinner and sin vigorously... Do not for a moment imagine that this life is the abiding place of justice; sin must be committed." -- Martin Luther "Some [demons] are also in the thick black clouds, which cause hail, lightning and thunder, and poison the air, the pastures and grounds." -- Martin Luther "We should throw the Epistle of James out of this school [the University of Wittenberg]...." -- Martin Luther Reason is the greatest enemy faith has. Whoever wants to be Christian should tear the eyes out of his reason. -- Martin Luther "But in what sense can [the United States] be called a Christian nation? Not in the sense that Christianity is the established religion or the people are compelled in any manner to support it. On the contrary, the Constitution specifically provides that 'congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.' Neither is it Christian in the sense that all its citizens are either in fact or in name Christians. On the contrary, all religions have free scope within its borders. Numbers of our people profess other religions, and many reject all. Nor is it Christian in the sense that a profession of Christianity is a condition of holding office or otherwise engaging in public service, or essential to recognition either politically or socially. In fact, the government as a legal organization is independent of all religions." -- Justice David Brewer, "The United States: A Christian Nation", 1905. "Another significant element of biblical faith is its intimate association with virtue. Jesus does not demand that people believe in him in the name of truth; He demands that they believe in him in the name of morality. Acceptance by faith is a virtuous act. 'Blessed are those who have not seen and yet believe,' and as Paul warns, 'whatever does not proceed from faith is sin.'" "This tie between faith and virtue is responsible for the Christian equation of doubt and disbelief with immorality. One is not morally free to investigate the truth of the Christian doctrine by the use of reason; instead one must believe uncritically or be condemned as immoral. A man is thus forced to choose between morality and truth, virtue and reason. The paragon of virtue, according to this view, is the man who refuses to critically evaluate his ideas-and one can scarcely imagine a more vicious form of irrationalism." -- George Smith, _Atheism: The Case Against God_, 1979, Prometheus Books, Buffalo, New York, page 166. "The threat of punishment for disbelief is the crowning touch of Christian misology. Believe in Jesus-regardless of evidence of justification-or be subjected to agonizing torture. With this theme reverberating throughout New Testament, we have intellectual intimidation, transcendental blackmail, in its purest form. Threats replace argumentation, and irrationality gains the edge over reason through an appeal to brute force. Man's ability to think and question becomes his most dangerous liability, and the intellectually frightened, docile, unquestioning believer is presented as the exemplification of moral perfection." -- George Smith, Atheism The Case Against God, page 169. "The use of torture against heretics was formally approved in 1252 by Innocent IV in his bull Ad Existirpanda, and by 1312 cruelty had grown so excessive that it was disapproved by a church council. It nevertheless continued as the principal method of examination and, after the publication of the Malleus, was given extraordinary variety and elaborated with artistic skill by men who pondered long on the best methods on evoking the most intense and prolonged human suffering. According to canon law, torture could be applied once only, but it could be adjourned and 'continued' many times, and if necessary, it could be used on witnesses as well." "The accused was usually first tested in the ordeal of water, which consisted of throwing her into a river or moat; innocence was proved by sinking, guilt by swimming, the principle being that the water refused to receive those who had shaken off the baptismal water through a renunciation of their faith. Even when the ordeal by water immediately revealed that the accused was guilty, it was imperative to obtain a full confession, to which end a variety of very ingenious devices was afterward applied. There were heavy pincers to tear out the fingernails, or to be used red-hot for pinching; there was the rack, a long table on which the accused was tied by her hands and feet, back down, and stretched by rope and windlass until the joints were dislocated; to this were added rollers covered with knobs or sharp spikes, which were placed under the hips and shoulders, and over which the victim was rolled back and forth; there were the thumbscrew, an instrument designed for disarticulating the fingers, Spanish boots for crushing the legs and feet, metal shirts lined with knives, the Iron Virgin, a hollow instrument the size and figure of a woman, with knives so arranged inside that when the two halves of the figure were closed under pressure the accused would be lacerated in its deadly embrace. This and other devices were inscribed with the motto Soli Deo Gloria, 'Glory be only to God.' In addition there were a variety of branding irons, horsewhips, pins to be thrust under the nails, and various devices for suspending the accused in space, head up or head down, with weights attached. These instruments were sprayed with holy water to fortify them against the devil, and to weaken her power of silence the suspected witch was forced to drink an infusion prepared from objects that had been blessed. Official records reveal that suspects were put to eighteen successive tortures in one day, and a witch named Holf was 'continued' fifty-six times. When the torturer and his assistant grew tired, the hands and the feet of the accused were tied, the hair was cut off and brandy was poured over the head and ignited, or sulfur was burned in the armpit or on the breast. At night the victim was chained closely to the floor or the wall where she was helpless prey to the rats and vermin which populated the bloody torture chambers." -- George Smith, _Man And His Gods_, pages 286-287. "I still say it is a self imposed thought prison you do not need." -- Tony Hindle, on Christianity "Christianity has a number of subtleties in its foundations which belong to the Orient. Above all, it knows that it is in itself a matter of absolute indifference whether a thing be true, but a matter of the highest importance /to what extent/ it is believed to be true. Truth and /belief/ that something is true: two completely diverse worlds of interest, almost /antithetical/ worlds -- one gets to them by fundamentally different roads." -- Nietzsche's _The Anti-Christ_, #23 To talk of immaterial existences is to talk of nothings. To say that the human soul, angels, god, are immaterial, is to say they are nothings, or that there is no god, no angels, no soul. I cannot reason otherwise: but I believe I am supported in my creed of materialism by Locke, Tracy, and Stewart. At what age of the Christian church this heresy of immaterialism, this masked atheism, crept in, I do not know. But heresy it certainly is. -- Thomas Jefferson, letter to John Adams, Aug. 15, 1820 Among the sayings and discourses imputed to him [Jesus] by his biographers, I find many passages of fine imagination, correct morality, and of the most lovely benevolence; and others again of so much ignorance, so much absurdity, so much untruth, charlatanism, and imposture, as to pronounce it impossible that such contradictions should have proceeded from the same being. -- Thomas Jefferson, letter to William Short, April 13, 1820 fundamentalist/evangelical christianity = spiritual self-neutering CHRISTIAN PRINCIPLES: Hurt other people, apologize to Jesus, and get into Heaven. [God] puts an apple tree in the middle of [the Garden of Eden] and says, do what you like guys, oh, but don’t eat the apple. Surprise surprise, they eat it and he leaps out from behind a bush shouting "Gotcha." It wouldn’t have made any difference if they hadn’t eaten it... Because if you’re dealing with somebody who has the sort of mentality which likes leaving hats on the pavement with bricks under them you know perfectly well they won’t give up. They’ll get you in the end. -- Douglas Adams _The Restaurant at the End of the Universe_, 1980 "The absurdity of the doctrine known as 'The Fall of Man,' gave birth to that other absurdity known as 'The Atonement'. So that now it is insisted that, as we are rightfully charged with the sin of someone else, we can rightfully be credited with the virtues of another." _Orthodoxy_, Ingersoll Works, Vol. 2, p. 370. The trouble with born-again Christians is that they are an even bigger pain the second time around. -- Herb Caen (b. 1916), U.S. columnist, author. San Francisco Chronicle (20 July 1981) Sunday school: A prison in which children do penance for the evil conscience of their parents. -- H.L. Mencken "If Christ were here now there is one thing he would not be -- a Christian." -- Mark Twain, "Notebook" "Eternal Suffering awaits all those who question God's Infinite love" -- Bill Hicks First Premise: If God exists and the Bible has evidence of being inspired of God, then the Bible is inerrant. Second Premise: God exists and the Bible has evidence of being inspired of God. Conclusion: Therefore, the Bible is inerrant. (Christians need to prove the second premise) (note that the reverse argument would be invalid -- even if the Bible *is* inerrant, it could still be written by humans) "These people's God has shown them by a million acts that he respects none of the Bible's statues. He breaks every one of them himself, adultery and all." -- Maxwell Geismar, _Mark Twain and the Three R's_, p.124 The Christian church has left nothing untouched by its depravity; it has turned every value into worthlessness, and every truth into a lie. -- Frederick Nietzsche The grand mystery of the Christian dogma of the Trinity is that it involves three bachelors, one virgin, and no sex. -- Kaz Dziamka, http://www.infidels.org/org/ffrf/fttoday/dec96/dziamka.html "Gandhi was a non-Christian his entire life; Jeffrey Dahmer allegedly became a Christian shortly before his murder in prison. Thus, according to traditional Christian doctrines, a very noble man burns in Hell forever, while one of the worst serial murderers ever known gets to enjoy eternal paradise. Do you really think that an omniscient god could not devise a better scheme of divine justice than this?" -- Jeffery Jay Lowder "We must question the story logic of having an all-knowing all-powerful God, who creates faulty Humans, and then blames them for his own mistakes." -- Gene Roddenberry. Biblical higher criticism "is preserved in the particular enclave of academic Christian scholarship and is thought to be too unfruitful to share with the average pew-sitter, for it raises more questions than the church can adequately answer. So the leaders of the church would protect the simple believers from concepts they were not trained to understand. In this way that ever-widening gap between academic Christians and the average pew-sitter made its first appearance." Bishop John Shelby Spong, _Resurrection: Myth or Reality?_ (San Fransisco: HarperCollins, 1994), p. 12. "Few theologians would care to pursue their research to its logical conclusion and finally assert, as did Thomas Paine, that the biblical account of Jesus 'has every mark of fraud and imposition stamped upon the face of it.'" George Smith, _Atheism: The Case Against God_ (Buffalo, NY: Prometheus, 1989), pp. 203-204. Don't brain-wash our children with such lies about Noah's Arc as if it really happened and threaten them with hell if they choose not to believe. Schools who teach Biblical myths may as well also teach that genetic engineering is impossible, the world is flat and that it is right to have slavery. Its time for a new Bible. If God wants the faith to spread, then he has to do a better job than this. He sure has failed to convince me and most other people. I'll give him an 'F' for his performance. All powerful God? An all powerful failure! -- Matthew Mason, http://members.tripod.com/~MatthewMason/god.html "Religion tries to force all minds into one mind. Knowing that all cannot believe, the church endeavors to make all say that they believe. Religion longs for the unity of hypocrisy" -- Robert G. Ingersoll, the Great Agnostic. To make sure that my blasphemy is thoroughly expressed, I hereby state my opinion that the notion of a god is a basic superstition, that there is no evidence for the existence of any god(s), that devils, demons, angels and saints are myths, that there is no life after death, heaven nor hell, that the Pope is a dangerous, bigoted, medieval dinosaur, and that the Holy Ghost is a comic book character worthy of laughter and derision. I accuse the Christian god of murder by allowing the Holocaust to take place not to mention the "ethnic cleansing" presently being performed by Christians in our world and I condemn and vilify this mythical deity for encouraging racial prejudice and commanding the degradation of women. -- James Randi Canadian Atheist ONLINE Issue 4 Dr Law, Unashamed to attempt to be Christ-like while unabashedly proud of not being a Christian. crucifixion (read "cruci- fiction") "We are taught to believe that there's an invisible man, who lives in the sky, who has a list of ten things he doesn't want you to do, who watches you every minute, and if you do something he doesn't like, you're going to burn forever. YET HE LOVES YOU!" -- George Carlin, on Politically Incorrect, May 29, 1997 Um, the current idea of Christianity, sure. I think there's an assertion here that that sort of thing doesn't _have_ to be a part of Christian faith. An acquaintance of mine who was "intelligent and Christian" gave up on calling himself a Christian because of problems like this. He started calling himself a "Joshuist" -- after Joshua, the original name of Jesus. (Or so he says. I haven't done the research he has.) I liked the idea of this sort of separation -- wanting to distinguish himself from someone bound by dogma, but continuing to admit that Jesus had some interesting memes that were worth spreading. -- "Kirt A. Dankmyer -- aka Loki" "I've been fighting against the Jews and niggers and for our Lord Jesus Christ and the white race ever since I was a child. And most of the time we've been losing ...We had lost the fight for the preservation of the white race until God himself intervened in earthly affairs with AIDS to rescue and preserve the white race that he had created. So AIDS is a great racial miracle. I praise God all the time for AIDS." -- J. B. Stoner at the Aryan Nations Congress at Hayden Lake Idaho in 1994. Evangelism is the only ism with an angel right in the middle of it. "The scholars have taken the keys of knowledge and hidden them" -- Jesus, Gospel of Thomas 39 (see also Luke 11:52) (how similar to today, eh?) Jesus said, "If the flesh came into being because of spirit, that is a marvel, but if spirit came into being because of the body, that is a marvel of marvels. Yet I marvel at how this great wealth has come to dwell in this poverty." -- Gospel of Thomas, 29 "Fundamentalists are to Christianity what paint-by-numbers is to art." -- Robin Tyler Ruth Green made a poignant observation with respect to Jesus on page 205 in her book The Born Again Skeptics Guide to the Bible, Much of the morality taught by Jesus is impractical to the point of the absurd: Turn the other cheek, pay double damages, judge no one's behavior, go farther than forced to go, don't use your mind but be as children, sell all and give the proceeds to the poor (thus becoming poor yourself), have no thought for the morrow, make no plans, don't worry about food and clothing, be passive and meek, let everybody walk all over you, love people who persecute you as much as those who are kind to you and have regard for your feelings, be mournful, be smug and self-righteous and goad others into mistreating you, forsake everything of this world in preparation for the next, agree with everyone, deny sexual urges, mutilate yourself, have no deep love for your family and seriously consider deserting them, if robbed give the thief the same amount again, don't resist attackers but let them abuse you once more, avoid coarse people not on your level, accept every misfortune gratefully, don't share your culture with dolts, and behave as you please as long as you finally repent. You may recall the passage by Paul that "I become all things to all men in order to save" which is a call to intellectual hypocrisy in the name of spreading Christianity. Those who deny reason cannot be conquered by it. No rational argument will have a rational effect on a man who does not want to adopt a rational attitude. -- Karl Popper The heart of man is "deceitful and desperately wicked." -- Pat Robertson (Answers to 200 of Life's most Probing Questions, Bantom Books, 1984) "A lasting peace will never be built upon man's efforts, because man is sinful, vicious, and wicked." -- Pat Robertson "I'm free, I have been forgiven, God's love has taken off my chains and given me these wings. And I'm free, yeah, and the freedom I've been given is something that not even death can take away from me. Because I'm free, Jesus set me free!" -- Steven Curtis Chapman Philosophy of Religion, 4E., ed. John H. Hick, Prentice Hall: "According to the main Christian tradition, God is the creator and sustainer of the entire universe _ex_nihilo_ (out of nothing) and God's ultimate power over the creation is accordingly unlimited. However... God withholds the exercise of unlimited divine power, thereby forming an autonomous creaturely realm within which God acts noncoercively, seeking creatures' free responses. pg 48/49 he sewed his eyes shut because he was afraid to see he tries to tell me what i put inside of me he's got the answers to ease my curiosity he dreamed a god up and called it christianity he flexed his muscles to keep his flock of sheep in line he made a virus that would kill off all the swine his perfect kingdom of killing suffering and pain demands devotion--atrocities done in his name -- "heresy" -- nine inch nails (the downward spiral, lyrics by Trent Rezno) A Prayer for Salvation Dear Lord, thank you for sending your Son, Jesus to save me from my sins. Forgive me for all of my wrong doing. Lord, I accept you into my heart and give my life and soul to you. Take them and use them to your glory. Help me to live the life you have planned for me. In Jesus name, I pray. Amen "I do not find in orthodox Christianity one redeeming feature." -- Thomas Jefferson More Jefferson: "The clergy converted the simple teachings of Jesus into an engine for enslaving mankind and adulterated by artificial constructions into a contrivance to filch wealth and power to themselves...these clergy, in fact, constitute the real Anti-Christ. Jefferson: "Christianity...(has become) the most perverted system that ever shone on man....Rogueries, absurdities and untruths were perpetrated upon the teachings of Jesus by a large band of dupes and importers led by Paul, the first great corrupter of the teaching of Jesus." Faith, Hope, and Charity. The Three Sisters of the Apocalypse. Wade T. Smith "The good Christian should beware of mathematicians and all those who make empty prophecies. The danger already exists that mathematicians have made a covenant with the devil to darken the spirit and confine man in the bonds of Hell." -- St. Augustine "We know that God exists because the Bible tells us so. And we know that the Bible is true because it is the word of God." (ha!) "I say quite deliberately that the Christian religion, as organized in its churches, has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world." -- Bertrand Russell : #... : # :#####: # : # : ...# : B R DEATH I N ! ___/|__ _ \ \_/ / Have you forgotten about Jesus? < >LOGIC _ < Isn't it about time you did? /_____/ \_\ Thank you for praying for me. Although I do not believe that there is a god to answer your prayers, I appreciate the gesture. However, I really think such a prayer is a demonstration of arrogance. After all, what do you really hope to accomplish by praying for me? Obviously, you're not educating God about my nonbelief; as an omniscient being he should already be aware of that. And certainly you're not telling God what to do. That would imply that you are better than God. But if God already knows I'm not a theist and has chosen not to provide evidence for his existence, then why would he change his mind on the basis of your prayer? -- Jeffery Jay Lowder "His disciples said to him, 'Twenty-four prophets have spoken in Israel, and they all spoke of you.' He said to them, 'You have disregarded the living one who is in your presence, and have spoken of the dead.'" -- Jesus, Gospel of Thomas 13 "The doctrine that the earth is neither the center of the universe nor immovable, but moves even with a daily rotation, is absurd, and both philosophically and theologically false, and at the least an error of faith." [Catholic Church's decision against Galileo Galilei] "It is surely harmful to souls to make it a heresy to believe what is proved." [Galileo Galilei, "The Authority of Scripture in Philosophical Controversies"] ------------------------------------------------------------------**** Religion: Christianity: Faith: Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen" -- The Holy Bible, Hebrews 11:1 For many, faith is a suitable substitute for knowledge, as death is for a difficult life. "Faith is not to be confused with a mere intellectual assent to the doctrinal teachings of Christianity, though that is obviously necessary. It includes a radical and total commitment to Him as the Lord of one's life." -- _The Living Bible Encyclopedia_ Faith is required in 2 situations: Lies and Mistakes. The truth does not require faith... -- 'Buck' Field For me, faith isn't necessarily about religion. It's about dreams -- daring to have them and to risk pursuing them. -- Jon Katz ******* Conscious faith is freedom. Emotional faith is slavery. Mechanical faith is foolishness. -- G.I. Gurdjief ******* "Irrevocable commitment to any religion is not only intellectual suicide; it is positive unfaith because it closes the mind to any new vision of the world. Faith is, above all, openness - an act of trust in the unknown." -- Alan Watts, "The Book" "Faith may be defined briefly as an illogical belief in the occurrence of the improbable.... A man full of faith is simply one who has lost (or never had) the capacity for clear and realistic thought. He is not a mere ass: he is actually ill." -- H.L. Mencken, New York Times Magazine, 11 September 1955 "Faith is the antithesis of proof." -- NY State Supreme Court Justice Edward J. Greenfield, 1995 FAITH: Fanatics Abandoning Intelligence Through Holiness FAITH - An attitude fostered by individuals in high places in order to ensure the subservience of those in their charge. Phaith; n 1. the internalizing and embodying of a principle, frequenlty resulting from an experience of boundary dissolution and/or seeming participation in a wider, more pervasive consciousness than is the accepted norm and integrating the principle and/or the effects of the experience into one's actions, perceptions, and decission making. 2. that level of trust in one's modus which is necessary to function in an uncertain world. -- KMO, on the CoV mailing list. "Faith is deciding to allow yourself to believe something your intellect would otherwise cause you to reject -- otherwise there's no need for faith." "Faith, as the theologians and other mystics use the term, is the capacity to accept as "true" declarations that have no predictive content. It is their way of asking us to believe something for no other reason than because they say it is so. In quoting the Council of Trent, "He who is gifted with heavenly knowledge of faith is free from an inquisitive curiosity." Walter Lippmann in 'A Preface to Morals' adds: "These words are rasping to our modern ears, but there is no occasion to doubt that the men who uttered them had made a shrewd appraisal of average human nature." -- Chester Dolan, "Holy Daze: Coming to Grips with "Religion," the Holy Daze of Humanity", "Faith" section, pp.130-135, MOPAH Publications I said faith was belief without evidence. Another way of putting it is belief without question, or, more accurately, belief beyond questioning. -- David McFadzean Faith can be understood as an individual's and/ or a community's direct confrontation with itself in its whole nature as free and responsible and "thereby with the incomprehensible ground of this human reality, called God." -- Christian Mendenhall, PhD, http://kali.murdoch.edu.au/~academy/articles/ jnode._FAITH._Phil_Morle_.847118000.0.html "Faith is the great cop-out, the great excuse to evade the need to think and evaluate evidence. Faith is belief in spite of, even perhaps because of, the lack of evidence." -- Richard Dawkins "Faith" means not wanting to know what is true. -- Friedrich Nietzsche _The Anti-Christ_, 1888 "We may define "faith" as the firm belief in something for which there is no evidence. Where there is evidence, no one speaks of "faith." We do not speak of faith that two and two are four or that the earth is round. We only speak of faith when we wish to substitute emotion for evidence. The substitution of emotion for evidence is apt to lead to strife, since different groups, substitute different emotions." -- Bertrand Russell Faith, n. Belief without evidence in what is told by one who speaks without knowledge, of things without parallel. [Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary] "Faith strikes me as intellectual laziness." -- Robert A. Heinlein I would define faith, however, as belief WITHOUT RECOURSE TO evidence -- Reed Konsler konsler@ascat.harvard.edu gullibility + arrogance Unshakable faith = ----------------------- common sense -- Scott Davies (scottd@cory.EECS.Berkeley.EDU) on alt.atheism.moderated FAITH IS THE DIRECTING OF ONE'S LIFE BY A THOERY -- Cathy, Faith: A belief which is held to be valid and reasonable, without regard to it's rationality. -- Reed Konsler "Another meme of the religious meme complex is called faith. It means blind trust, in the absence of evidence, even in the teeth of evidence. The story of Doubting Thomas is told, not so that we shall admire Thomas, but so that we can admire the other apostles in comparison. Thomas demanded evidence. Nothing is more lethal for certain kinds of meme than a tendency to look for evidence. The other apostles, whose faith was so strong that they did not need evidence, are held up to us as worthy of imitation. The meme for blind faith secures its own perpetuation by the simple unconscious expedient of discouraging rational inquiry." -- Richard Dawkins, "The Selfish Gene" ------------------------------------------------------------------**** Religion: Christianity: History: General: After Constantine, Emperor from 306-337 A.D., converted on the eve of a battle in 312, Christianity was made the state religion. Before the year 66 there were around 40,000 Christians in the empire. By 100 AD there were 80,000 in Asia Minor, and 320,000 in the empire. An incredible growth rate that has never been surpassed or even equaled. -- http://www.theology.edu/b416.htm (note that Scientology has expanded MUCH faster than that, thus falsifying this claim! Also of note for growth rates are certain new Japanese religions) "We found a great number of books...and since they contained nothing but superstitions and falsehoods of the Devil we burned them all." -- Catholic Bishop Diego De Landa, after burning priceless books of Mayan history and science, July 1562 "...I do further promise and declare, that I will, when opportunity presents, make and wage relentless war, secretly or openly, against all heretics, Protestants and Liberals, as I am directed to do and to extirpate and exterminate them from the face of the whole earth, and that I will spare neither sex, age nor condition, and that I will hang, waste, boil, flay, strangle and bury alive these infamous heretics; rip up the stomachs and wombs of their women and crush their infants' heads against the wall, in order to annihilate forever their execrable race." -- Pope Paul III, 1576 "Every man is free to adopt and profess any religion, which, under the guidance of reason, he believes to be true." -- Rome's "Syllabus of Condemned Opinions" "Consequently, in the name of God Almighty, by the authority of the Apostles Saints Peter and Paul, and by our Own, We reprove and condemn this Charter [the Magna Carta]; under pain of anathema We forbid the King to observe it or the barons to demand its execution. We declare the Charter null and of no effect, as well as all the obligations contracted to confirm it. It is Our wish that in no case should it have any effect." -- Pope Innocent III (1161-1216) "The right of holding slaves is clearly established in the Holy Scriptures, both by precept and example." -- Rev. R. Furman, D.D., Baptist, of South Carolina "Taking its root in the lower classes, the religion continues to spread among the vulgar: nay, one can even say it spreads because of its vulgarity and the illiteracy of its adherents. And while there are a few moderate, reasonable, and intelligent people who interpret its beliefs allegorically, yet it thrives in its purer form among the ignorant." -- Celsus, on the spread of Christianity, _True Discourse_, c. 170 CE "Christians, it is needless to say, utterly detest each other. They slander each other constantly with the vilest forms of abuse and cannot come to any sort of agreement in their teaching. Each sect brands its own, fills the head of its own with deceitful nonsense, and makes perfect little pigs of those it wins over to its side." -- Celsus (2nd Century C.E.) "You are going to see again the child about which you read in the Terrible Judgment, that it was condemned to hell. See! it is a pitiful sight. The little child is in this red hot oven. Hear the fire! It beats its head against the roof of the oven. It stamps its little feet on the floor. You can see on the face of this little child what you see on the faces of all in hell * despair, desperate and horrible... This child committed very bad mortal sins, knowing well the harm of what it was doing, and knowing that hell would be the punishment. God was very good to this child. Very likely God saw that this child would get worse and worse, and would never repent, and so it would have to be punished much more in hell. So God, in His mercy, called it out of the world in its early childhood." -- from Tracts for Spiritual Reading, an officially approved Catholic Children's book. In his Approbation, William Meagher, Vicar-General of Dublin, states "I have carefully read over this Little Volume for Children and have found nothing whatever in it contrary to the doctrines of the Holy Faith; but on the contrary, a great deal to charm, instruct and edify the youthful classes for whose benefit it has been written." "Entering the city [Jerusalem, July 15, 1099], our pilgrims pursued and killed Saracens up to the Temple of Solomon, in which they had assembled and where they gave battle to us furiously for the whole day so that their blood flowed throughout the whole temple. Finally, having overcome the pagans, our knights seized a great number of men and women, and the killed whom they wished and whom they wished they let live.... Then, rejoicing and weeping from extreme joy, our men went to worship at the sepulchre of jour Saviour Jesus and thus fulfilled their pledge to Him.... They also ordered that all the Saracen dead should be thrown out of the city because of the extreme stench, for the city was almost full of their cadavers. The live Saracens dragged the dead out before the gates and made piles of them, like houses. No one has ever heard of or seen such a slaughter of pagan peoples since pyres were made of them like boundary marks, and no one except God knows their number." -- Histoire anonyme de la premiere croisade, L. Brehier, ed. Paris: Champion, 1924 (From The Portable Medieval Reader, Ed. James Bruce Ross and Mary Martin McLaughlin) Monarchianism: A Christian heresy which taught that God is a single entity and that Jesus was a pure man, born of a virgin, who was adopted by God. -- http://www.religioustolerance.org/glossary.htm "All Gaza's temples are torn down and burned and the city is cleansed of every belief but the Christian faith. The most stubborn opponents, faute de mieux, are tied up, marched away to the provincial capital, severely tortured, and all killed mala morte, 'a great number.'" -- Ramsay MacMullen, "Christianizing the Roman Empire", p.89, from information from the Life of Porphyry. "Anyone who asserted wrong teachings, anyone serving the devil or his demons, earned instead an equally remarkable antagonism. In their official high meetings together, Christians thus could not keep their own disagreements within the bounds of civil language; their continual quarrels required the intervention of the civil authorities; and all this was well known and noted by friends and foes alike." -- Ramsay MacMullen, "Christianizing the Roman Empire", p.92 No wild beasts are as hostile to men as Christian sects in general are to one another. -- Emperor Julian "The party stands on the basis of Positive Christianity, and Positive Christianity IS National Socialism...National Socialism is the doing of God's will...God's will reveals itself in German blood...Dr. Zoellner and Count Galen have tried to make clear to me that Christianity consists in faith in Christ as the Son of God. That makes me laugh... No, Christianity is not dependent upon the Apostle's Creed... True Christianity is represented by the party, and the German people are now called by the party and especially by the Fuehrer to a real Christianity...The Fuehrer is the herald of a new revelation." -- Dr. Hans Kerrl, Nazi Minister for Church Affairs 97 Thus, my beloved, having danced with us the Lord went forth. And we as men gone astray or dazed with sleep fled this way and that. I, then, when I saw him suffer, did not even abide by his suffering, but fled unto the Mount of Olives, weeping at that which had befallen. And when he was crucified on the Friday, at the sixth hour of the day, darkness came upon all the earth. And my Lord standing in the midst of the cave and enlightening it, said: John, unto the multitude below in Jerusalem I am being crucified and pierced with lances and reeds, and gall and vinegar is given me to drink. But unto thee I speak, and what I speak hear thou. I put it into thy mind to come up into this mountain, that thou mightiest hear those things which it behoveth a disciple to learn from his teacher and a man from his God. 98 And having thus spoken, he showed me a cross of light fixed (set up), and about the cross a great multitude, not having one form: and in it (the cross) was one form and one likeness [so the MS.; I would read: and therein was one form and one likeness: and in the cross another multitude, not having one form]. And the Lord himself I beheld above the cross, not having any shape, but only a voice: and a voice not such as was familiar to us, but one sweet and kind and truly of God, saying unto me: John, it is needful that one should hear these things from me, for I have need of one that will hear. This cross of light is sometimes called the (or a) word by me for your sakes, sometimes mind, sometimes Jesus, sometimes Christ, sometimes door, sometimes a way, sometimes bread, sometimes seed, sometimes resurrection, sometimes Son, sometimes Father, sometimes Spirit, sometimes life, sometimes truth, sometimes faith, sometimes grace. And by these names it is called as toward men: but that which it is in truth, as conceived of in itself and as spoken of unto you (MS. us), it is the marking-off of all things, and the firm uplifting of things fixed out of things unstable, and the harmony of wisdom, and indeed wisdom in harmony [this last clause in the MS. is joined to the next: 'and being wisdom in harmony']. There are of the right hand and the left, powers also, authorities, lordships and demons, workings, threatenings, wraths, devils, Satan, and the lower root whence the nature of the things that come into being proceeded. 99 This cross, then, is that which fixed all things apart (al. joined all things unto itself) by the (or a) word, and separate off the things that are from those that are below (lit. the things from birth and below it), and then also, being one, streamed forth into all things (or, made all flow forth. I suggested: compacted all into ). But this is not the cross of wood which thou wilt see when thou goest down hence: neither am I he that is on the cross, whom now thou seest not, but only hearest his (or a) voice. I was reckoned to be that which I am not, not being what I was unto many others: but they will call me (say of me) something else which is vile and not worthy of me. As, then, the place of rest is neither seen nor spoken of, much more shall I, the Lord thereof, be neither seen. 100 Now the multitude of one aspect (al. of one aspect) that is about the cross is the lower nature: and they whom thou seest in the cross, if they have not one form, it is because not yet hath every member of him that came down been comprehended. But when the human nature (or the upper nature) is taken up, and the race which draweth near unto me and obeyeth my voice, he that now heareth me shall be united therewith, and shall no more be that which now he is, but above them, as I also now am. For so long as thou callest not thyself mine, I am not that which I am (or was): but if thou hear me, thou, hearing, shalt be as I am, and I shall be that which I was, when I thee as I am with myself. For from me thou art that (which I am). Care not therefore for the many, and them that are outside the mystery despise; for know thou that I am wholly with the Father, and the Father with me. 101 Nothing, therefore, of the things which they will say of me have I suffered: nay, that suffering also which I showed unto thee and the rest in the dance, I will that it be called a mystery. For what thou art, thou seest, for I showed it thee; but what I am I alone know, and no man else. Suffer me then to keep that which is mine, and that which is thine behold thou through me, and behold me in truth, that I am, not what I said, but what thou art able to know, because thou art akin thereto. Thou hearest that I suffered, yet did I not suffer; that I suffered not, yet did I suffer; that I was pierced, yet I was not smitten; hanged, and I was not hanged; that blood flowed from me, and it flowed not; and, in a word, what they say of me, that befell me not, but what they say not, that did I suffer. Now what those things are I signify unto thee, for I know that thou wilt understand. Perceive thou therefore in me the praising (al. slaying al. rest) of the (or a) Word (Logos), the piercing of the Word, the blood of the Word, the wound of the Word, the hanging up of the Word, the suffering of the Word, the nailing (fixing) of the Word, the death of the Word. And so speak I, separating off the manhood. Perceive thou therefore in the first place of the Word; then shalt thou perceive the Lord, and in the third place the man, and what he hath suffered. 102 When he had spoken unto me these things, and others which I know not how to say as he would have me, he was taken up, no one of the multitudes having beheld him. And when I went down I laughed them all to scorn, inasmuch as he had told me the things which they have said concerning him; holding fast this one thing in myself, that the Lord contrived all things symbolically and by a dispensation toward men, for their conversion and salvation. -- The Acts of John, 97-102 The whole discourse (87-105) is the best popular exposition we have of the Docetic view of our Lord's person Apparently, The Acts of John was once a very popular document circulating amongst most of the heretical denominations http://wesley.nnc.edu/noncanon/acts/actjohn.htm "It may be conceded as possible, and even probable, that a religious enthusiast..., named Jesus, was a germ of this mythical Jesus Christ. But this is an assumption rather than a demonstrated fact." -- John E. Remsburg (1848-1919), historian and author "As a historian, I confess to a certain amusement when I hear the Judeo-Christian tradition praised as the source of our present-day concern for human rights, that is, for the valuable idea that all individuals everywhere are entitled to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness on this earth. In fact, the great religious ages were notable for their indifference to human rights in the contemporary sense. They were notorious not only for acquiescence in poverty, inequality, exploitation, and oppression, but also for enthusiastic justification of slavery, persecution, abandonment of small children, torture, and genocide." -- Arthur Schlesinger Jr., 1989 speech "The tiny inscription fragments from Dan, chiseled more than a hundred years after the alleged event, are presently the nearest there is to written evidence of the existence of the great King David and the even greater King Solomon. If I might borrow a popular phrase, Professor Rainey and his highly professional colleagues in academe are ignoring the 800-pound gorilla in the corner, which is the fact that thousands of tenth-century B.C.E. ostraca and artifacts have been found confirming the existence of minor neighboring kingdoms that were contemporary with David and Solomon, but there is nothing, not one potshard, not a scrap, to confirm the greatness of the founders of the United Monarchy." -- Peter Vokac, Tucson, Arizona. Letter in Biblical Archaeology Review, Mar/Apr '95, pg. 20 "St. Augustine found lying among the clergy so prevalent that he wrote two books (De Mendacio in 395 A.D. and Contra Mendacium in 420 A.D.), urging that it stop." -- Gordon Stein, 'A Second Anthology of Atheism and Rationalism',p. 65 Hermas, an early church father, wrote: "O Lord, I never spoke a true word in my life, I have always affirmed a lie as truth to all men, and no man contradicted me; instead, they all gave credit to my works." Visions of Hermas, vol. 2, c.3. Lactantius, a Christian apologist of the 4th century, wrote: "Among those who seek power and gain from religion, there will never be wanting an inclination to forge and lie for it." Quoted by C. Middleton, Misc. Works of Conyers Middleton, D.D., vol. 3, p. 51 (1752) Gregory of Nazanzius, a 4th century church father and bishop of Caesarea, wrote to St. Jerome: "A little jargon is all that is necessary to impose on the people. The less they comprehend, the more they admire." Quoted by C. Volney, The Ruins, p. 177 (1872). Angustine of Hippo, the greatest figure in Christian antiquity, wrote: "It is lawful, then, to him that discusses, disputes and preaches of things eternal, or to him that narrates of things temporal pertaining to religion or piety, to conceal at fitting times whatever seems fit to be concealed." Augustine, On Lying, c. 19 Jerome, who originally translated the Bible from Hebrew into Latin, knew of the error and insisted on perpetuating it rather than correcting it. He wrote: "For at the present day, now that the whole world has embraced the faith, the Jews argue that when Isaiah says, 'behold, a virgin shall conceive and bear a son,' the Hebrew word denotes a young woman, and not a virgin; that is to say, the word is 'almah', and not 'bethulah.' -- Jerome, The Perpetual Virginity of the Blessed Mary, vol. 6, page 336. There are actually some 200 gospels, epistles and other books concerning the life of Jesus the Christ. Of these, only 27 are accepted by the church. The other 173 have been declared by the church itself to be "pious frauds." "If one is willing to make adjustments in the historical claims of the Bible, they can be correlated with the archaeological evidence if one is willing to take some liberties with the archaeological evidence." -- J. Maxwell Miller, Biblical archaeologist "In the light of their doctrinal dualism and the intransigence, sometimes amounting to ferocity, with which its spirit was applied, Christians might have been expected to press their differences home with every device and force available. Moreover, if they are measured by their bishops (and a better yardstick is not easily thought of), close to half the population who called themselves church members toward mid-century must have belonged to some allegiance other than the one that ultimately prevailed: in other words, they were Arian, donatist, or Meletian. Sectarian rivalry was thus a very real thing, a spur to great exertions. Egypt especially, being split three ways, echoed to the shouts of partisans, the din of violence, and laments for those robbed, stripped naked, flogged, imprisoned, exiled, sent to the quarries and coppermines, conscripted into the army, tortured, decapitated, strangled, or stoned or beaten to death. The express object was to make converts." -- Ramsay MacMullen, "Christianizing the Roman Empire", p. 93 "As it happens, Josephus, who mentions John the Baptist, does not mention Jesus. There is, to be sure, a paragraph in his history of the Jews which is devoted to Jesus, but it interrupts the flow of the discourse and seems suspiciously like an afterthought. Scholars generally believe this to have been an insertion by some early Christian editor who, scandalized that Joesphus should talk of the period without mentioning the Messiah, felt the insertion to be a pious act." -- Isaac Asimov, 'Asimov's Guide To The Bible' ISBN 0-517-34582-X "People gave ear to an upstart astrologer who strove to show that the earth revolves, not the heavens or the firmament, the sun and the moon... This fool wishes to reverse the entire science of astronomy; but sacred scripture tells us [Joshua 10:13] that Joshua commanded the sun to stand still, and not the earth." -- Martin Luther in one of his "Table Talks" in 1539 "The church says that the earth is flat, but I know that it is round, for I have seen the shadow on the moon, and I have more faith in a shadow than in the church." -- Ferdinand Magellan "The careful student of history will discover that Christianity has been of very little value in advancing civilization, but has done a great deal toward retarding it." -- Matilda Joslyn Gage, "Woman, Church and State" "The Essenses are not mentioned anywhere in the New Testament, although their numbers were at least as great as the Sadducees and Pharisees. This would suggest an element of intentional secrecy regarding the influence of the sect on the teachings and work of Jesus." -- "The Jesus Conspiracy: The Turin Shroud and the Truth About the Resurrection" by Holger Kersten & Elmer R. Gruber p. 239 "The Essenes had various communities in Palestine, with the main center at Qumran on the shores of the Dead Sea. The sensational discovery of numerous scrolls in a cave at Qumran in 1947 made it possible to gain glimpses into a community which practiced in a way, 'Christianity before Christ'. As is well known, the translation of the material was systematically boycotted and only very recently almost all the Qumran texts have appeared in print. Similarities between the teaching of Jesus and those of the Essenes are obvious..." -- "The Jesus Conspiracy: The Turin Shroud and the Truth About the Resurrection" by Holger Kersten & Elmer R. Gruber p. 239 "Qumran lies directly within the orbit of Jesus' early activity. His first public appearance occurred in this region. It is a striking fact that the place where Jesus received the ritual baptismal bath in the Jordan at the hands of John, was only 5 km from the monastic settlement of Qumran. There is of course a reason for this. John the Baptist was a schaliach, an apostle of the sect of Qumran... John led a community of Essene moderates. After his baptism one should similarly count Jesus as a member of one of these communities, and refer to him as a Nazarene. This later led to the falsely translated and irrational description of him as 'Jesus of Nazareth', a place which was not even in existence at the time of Jesus. Later a sign was said to have been fixed to the Cross, giving charge against him as membership of this sect: "Jesus, Nazarenus, Rex Iudaeorum--Jesus, Nazarene, King of the Jews." -- "The Jesus Conspiracy: The Turin Shroud and the Truth About the Resurrection" by Holger Kersten & Elmer R. Gruber p. 239 Scholars investigating the Nag Hammadi find discovered that some of the texts tell the origin of the human race in terms very different from the usual reading of Genesis: the Testimony of Truth, for example, tells the story of the Garden of Eden from the viewpoint of the serpent! "I have repeated whatever may rebound to the glory, and suppressed all that could tend to the disgrace, of our religion." -- Eusebius, early Church Father, in 'Praeparatio Evangelica', chapter 31, book 12 "In another area of human rights, many Christian clergymen advocated slavery. Historian Larry Hise notes in his book 'Pro-Slavery' that ministers 'wrote almost half of all defenses of slavery published in America.' He lists 275 men of the cloth who used the Bible to prove that white people were entitled to own black people as work animals." -- James A. Haught, 'Holy Horrors' "Mark's declaration that Jesus came from the dispersion (nazareth), meaning the worldwide community of Jews outside Judaea (equivalent to diaspora), was misinterpreted by Matthew and Luke to mean that he came from a city called Nazareth [to fulfill prophesy]. In fact the term nazarite, or nazoraios, had nothing to do with any city of Nazareth, since no such place existed until the fifth century CE when one was built by a Christian Emperor to whom the nonexistence of Jesus' alleged hometown was an embarrassment. (Although the site of Nazareth was occupied in the first century, there is no evidence of any village named Nazareth earlier than the fifth century....)" -- William Harwood, 'Mythology's Last Gods: Yahweh and Jesus' (Prometheus), p. 260] "Christianity did not destroy paganism; it adopted it. The Greek mind dying, came to a transmigrated life in the theology and liturgy of the Church; the Greek language, having reigned for centuries over philosophy, became the vehicle of Christian literature and ritual; the Greek mysteries passed down into the impressive mystery of the Mass. Other pagan cultures contributed to the syncretist result. From Egypt came the ideas of a divine trinity, the Last Judgement, and a personal immortality of reward and punishment; from Egypt the adoration of the Mother and Child, and the mystic theosophy that made Neoplatonism and Gnosticism, and obscured the Christian creed; there, too, Christian moanasticism would find its exemplars and its source. From Phrygia came the worship of the Great Mother; from Syria the resurrection drama of Adonis; from Thrace, perhaps the cult of Dionysus, the dying and saving god. From Persia came millenarianism, the "ages of the world," the "final conflagration," the dualism of Satan and God, of Darkness and Light; already in the Forth Gospel Christ is the "Light shining in the darkness, and the darkness has never put it out." The Mithraic ritual so closely resembled the eucharistic sacrifice of the Mass that Christian fathers charged the Devil with inventing these similarities to mislead frail minds. Christianity was the last great creation of the ancient pagan world." -- Will and Ariel Durant, 'The Story of Civilization' "Styles of sculpture, music, and dance used to vary greatly from village to village within New Guinea. Some villagers along the Sepik River and in the Asmat swamps produced carvings that are now world-famous because of their quality. But New Guinea villagers have been increasing coerced or seduced into abandoning their artistic traditions. When I visited an isolated triblet of 578 people at Bomai in 1965, the missionary controlling the only store had just manipulated the people into burning all their art. Centuries of unique cultural development ("heathen artifacts," as the missionary put it) had thus been destroyed in one morning." -- Jared Diamond, 'The Third Chimpanzee: The Evolution and Future of the Human Animal', 1992, Harper Collins, New York, page 231 "...Jesus was almost certainly not 'of Nazareth'. An overwhelming body of evidence indicates that Nazareth did not exist in biblical times. The town is unlikely to have appeared before the third century." -- Baigent, Leigh and Lincoln, 'The Messianic Legacy' "It is clear that the canonical gospels are neither the second-century tissue of fabrications argued by Strauss and others, nor quite the contemporary eyewitness descriptions that, given the nature of Christianity's claims, we might not unreasonably expect. Ironically, it has not been theologians but outsiders, such as scholars of ancient history, well used to imperfections in the works of the pagan writers of antiquity, who have been most prepared to recognize the strong vein of authenticity underlying the gospels. As argued by Nicholas Sherwin-White in ‘Roman Society and Roman Law in the New Testament: ...it can be maintained that those who had a passionate interest in the story of Christ, even if their interest in events was parabolical and didactic rather than historical, would not be led by that very fact to pervert and utterly destroy the historical kernel of their material. Sherwin-White's view has been echoled by the Oxford English don C.S. Lewis, speaking particularly of the John gospel: I have been reading poems, romances, vision literature, legends, myths all my life. I know what they are like. I know that none of them is like this. Of this text there are only two possible views. Either this is reportage--though it may no doubt contain errors--pretty close to the facts; nearly as close as Bowell. Or else, some unknown writer in the second century, without known predecessors or successor, suddenly anticipated the whole technique of modern, novelistic, realistic narrative. If it is untrue, it must be narrative of that kind. The reader who doesn't see this simply has not learned to read. -- Jesus: The Evidence by Ian Wilson, p. 49 "To assert that the earth revolves around the sun is as erroneous as to claim that Jesus was not born of a virgin." Cardinal Bellarmine, during the trial of Galileo in 1615. "About 200 B.C. mystery cults began to appear in Rome just as they had earlier in Greece. Most notable was the Cybele cult centered on Vatican hill ... Associated with the Cybele cult was that of her lover, Attis (the older Tammuz, Osiris, Dionysus, or Orpheus under a new name). He was a god of ever-reviving vegetation. Born of a virgin, he died and was reborn annually. The festival began as a day of blood on Black Friday and culminated after three days in a day of rejoicing over the resurrection." -- Gerald L. Berry, "Religions of the World" "In 1163 Pope Alexander III forbade the study of natural philosophy, partly because of the Arabs, who were the only natural philosophers of the time, were atheists and infidels, and partly because there was nothing said about natural philosophy in the Bible. In the next century the Franciscans and the Dominicans, although fighting with each other over the deification of the Virgin Mary, jointly and in the most emphatic terms condemned all experiments in chemistry, physics and medicine. In 1380 Charles V of France and in 1404 Henry IV of England promulgated sharp-toothed laws against the possession of furnaces, crucibles, retorts, and other apparatus, and similar measures were taken in this or later periods to exterminate the 'experimental' method in Italy and Spain, the experimenters being dreaded as the cohorts of Satan. Even mathematics was looked upon with fear because of the magical power of numbers, and at the time of the persecution of Galileo (1564-1642) mathematicians were denounced as the greatest of all heretics." -- Homer W. Smith, _Man And His Gods_, 1957, Grosset and Dunlap, New York, page 261. The Gospels are Jewish books "written, to a greater or lesser degree, in the midrashic style of the Jewish sacred storyteller, a style that most of us do not begin even now to comprehend. This style is not concerned with historic accuracy. It is concerted with meaning and understanding. [For example] the Jewish writers of antiquity interpreted God's presence to be with Joshua after the death of Moses by repeating the parting of the waters story (Joshua 3)....When the story of Jesus' baptism was told, the gospel writers asserted that Jesus parted not the Jordan River, but the heavens." That is the way the midrashic principle worked. Stories about heroes of the Jewish past were heightened and retold again and again about heroes of the present moment, not because those same events actually occurred, but because the reality of God revealed in those moments was like the reality of God known in the past." -- John Shelby Spong, Liberating the Gospels, p. 36 Great Medical Disasters by Dr. Richard Gordon (1986-Dorset Press): "Heal the sick, cleanse the lepers, raise the dead, cast out devils, Jesus sent forth his disciples, knowing of course the forthcoming split of medicine into therapeutics, epidemiology, resuscitation, and psychiatry. The Early Christians obeyed with evangelical zeal. They claimed exclusive world rights in healing, prescribing prayer, and fasting. The human was sacred, never to be violated by dissection (the Moslems agreed). RELIGION THUS IMMOBILIZED MEDICINE FOR FIFTEEN CENTURIES." The evidence from Ai was mainly negative. There was a great walled city there beginning about 3000 B. C., more than 1800 years before Israel's emergence in Canaan. But this city was destroyed about 2400 B. C., after which the site was abandoned. Despite extensive excavation, no evidence of a Late Bronze Age (1550- 1200 B. C.) Canaanite city was found. *In short, there was no Canaanite city here for Joshua to conquer* ("Joseph A. Callaway: 1920-1988," November/December 1988, p. 24, emphasis added). "The 'Christian spirit' which persecutes the gay and lesbian community is the same as that which perpetrated the Crusades on the Arab world, which outlawed Copernicus, Galileo, Bacon, and Darwin, which justified the enslavement and segregation of African-Americans, which kept silence during the Holocaust, and silenced women as spokes people for God. As it always was, this cruel spirit is still in error." -- Dr. George Williamson, Senior Pastor, First Baptist Church of Granville The result of their scholarly investigations has been that virtually all that the Bible has to say about the early history of Israel has been rejected.... Gone are Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Moses, Joshua and now even David. The Egyptian sojourn and exodus stories, along with Sinai wanderings and Joshua's military entry into Canaan, have been reduced to retrojections or inventions by later Biblical writers ("Of Minimalists and Maximalists," Biblical Archaeology Review, Vol. 21, No. 2, March/April 1995, p. 22). "Roman sources that mention him [Jesus] are all dependent on Christian reports. Jesus' trial did not make headlines in Rome, and the archives there had no record of it. If archives were kept in Jerusalem, they were destroyed when revolt broke out in 66 CE or during the subsequent war. That war also devastated Galilee. Whatever records there may have been did not survive. When he was executed, Jesus was no more important to the outside world than the two brigands or insurgents executed with him -- whose name we do not know." E.P. Sanders, _The Historical Figure of Jesus_ (New York: Penguin, 1993), p. 49. Under the reign of Tiberius, the whole earth, or at least a celebrated province of the Roman Empire, was involved in a preternatural darkness of three hours. Even this miraculous event, which ought to have excited the wonder, the curiosity, and the devotion of mankind, passed without notice in an age of science and history. It happened during the lifetime of Seneca and the elder Pliny, who must have experienced the immediate effects, or received the earliest intelligence, of the prodigy. Each of these philosophers, in a laborious work, has recorded all the great phenomena of nature, earthquakes, meteors, comets, and eclipses, which his indefatigable curiosity could collect. Both the one and the other have omitted to mention the greatest phenomenon to which the mortal eye has been witness since the creation of the globe. A distinct chapter of Pliny is designed for eclipses of an extraordinary nature and unusual duration; but he contents himself with describing the singular defect of light which followed the murder of Caesar... -- Edward Gibbon _The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire_, ch 14 (see Matt 27:45, Mark 15:33, Luke 23:44, event NOT in John) "The main difficulty about the story as it stands is that there is no evidence anywhere else of the custom of releasing a prisoner at feast time. If Barabbas had been condemned to death, only the Roman emperor could have released him, and it is unlikely that anything could have induced a responsible governor to release of notorious nationalist. It is entirely out of character with what is known of Pilate from Josephus." -- Great Events of Biblical Times "He had been only about six hours on the cross, and was a young and presumably healthy man of thirty or nearby. An ordinary man of his age would live as many days on the cross as he lived hours; for, no vital organ being injured, the sufferer hung by the hands and feet, first in pain, and then in stupor, till he ultimately expired in syncope and exhaustion. A nail through each hand and a nail through each foot for six hours did not and could not kill Christ, or any other fairly strong man of thirty." -- W. S. Ross, "Did Jesus Christ Rise from the Dead?" John Jackson said the following on page 8 in Pagan Origins of the Christ Myth, The paucity of our information concerning the Christian savior is concisely expressed by Mr. Robert Keable, in his work, The Great Galilean: 'No man knows sufficient of the early life of Jesus to write a biography of him. For that matter, no one knows enough for the normal New York Times obituary notice of a great man. If regard were had to what we should call, in correct speech, definitely historical facts, scarcely three lines could be filled. Moreover, if newspapers had been in existence, and if that obituary notice had had to be written in the year of his death, no editor could have found in the literature of his day so much as his name. Yet few periods of the ancient world were so well documented as the period of Augustus and Tiberius. But no contemporary knew of his existence.... His first mention in any surviving document, secular or religious, is twenty years after. Thomas Jefferson: "I have examined all the known superstitions of the word, and I do not find in our particular superstition of Christianity one redeeming feature. They are all alike founded on fables and mythology. Millions of innocent men, women and children, since the introduction of Christianity, have been burnt, tortured, fined and imprisoned. What has been the effect of this coercion? To make one half the world fools and the other half hypocrites; to support roguery and error all over the earth." -- Six Historic Americans by John E. Remsburg, letter to William Short ------------------------------------------------------------------**** Religion: Christianity: History: Hitler: "What shall we Christians do now with this depraved and damned people of the Jews? ... I will give my faithful advice: First, that one should set fire to their synagogues. ... Then that one should also break down and destroy their houses. ... That one should drive them out the country." -- Martin Luther "When an opponent declares, 'I will not come over to your side,' I calmly say, 'Your child belongs to us already...What are you? You will pass on. Your descendants, however, now stand in the new camp. In a short time they will know nothing else but this new community.'" -- Adolf Hitler "The national government ... will maintain and defend the foundations on which the power of our nation rests. It will offer strong protection to Christianity as the very basis of our collective morality." -- ??Pat Robertson??? WRONG: Adolf Hitler. "Remember, the German people are the chosen of God. On me the German Emperor, the spirit of God has descended. I am His sword, His weapon, and His vice-regent." -- Kaiser Wilhelm II, 4 August 1914 "I have followed [the Church] in giving our party program the character of unalterable finality, like the Creed. The Church has never allowed the Creed to be interfered with. It is fifteen hundred years since it was formulated, but every suggestion for its amendment, every logical criticism, or attack on it, has been rejected. The Church has realized that anything and everything can be built up on a document of that sort, no matter how contradictory or irreconcilable with it. The faithful will swallow it whole, so long as logical reasoning is never allowed to be brought to bear on it." -- Adolf Hitler, from Rauschning, _The Voice of Destruction_, pp. 239-40 "ATHEIST HALL CONVERTED Berlin Churches Establish Bureau to Win Back Worshippers Wireless to the New York Times. BERLIN, May 13. - In Freethinkers Hall, which before the Nazi resurgence was the national headquarters of the German Freethinkers League, the Berlin Protestant church authorities have opened a bureau for advice to the public in church matters. Its chief object is to win back former churchgoers and assist those who have not previously belonged to any religious congregation in obtaining church membership. The German Freethinkers League, which was swept away by the national revolution, was the largest of such organizations in Germany. It had about 500,000 members ..." -- New York Times, May 14, 1993, page 2, on Hitler's outlawing of atheistic and freethinking groups in Germany in the Spring of 1933, after the Enabling Act authorizing Hitler to rule by decree "Accordingly, it must and dare not be considered a trifling matter but a most serious one to seek counsel against this and to save our souls from the Jews, that is, from the devil and from eternal death. My advice, as I said earlier, is: First, that their synagogues be burned down, and that all who are able toss sulfur and pitch; it would be good if someone could also throw in some hellfire... Second, that all their books -- their prayer books, their Talmudic writings, also the entire Bible -- be taken from them, not leaving them one leaf, and that these be preserved for those who may be converted... Third, that they be forbidden on pain of death to praise God, to give thanks, to pray, and to teach publicly among us and in our country... Fourth, that they be forbidden to utter the name of God within our hearing. For we cannot with a good conscience listen to this or tolerate it..." -- Martin Luther,"On the Jews and Their Lies",1543 "Henceforth anyone applying for government employment - and soon for various other positions as well - had to submit proof that he was not a Jew. Since prior to 1874-1876 births had been registered only by the churches, the latter were asked to help in determining who was or was not fully Aryan, for under Nazi law this depended on the racial (i.e., religious) status of the parents and grandparents. The Church co-operated as a matter of course, complaining only that priests already overburdened with work were not receiving compensation for this special service to the state. The very question of whether the Church should lend its help to the Nazi state in sorting out people of Jewish descent was never debated. ... And the co-operation of the Church in this matter continued right through the war years, when the price of being Jewish was no longer dismissal from a government job and loss of livelihood, but deportation and outright physical destruction." -- Lewy, G., "The Catholic Church and Nazi Germany", Weidenfeld & Nicholson, 1968, p.282. "Almighty God, dear heavenly Father. In Thy name let us now, in pious spirit, begin our instruction. Enlighten us, teach us all truth, strengthen us in all that is good, lead us not into temptation, deliver us from all evil in order that, as good human beings, we may faithfully perform our duties and thereby, in time and eternity, be made truly happy. Amen." -- Mandatory secondary school prayer in Nazi Germany in the 1930s, from July-August 1995 issue of Liberty: A Magazine of Religious Freedom, published by the North American Division of the Seventh-day Adventist Church in Silver Spring, Maryland "Remember, the German people are the chosen of God. On me the German Emperor, the spirit of God has descended. I am His sword, His weapon, and His vice-regent." -- Kaiser Wilhelm II, 4 August 1914 "There is a road to freedom. Its milestones are Obedience, Endeavor, Honesty, Order, Cleanliness, Sobriety, Truthfulness, Sacrifice, and love of the Fatherland." -- Message, signed Hitler, painted on walls of concentration camps; Life, August 21, 1939 "Christian biblical theology must recognise that its articulation of anti-Judaism in the New Testament ... generated the unspeakable sufferings of the Holocaust." -- Dr. E. Florenza (Prof. of New Testament Studies) & Dr. D. Tracy (Prof. of Philosophical Theology), "The Holocaust as Interruption" (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, Ltd., 1984).] He did not call them Abraham's children, but a "brood of vipers" [Matt. 3:7]. Oh, that was too insulting for the noble blood and race of Israel, and they declared, "He has a demon' [Matt 11:18]. Our Lord also calls them a "brood of vipers"; furthermore in John 8 [:39,44] he states: "If you were Abraham's children ye would do what Abraham did... You are of your father the devil. It was intolerable to them to hear that they were not Abraham's but the devil's children, nor can they bear to hear this today. -- Martin Luther, _On the Jews and their Lies_ "If I had to baptize a Jew, I would take him to the bridge of the Elbe, hang a stone around his neck and push him over with the words 'I baptize thee in the name of Abraham'." -- Martin Luther, "Hitler's Spiritual Ancestor" by Peter F. Weiner (1985, Gustav Broukal Press) "If I had power over the Jews, as our princes and cities have, I would deal severely with their lying mouth." -- Martin Luther,"On the Jews and Their Lies",1543 "They [rulers] must act like a good physician who, when gangrene has set in proceeds without mercy to cut, saw, and burn flesh, veins, bone, and marrow. Such a procedure must also be followed in this instance. Burn down their synagogues, forbid all that I enumerated earlier, force them to work, and deal harshly with them, as Moses did... If this does not help we must drive them out like mad dogs." -- Martin Luther,"On the Jews and Their Lies",1543 "I should have no compassion on these witches; I should burn them all." -- Martin Luther We are at fault in not slaying them [the Jews]. -- Martin Luther (On the Jews and their lies, 1543) Mankind has grown great in eternal struggle, and only in eternal peace does it perish. -- Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf) (My Struggle) ...a man does not die for business, but for ideals. -- Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)(My Struggle) "I am now as before a Catholic and will always remain so" -- Adolph Hitler, to Gen. Gerhard Engel, 1941 "Germans must fight Jews, that organized body of world criminals against whom Christ, the greatest anti-Semite of all time, had fought." -- Julius Streicher, from Louis L. Snyder, "Hitler's Elite, Shocking Profiles of the Reich's Most Notorious Henchmen", Berkley Books, 1990 "No, in politics things are entirely different. You will never learn what is going on in my head. As for those who boast of privy to my thoughts -- to them lie all the more." Adolph Hitler, in Gerald Fleming, _Hitler and the Final Solution_, 1984, University of California Press: Los Angeles, CA and London, England, p. 18 Creation is not yet completed. Man must pass through many further stages of metamorphosis. Post-Atlantean man is already in a state of degeneration and decline, barely able to survive. . . . All creative forces will be concentrated in a new species. The two types of man, the old and the new, will evolve rapidly in different directions. One will disappear from the face of the earth, the other will flourish. . . . This is the real motive behind the National Socialist Movement! -- Constance Cumbey, The Hidden Dangers of the Rainbow: The New Age Movement and Our Coming Age of Barbarism, 1983, Huntington House: Lafayette, LA, p. 112; quoting Ravenscroft, The Spear of Destiny, p. 250 The German occult societies appropriated some Theosophical ideas, to be sure, to the same extent that the Nazis eagerly distorted some of the doctrines of Nietzsche (so carefully doctored by his sister to omit the parts where he condemns German nationalism as an "abyss of stupidity!" or disavows anti-Semitism.) -- http://www.clas.ufl.edu/users/seeker1/fortpages/occult-reich.html The German mystical societies essentially saw a coming struggle between the forces of materialism and relativism and that of true, Aryan, spiritual civilization - a struggle that would be apocalyptic and where there could be no quarter whatsoever afforded for the enemy. Therein lay the roots of Nazism and the Holocaust. -- http://www.clas.ufl.edu/users/seeker1/fortpages/occult-reich.html "Parallel to the training of the body a struggle against the poisoning of the soul must begin. Our whole public life today is like a hothouse for sexual ideas and simulations. Just look at the bill of fare served up in our movies, vaudeville and theaters, and you will hardly be able to deny that this is not the right kind of food, particularly for the youth... Theater, art, literature, cinema, press, posters, and window displays must be cleansed of all manifestations of our rotting world and placed in the service of a moral, political, and cultural idea." -- Adolf Hitler, "Mein Kampf", Vol. 1, Chapter 10, echoing the Cultural Warfare rhetoric of the Religious Right "All in all, this whole period of winter 1919-20 was a single struggle to strengthen confidence in the victorious might of the young movement and raise it to that fanaticism of faith which can move mountains." -- Adolf Hitler, "Mein Kampf" Vol. 1 Chapter 12 "For this, to be sure, from the child's primer down to the last newspaper, every theater and every movie house, every advertising pillar and every billboard, must be pressed into the service of this one great mission, until the timorous prayer of our present parlor patriots: 'Lord, make us free!' is transformed in the brain of the smallest boy into the burning plea: 'Almighty God, bless our arms when the time comes; be just as thou hast always been; judge now whether we be deserving of freedom; Lord, bless our battle!' -- Adolf Hitler's prayer, "Mein Kampf", Vol. 2 Chapter 13 "I had excellent opportunity to intoxicate myself with the solemn splendor of the brilliant church festivals. As was only natural, the abbot seemed to me, as the village priest had once seemed to my father, the highest and most desirable ideal." -- Adolf Hitler, "Mein Kampf", Vol. 1, Chapter 1 "What we have to fight for...is the freedom and independence of the fatherland, so that our people may be enabled to fulfill the mission assigned to it by the Creator." -- Adolph Hitler, _Mein Kampf_, pp. 125 "For how shall we fill people with blind faith in the correctness of a doctrine, if we ourselves spread uncertainty and doubt by constant changes in its outward structure? ...Here, too, we can learn by the example of the Catholic Church. Though its doctrinal edifice, and in part quite superfluously, comes into collision with exact science and research, it is none the less unwilling to sacrifice so much as one little syllable of its dogmas... it is only such dogmas which lend to the whole body the character of a faith." -- Adolf Hitler, "Mein Kampf" Vol. 2 Chapter 5 "The Government, being resolved to undertake the political and moral purification of our public life, are creating and securing the conditions necessary for a really profound revival of religious life" -- Adolph Hitler, in a speech to the Reichstag on March 23, 1933 "That this is possible may not be denied in a world where hundreds and hundreds of thousands of people voluntarily submit to celibacy, obligated and bound by nothing except the injunction of the Church. Should the same renunciation not be possible if this injunction is replaced by the admonition finally to put an end to the constant and continuous original sin of racial poisoning, and to give the Almighty Creator beings such as He Himself created?" -- Adolf Hitler, "Mein Kampf" Vol. 2 Chapter 2 "The anti-Semitism of the new movement [Christian Social movement] was based on religious ideas instead of racial knowledge." -- Adolf Hitler, "Mein Kampf", Vol. 1, Chapter 3 "Secular schools can never be tolerated because such schools have no religious instruction, and a general moral instruction without a religious foundation is built on air; consequently, all character training and religion must be derived from faith ... we need believing people." -- Adolf Hitler, April 26, 1933, from a speech made during negotiations leading to the Nazi-Vatican Concordant of 1933 "The National Government will therefore regard as its first and supreme task to restore to the German people unity of mind and will. It will preserve and defend the foundations on which the strength of our nation rests. It will take under its firm protection Christianity as the basis of our morality, and the family as the nucleus of our nation and our State." -- 'Nazism, A History in Documents & Eyewitness Accounts'. (Original source Jacobsen and Jochmann, Ausgewahlte Dokumente Bd II.) Only in the steady and constant application of force lies the very first prerequisite for success. This persistence, however, can always and only arise from a definite spiritual conviction. Any violence which does not spring from a firm, spiritual base, will be wavering and uncertain. -- Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)(My Struggle) "God gave the savior to the German people. We have faith, deep and unshakable faith, that he [Hitler] was sent to us by God to save Germany." -- Hermann Goering, from Louis L. Snyder, "Hitler's Elite, Shocking Profiles of the Reich's Most Notorious Henchmen", Berkley Books, 1990 "Hence today I believe that I am acting in accordance with the will of the Almighty Creator: by defending myself against the Jew, I am fighting for the work of the Lord." -- Adolph Hitler (Mein Kampf) (My Struggle) "My father was really a bigot. He was very strict and fanatical. I learned that my father took a religious oath at the time of the birth of my younger sister, dedicating me to God and the priesthood, and after that leading a Joseph married life [celibacy]. He directed my entire youthful education toward the goal of making me a priest. I had to pray and go to church endlessly, do penance over the slightest misdeed -- praying as punishment for any little unkindness to my sister, or something like that." -- Rudolf Hess, to psychologist G.M. Gilbert, in his Nuremberg cell, from Louis L. Snyder, "Hitler's Elite, Shocking Profiles of the Reich's Most Notorious Henchmen", Berkley Books, 1990 The greatness of every mighty organization embodying an idea in this world lies in the religious fanaticism and intolerance with which, fanatically convinced of its own right, it intolerantly imposes its will against all others. -- Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)(My Struggle) Christianity could not content itself with building up its own altar; it was absolutely forced to undertake the destruction of the heathen altars. Only from this fanatical intolerance could its apodictic faith take form; this intolerance is, in fact, its absolute presupposition. -- Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)(My Struggle) As for the Nazi atrocities, their motto was "Gott mit uns" (God is with us) My feeling as a Christian points me to my Lord and Savior as a fighter. It points me to the man who, once lonely with only a few followers, recognized these Jews for what they were, and calling me to fight them, and who, so help me, was greatest not as a sufferer but as a fighter. With boundless love, as a Christian and as a man, I read the passages which relate how the Lord finally gathered His strength and made use of the whip in order to drive the usurers, the vipers, and cheats from the temple. Today 2,000 years later, I recognize with deep emotion Christ's tremendous fight for this world against the Jewish poison. I recognized this most profoundly by the fact that He had to shed his blood on the cross for his fight. As a Christian it is not my duty to permit myself to be cheated, but is my duty to be a champion of truth and of right.... As a Christian I owe something to my own people.... I am a veritable devil and not a Christian if I do not feel compassion and do not wage war, as our Lord did 2,000 years ago, against those who are pillaging and exploiting this poor people (the German people --Ed.)... Two thousand years ago a man was likewise denounced by this particular race which today is denouncing and blaspheming everywhere.... That man was dragged into court and they said then: He is arousing the people! So he also was "agitating." And against whom? Against "God," they cried. Yes indeed he was agitating against the "god" of the Jews, for that "god" is money. -- Adolf Hitler (Munich, April 12, 1922; Voelkische Beobachter, April 22, 1922). The National Government will preserve and defend those basic principles on which our nation was built up. They regard Christianity as the foundation of our national morality and the family as a basis of national life. -- Adolf Hitler to the German People: Feb. 1 1933). The great masses of people do not consist of philosophers; precisely for the masses, faith is often the sole foundation of a moral attitude. The various substitutes have not proved so successful from the standpoint of results that they could be regarded as a useful replacement for previous religious creeds. But if religious doctrine and faith are really to embrace the broad masses, the unconditional authority of the content of this faith is the foundation of all efficacy. -- Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)(My Struggle) The fact is that far more crime and child abuse has been committed by zealots in the name of God, Jesus and Mohammed than has ever been committed in the name of Satan. Many people don't like that statement, but few can argue with it. -Kenneth V. Lanning, Supervisory Special Agent at the Behavioral Science Institution and Research Unit of the FBI Academy (from Carl Sagan's _The Demon-Haunted World_) "I never saw a contradiction between the ideas that sustain me and the ideas of that symbol, of that extraordinary figure." [Jesus Christ] -- Fidel Castro, Cuban communist leader ------------------------------------------------------------------**** Religion: Christianity: Bible: Commentary: "All that is necessary, as it seems to me, to convince any reasonable person that the Bible is simply and purely of human invention -- of barbarian invention -- is to read it. Read it as you would any other book; think of it as you would of any other; get the bandage of reverence from your eyes; drive from your heart the phantom of fear; push from the throne of your brain the coiled form of superstition -- then read the Holy Bible, and you will be amazed that you ever, for one moment, supposed a being of infinite wisdom, goodness and purity, to be the author of such ignorance and of such atrocity." -- Robert G. Ingersoll, "The Gods", 1872 "The total absence of humour in the Bible is one of the most singular things in all literature" -- Alfred North Whitehead "The two testaments are interesting, each in its own way. The Old one gives us a picture of these people's Deity before he got religion. The other one gives us a picture of him as he appeared afterwards. The Old Testatment is interested mainly in blood and sensuality. The new one is Salvation. Salvation by fire." -- Mark Twain, "Letters from the Earth" Holy Scripture: A book sent down from heaven.... Holy Scriptures contain all that a Christian should know and believe, provided he adds to it a million or so commentaries. -- Voltaire "If one were to take the bible seriously, one would go mad. But to take the bible seriously, one must be already mad." -- Aleister Crowley "The NT, compared with the Old, is like a farce of one act..." -- _The Age of Reason_, Thomas Paine, p. 153 "One does well to put on gloves when reading the New Testament. The proximity of so much uncleanliness almost forces one to do this." -- Fredrich Nietzsche "Is it not wonderful that the creator of all worlds, infinite in power and wisdom, could not hold his own against the gods of wood and stone? Is it not strange that after he had appeared to his chosen people, delivered them from slavery, feed them by miracles, opened the sea for a path, led them by cloud and fire, and overthrown their pursuers, they still preferred a calf of their own making?" (Exod. 32:1-8) "...a God who gave his entire time for 40 years to the work of converting three millions of people, and succeeded in getting only two men, and not a single woman, decent enough to enter the promised land?" (Num. 14:29-30) -- Robert G. Ingersoll "Armies of Bible scholars and theologians have for centuries found respected employment devising artful explanations of the Bible often not really meaning what it says." -- J.S. Bullion, Jr., U.S. freethinker, writer "I do not see how anyone could come fresh to the Bible and see any regard for human life at all in the early parts. From the extermination of every living thing outside the ark to the ethnic cleansing of the promised land, the story is one of utter disregard to human life except when it suits God's purposes..... it does not license anyone to preach on the excellence of the Ten Commandments as a sort of constitution document for modern society." -- Andrew Brown, religious correspondent for the Independent, a national UK paper "The Bible is such a gargantuan collection of conflicting values that anyone can "prove" anything from it." -- Robert Heinlein, Dr. Jacob Burroughs in "The Number of the Beast" The Old Testament, as everyone who has looked into it is aware, drips with blood; there is, indeed, no more bloody chronicle in all the literature of the world. -- Henry L. Mencken "No man ever believes that the Bible means what it says: He is always convinced that it says what he means." -- George Bernard Shaw "The only difference between God and Adolf Hitler is that God is more proficient at genocide." Those who cling steadfastly to the infallibility of the Bible (or the infallibility of anything that is the result of human endeavor) are actuality clinging to the desire to have their own interpretation deemed infallible. It is their ego they are talking about, not the Bible. -- jpcrooks@indy.net (Patricia & John Crooks) Yes indeed. Add to that the fact that it's a loose collection of separately produced writings in a number of languages which were selected by the church to support its arguments and it loses even more value. The very term 'The Bible' is a carefully crafted misnomer to give the impression that 'this is THE BOOK' when in fact it wasn't even A book. -- Martin Traynor , on the CoV mailing list "What is it the Bible teaches us? - rapine, cruelty, and murder. What is it the Testament teaches us? - to believe that the Almighty committed debauchery with a woman engaged to be married, and the belief of this debauchery is called faith." -- Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason I don't know if this helps with the discussion on the validity of the bible. I suppose it's as valid as a 16th Century map of the New World. It wasn't accurate and a lot was missing. But it got the people where they needed to go to make their own discoveries. -- Stephen Atkins , on the CoV mailing list "It is interesting that every time God gives direct orders to anyone, it is always "Thou shalt kill." -- Newsweek magazine Missionaires claim that Jesus fulfilled a prophecy that the Messiah would be born of a virgin. They get this from a verse in the bible (Isaiah 7:14) "Therefore, the Lord himself shall give you a sign: Behold a young woman shall conceive and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanual." The idea of gods and demigods being born of virgins occurs in many places in pagan mythology. When Matthew(1:23) quoted this passage and translated it into the Greek of the new testament, his anxiety to prove a point led him to actually mistranslate this passage. He translates the Hebrew word "ALMA" which actually means "young woman" as "virgin." Thus, we suddenly have an instant prediction of the virgin birth of the Messiah. The proper hebrew word for virgin is Besulah, and Alma has never been translated as "virgin." -- Joshua Kerr Joshkerr@mail.utexas.edu Missionaries claim that Jesus fulfilled the prophecy that the Messiah would be killed by crucifixion. They quote the biblical verse, which, correctly translated, reads (Psalms 22:17), "For dogs have encompassed me, a company of evil-doers have enclosed me, like a lion, they are at my hands and feet." "like a lion" in Hebrew is KeAri. The fundamentalist Christian interpreters actually changed the spelling of the word from KeAris to Kari. If one then totally ignores the hebrew grammar, one can twist this to mean "he gouged me." Then, as in the King James Version, they make this verse read "they pierced my hands and feet." However, this bears no relation to the original meaning of the verse. Even with the change in spelling, it is a forced translation. -- Joshua Kerr joshkerr@mail.utexas.edu The Jewish Bible says that the Messiah will redeem Israel. IN the case of Jesus, the very opposite took place. Not long after his death, the Holy Temple in Jerusalem was destroyed, Jerusalem was laid to waste, and the Jews went into Exile beginning a 1900 year long night of persecution, largely at the hands of the followers of this self styled "Messiah!" -- Joshua Kerr Joshkerr@mail.utexas.edu The true Messiah is to reign as kind of the Jews. Jesus career as described in the New Testament lasted all of three years, at the end of which he was crucified by the Romans as a common criminal. He never functioned as anything but a wandering preacher and faith healer. Certainly, he held no official position or exercised any rule of any kind. -- Joshua Kerr joshkerr@mail.utexas.edu Jesus claimed that he did not intend to change the Laws of Moses "Think not that I have come to abolish the Law (Torah) and the Prophets, I have come not to abolish them , but to fulfill them. For truly I say to you, till heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot, will pass from the Law until all is accomplished. Whoever then breaks one of the least of these commandments and teaches men so, shall be called least in the Kingdom of Heaven". (Matthew 5) Later on, he himself abrogated some of the laws, while his followers eventually abolished or changed nearly all of them. However, the Torah itself clearly states in many places that its laws are eternal, never to be abolished. And even the Christians acknowledge that the Jewish Bible is the word of G-d. If the Torah is eternal and Jesus himself claims to have no intention of abolishing or changing it, why do the Christians celebrate the Sabbath on Sunday when G-d clearly calls for a Saturday only Sabbath eternal convenent? Why do Christians eat pig when the Torah forbids it? What reason can Christians give for not celebrating Rosh Hashanna and Yom Kippur which are clearly spelled out in the Torah? This same argument applied to hundreds of other Laws that are ignored by Christians. -- Joshua Kerr joshkerr@mail.utexas.edu Matt. xii. 40), "For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the whale's belly, so shall the Son of man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth." Friday night. Saturday. Saturday Night. Count 'em and weep! "Now 7-11 has bowed to pressure from the Moral Majority to remove Playboy and Penthouse from their newsstand. I guess to be fair you have to look at it from the fundamentalist perspective - what they're saying is that they don't want pornography out in the open, because what it does is it forces a certain type of literature on somebody in a public place. It would be like..., uh..., oh I don't know, say like ... put the Bible in everybody's hotel room, or something crazy like that." -- Dennis Miller, from the "Black & White" show "Most of it is crap, but in every pile of crap is a gem of stupidity that will have you on the floor in laughter." -- psycho@ace.comi (Preacher) "We know, on the authority of Moses, that longer than six thousand years the world did not exist." -- Martin Luther (1483-1546) "Lectures on Genesis" "Many sweat to reconcile St. Paul and St. James, but in vain. 'Faith justifies' and 'faith does not justify' contradict each other flatly. If any one can harmonize them I will give him my doctor's hood and let him call me a fool." -- Martin Luther "The wars of extermination have given a lot of people trouble unless they know what was going on. The people in the land of Palestine were very wicked. They were given over to idolatry; they sacrificed their children; they had all kinds of abominable sex practices; they were having sex, apparently, with animals; they were having sex men with men, and women with women; they were committing adultery, fornication; they were worshipping idols, offering their children up; and they were forsaking God. God told the Israelites to kill them all - men, women and children, to destroy them. And that seems to be a terrible thing to do. Is it? Or isn't it? Well, let us assume there were 2,000 of them, or 10,000 of them living in the land, or whatever number there was of them. I don't have the exact number. Pick a number. God said, 'Kill them all.' Well, that would seem hard, wouldn't it? That would be 10,000 people who would probably go to Hell. But, if they stayed and reproduced, in 30 or 40 or 50 or 60 or 100 more years, they could conceivably be - 10,000 would go to a 100,000 - 100,000 could conceivably go to a million. And then, there would be a million people who would have to spend eternity in Hell! And it's far more merciful to take away a few than to see in the future a 100 years down the road, and say, 'Well, I have to take away a million people that would forever be apart from God,' because the abomination was there like a contagion. God saw that there was no cure for it. It wasn't going to change; their hearts weren't going to change; and all they would do is cause trouble for the Israelites, and pull the Israelites away from God, and prevent the truth of God from reaching the Earth. So, God, in love, took away a small number that he might not have to take away a large number." -- Pat Robertson, rationalizing genocide committed by the early Israelites, on "The 700 Club television program. May 6, 1985 "When I, or people like me, are running the country, you'd better flee, because we will find you, we will try you, and we will execute you. I mean every word of it. I will make it part of my mission to see to it that they are tried and executed... If we're going to have true reformation in America, it is because men once again, if I may use a worn out expression, have righteous testoserone flowing through their veins. They are not afraid of contempt for their contemporaries. They are not even here to get along. They are here to take over... Somebody like Susan Smith should be dead. She should be dead now. Some people will go, "Well how do you know God doesn't have a wonderful plan for her life?" He does, it's listed in the Bible. His plan for her is that she should be dead." [Randall Terry, founder of Operation Rescue, at the Aug 8, 1995 U.S. Taxpayers Alliance Banquet in Washington DC, talking about doctors who perform abortions and volunteer escorts] "Integrity and honesty, not objectivity and certainty, are the highest virtues to which the theological enterprise can aspire. From this perspective, all human claims to possess objectivity, certainty, or infallibility are revealed as nothing but the weak and pitiable pleas of frantically insecure people who seek to live in a illusion because reality has proved to be too difficult. Papal infallibility and biblical inerrancy are the two ecclesiastical versions of this human idolatry. Both papal infallibility and biblical inerrancy require widespread and unchallenged ignorance to sustain their claims to power. Both are doomed as viable alternatives for the long-range future of anyone." -- Bishop John Shelby Spong, Episcopal (Anglican) Bishop of Newark, NY, in Resurrection: Myth or Reality? pg. 99 "I could not believe that anyone who has read this book would be so foolish as to proclaim that the Bible in every literal word was the divinely inspired, inerrant word of God. Have these people simply not read the text? Are they hopelessly misinformed? Is there a different Bible? Are they blinded by a combination of ego needs and naivete?" -- Bishop John Shelby Spong "An engineering professor is treating her husband, a loan officer, to dinner for finally giving in to her pleas to shave off the scraggly beard he grew on vacation. His favorite restaurant is a casual place where they both feel comfortable in slacks and cotton/polyester-blend golf shirts. But, as always, she wears the gold and pearl pendant he gave her the day her divorce decree was final. They're laughing over their menus because they know he always ends up diving into a giant plate of ribs but she won't be talked into anything more fattening than shrimp." "Quiz: How many biblical prohibitions are they violating? Well, wives are supposed to be 'submissive' to their husbands (I Peter 3:1). And all women are forbidden to teach men (I Timothy 2:12), wear gold or pearls (I Timothy 2:9) or dress in clothing that 'pertains to a man' (Deuteronomy 22:5). Shellfish and pork are definitely out (Leviticus 11:7, 10) as are usury (Deuteronomy 23:19), shaving (Leviticus 19:27) and clothes of more than one fabric (Leviticus 19:19). And since the Bible rarely recognizes divorce, they're committing adultery, which carries the rather harsh penalty of death by stoning (Deuteronomy 22:22)." [for a grand total of *ten* broken prohibitions -- CEB] "So why are they having such a good time? Probably because they wouldn't think of worrying about rules that seem absurd, anachronistic or -- at best -- unrealistic. Yet this same modern-day couple could easily be among the millions of Americans who never hesitate to lean on the Bible to justify their own anti-gay attitudes." -- from `And Say Hi To Joyce' by lesbian columnist Deb Price "Of course, we cannot guarantee our Bibles against normal wear or abuse." -- Oxford University Press (just think about that for a minute!) "Not only might one-quarter to one-half of the weight be lost in planing, whereas with iron only a minute fraction was lost in this way, but half of the weight of timber in a wooden ship was wasted, its only use being to hold the other half in position. Even so, a wooden ship had great stresses as a structure. The absolute limit of its length was 300 feet, and it was liable to "hogging" and "sagging" in addition to being unable to withstand the local strain of the screw propeller" -- "The British Shipbuilding Industry, 1870-1914", pp. 13-14, by Sidney Pollard and Paul Robertson, as cited by Robert Moore in "The Impossible Voyage of Noah's Ark", on the physical impossibility of Noah's 450 foot-long wooden ark "Perhaps there was an organization in Phineas' day known as the N.A.A.C.P. (National Association for the Advancement of Canaanite People) who took exception with this teaching of segregation. Perhaps there were pulpits proclaiming a more tolerant and socially accepted view and government agency crusading for 'affirmative action.' We really do not know; but we do know from the Bible story in Numbers chapter 25 that the Israel people began to disobey God's law, accept integration, cultural exchange and a type of interracial marriage, and thus were struck collectively by a plague. Phineas was the man who courageously fought against the racial treason even to the point of bloodshed, and he too was honored by God." -- Pastor Pete Peters, 'THE BIBLE: Handbook For Survivalists, Racists, Tax Protestors, Militants And Right-Wing Extremists', ND, Scriptures For America, La Porte, Colorado, pp. 4-5 "The theory that you should always treat the religious convictions of other people with respect finds no support in the Gospels." -- Arnold Lunn (1888-1974), British author "Heaven and earth, centre and circumference, were created together, in the same instant, and clouds full of water... this work took place and man was created by the Trinity on the twenty-third of October, 4004 B.C., at nine o'clock in the morning." -- John Lightfoot (Vice-Chancellor of the University of Cambridge), 1859 "Changes in the educational levels of the general population in recent years appear to account for much of the variance in biblical beliefs over time. The current proportion of biblical literalists is 32%, only half of what it was in 1963, when 65% of Americans said they believed in the absolute truth of all words in the Bible and that it represented the actual word of God. Belief in inerrancy is most likely to be found among people who did not complete high school (58%), and least likely among college graduates (29%)." -- One Nation Under God, (1993) Barry A. Kosmin & Seymour P. Lachman. pg. 268 The Bible has been interpreted to justify such evil practices as, for example, slavery, the slaughter of prisoners of war, the sadistic murders of women believed to be witches, capital punishment for hundreds of offenses, polygamy, and cruelty to animals. It has been used to encourage belief in the grossest superstition and to discourage the free teaching of scientific truths. We must never forget that both good and evil flow from the Bible. It is therefore not above criticism. -- Steve Allen (Steve Allen, on the Bible Religion & Morality) "We are asked to justify these frightful passages, these infamous laws of war, because the Bible is the word of God. As a matter of fact, there never was, and there never can be, an argument even tending to prove the inspiration of any book whatever. In the absence of positive evidence, analogy and experience, argument is simply impossible, and at the very best, can amount only to a useless agitation of the air. The instant we admit that a book is too sacred to be doubted, or even reasoned about, we are mental serfs. It is infinitely absurd to suppose that a god would Address a communication to intelligent beings, and yet make it a crime, to be punished in eternal flames, for them to use their intelligence for the purpose of understanding his communication. If we have the right to use our reason, we certainly have the right to act in accordance with it, and no god can have the right to punish us for such action." -- Robert G. Ingersoll, "The Gods", 1872 "It will yet be the proud boast of women that they never contributed a line to the Bible." -- George W. Foote "Nothing could be more anti-Biblical than letting women vote." -- Editorial, Harper's Magazine, November 1853 "The real oppressor, enslaver, and corrupter of the people is the Bible." -- 'Some Mistakes of Moses', Ingersoll's Works, Vol. 2 p. 43 "If Christ, in fact, said "I came not to bring peace but a sword," it is the only prophecy in the New Testament that has been literally fulfilled." -- Robert G. Ingersoll "We are told in the Pentateuch, that god, the father of us all, gave thousands of maidens, after having killed their fathers, their mothers, and their brothers, to satisfy the brutal lusts of savage men. If there be a god, I pray him to write in his book, opposite my name, that I denied this lie for him." -- Robert G. Ingersoll "Few intelligent Christians can still hold to the idea that the Bible is an infallible Book, that it contains no linguistic errors, no historical discrepancies, no antiquated scientific assumptions, not even bad ethical standards. Historical investigation and literary criticism have taken the magic out of the Bible and have made it a composite human book, written by many hands in different ages. The existence of thousands of variations of texts makes it impossible to hold the doctrine of a book verbally infallible. Some might claim for the original copies of the Bible an infallible character, but this view only begs the question and makes such Christian apologetics more ridiculous in the eyes of the sincere man." -- 'Christianity in America', p. 121, Elmer Homrighausen, former Dean of Princeton Theological Seminary "This question is put to Christians who believe that the Bible unerringly describes God and reports the commands and the characteristics of God. If there is a God, it is natural that we should wish to be quite correct in our understanding of that God's nature. So, we ask: Can and does God lie? Looking this point up in the mazes of Holy Writ, we discover confusion. In Numbers xxiii, 19, we are told: "God is not a man, that he should lie." This is put even mere strongly in Hebrews vi, 18, where we read: "It was impossible for God to lie." But do these citations settle the matter? Ah, no, we are upset in, our calculations the moment we turn to 2 Thessalonians ii, 11, where we read: "For this cause God shall send them strong delusions, that they should believe a lie." And in I Kings xxii, 23, God is thus reported: "Now, therefore, behold, the Lord hath put a lying spirit in the mouth of all these thy prophets, and the Lord hath spoken evil concerning thee." Can God lie? Can the Bible lie? Anyway, there is a mistake somewhere. The big mistake is in entertaining the idea of a God." -- E. Haldeman-Julius, "The Meaning Of Atheism" "Just as Philo, learned in Greek speculation, had felt a need to rephrase Judaism in forms acceptable to the logic-loving Greeks, so John, having lived for two generations in a Hellenistic environment, sought to give a Greek philosophical tinge to the mystic Jewish doctrine that the Wisdom of God was a living being, and to the Christian doctrine that Jesus was the Messiah. Consciously or not, he continued Paul's work of detaching Christianity from Judaism. Christ was no longer presented as a Jew, living more or less under the Jewish Law; he was make to address the Jews as "you," and to speak of their Law as "yours"; he was not a Messiah sent "to save the lost sheep of Israel," he was the coeternal Son of God; not merely the future judge of mankind, but the primeval creator of the universe. In this perspective the Jewish life of the man Jesus could be put into the background, faded almost as in Gnostic heresy; and the god Christ was assimilated to the religious and philosophical traditions of the Hellenistic mind. Now the pagan world-- even the anti-Semitic world--could accept him as its own." -- Will and Ariel Durant, 'The Story of Civilization' Whenever we read the obscene stories, the voluptuous debaucheries, the cruel and tortuous executions, the unrelenting vindictiveness with which more than half the Bible is filled, it would be more consistent that we call it the word of a demon than the word of God. It is a history of wickedness that has served to corrupt and brutalize humankind; and, for my part, I sincerely detest it, as I detest everything that is cruel. -- Thomas Paine (The Age of Reason) "No actual tyrant known to history has ever been guilty of one-hundredth of the crimes, massacres, and other atrocities attributed to the Deity in the Bible." -- Steve Allen, _More Steve Allen, on the Bible Religion & Morality_ "Jesus taught that the last will be first and the first will be last. He admonished his followers to be servants of everyone. He urged humility as the cardinal virtue by both word and example. Given these terms, it is difficult to imagine Jesus making claims for himself - I am the son of God, I am the expected One, the Anointed - unless, of course, he thought that nothing he said applied to himself." "...The early Christian community allowed it own triumphant faith to explode in confessions that were retrospectively attributed to Jesus, its authority figure. The climax of that trajectory came with the Gospel of John. In John Jesus does little other than make claims for himself. For that reason alone, scholars regard the Fourth Gospel as alien to the real Jesus, the carpenter from Nazareth." -- Robert W. Funk, Roy W. Hoover, and the Jesus Seminar, The Five Gospels "...The birth narrative of Jesus is missing, we are told in the prologue only that 'in the beginning' Jesus coexisted with God and that he is "full of grace and truth." John feels that to inform us of the particularly human trait of birth, even if virginal and thus not actuated by lust, would not be fitting of a God who is the Word. Human characteristics that Mark informs us of, such as the need for cleansing through baptism (1:9) or the Temptation (1:13), are conspicuously absent from John. To John's author, Jesus has no need for cleansing, he is already without sin. Likewise it would be foolish to narrate the temptation in the wilderness, for Satan is obviously no match against God and John's intended reader would be confused over such an idea." -- James Still, "The Gospel of John and the Hellenization of Jesus" The whole history of these books [the Gospels] is so defective and doubtful that it seems vain to attempt minute enquiry into it: and such tricks have been played with their text, and with the texts of other books relating to them, that we have a right, from that cause, to entertain much doubt what parts of them are genuine. In the New Testament there is internal evidence that parts of it have proceeded from an extraordinary man; and that other parts are of the fabric of very inferior minds. It is as easy to separate those parts, as to pick out diamonds from dunghills. -- Thomas Jefferson, letter to John Adams, January 24, 1814 You begin by making the most serious mistake of all Christians asserting the Bible is the Word of God. I'd like to give you a list, a litany, of the deeds that God committed somewhere in the Old Testament. Now remember, God, the Perfect Being, did all of following in what is supposedly His book. He created evil (Lam. 3:38, Jer. 26:3, 36:3, Ezek. 20.:25-26, Judges 9:3, 1 Sam. 16:23, 18:10); He deceived (Jer. 4:10, 15:18, 20:7, 2 Chron. 18:22, Ezek. 14:9, 2 Thess. 2:9-12); He told people to lie(Ex. 3:18, 1 Sam. 16:2); He lied (Gen 2:17, 2 Sam. 7:13); He rewarded liars (Ex. 1:15-20); He ordered men to become drunken (Jer. 25:27); He rewarded the fool and the transgressor (Prov.26:10); He delivered a man, Job, into Satan's hands (Job 2:6); He mingled a perverse spirit (Isa. 19:14); He spread dung on people's faces (Mal. 2:3); He ordered stealing (Ezek. 39:10, Ex. 3:22); He made false prophecies (Jonah 3:4. Gen. 5:10); He changed his mind (Jonah 3:10); He caused adultery (2 Sam. 12:11-12); He ordered the taking of a harlot (Hosea 1:2, 3:1-2); He killed (Num. 16:35, 21:6, Deut. 32:39, 1 Sam. 2:26, Psalm 135:10); He ordered killing (Lev. 26:7-8, Num. 25:4-5); He had a temper (Deut. 13:17, Judges 3:8); He was often jealous (Deut. 5:9, 6:15); He wasn't omnipresent (Gen 4:16, 11:5, 1 Kings 19:11-12); He wasn't omniscient (Deut. 8:2, 13:3, 2 Chron. 32:31); He often repented (Ex. 32:14, 1 Sam. 15:35); He practiced injustice (Ex. 4:22-23, Joshua 22:20, Rom. 5:12); He played favorites (Deut. 7:6, 14:2, 1 Sam. 12:22); He sanctioned slavery (Ex. 21:20-21, Deut. 15:17); He degraded deformed people (Lev. 21:16-23); He punished a bastard for being illegitimate (Deut. 23:2); He punished many for the acts of one (Gen. 3:16, 20:18); He punished children for the sins of their fathers (Ex. 12:29, 20:5, Deut. 5:9); He prevented people from hearing his word (Isa. 6:10, John 12:39-40); He supported human sacrifice (Ex. 22:29-30, Ezek. 20:26); He ordered cannibalism (Lev. 26: 29, Jer. 19:9); He demanded virgins as a part of war plunder (Num. 31:31-36); He ordered gambling (Joshua 14. 2, Num. 26:52, 55-56); He ordered horses to be hamstrung (Joshua 11:6); He sanctioned violation of the enemy's women (Deut. 21:10-14); He excused the beating of slaves to death (Ex. 21:20-21); He required a woman to marry her rapist (Deut. 22:28:29); He taught war (Psalm 144:1); He ordered the burning of human feces to cook food (Ezek. 21:3-5); He intentionally issued bad laws (Ezek. 20:25); He excused the sins of prostitutes and adulterers (Hosea 4:14); He excused a murderer and promised his protection (Gen. 4:8-15); He killed a man who refused to impregnate his widowed sister-in-law (Gen. 38:9-10); and He is indecisive (Gen. 18:17). -- Dennis McKinsey, editor of Biblical Errancy, Issue No. 3, March 1983. "If the Bible is telling the truth, then God is either untruthful or incompetent. If God is truthful, then the Bible is either untruthful or erroneous." -- Rev. Donald Morgan, Atheologian "A thorough reading and understanding of the Bible is the surest path to atheism." -- Rev. Donald Morgan, Atheologian "...if Jesus had been sired by Joseph, He would not have been able to claim the legal rights to the throne of David. According to the prophecy of Jeremiah 22:28-30, there could be no king in Israel who was a Descendant of King Jeconiah, and Matthew 1:12 relates that Joseph was from the line of Jeconiah. If Jesus had been fathered by Joseph, He could not rightly inherit the throne of David, since he was a relative of the cursed line." -- _Answers to Tough Questions_, by McDowell, p. 56) If a man would follow, today, the teachings of the Old Testament, he would be a criminal. If he would follow the teachings of the new, he would be insane. -- Robert G. Ingersoll "The right of holding slaves is clearly established in the Holy Scriptures, both by precept and example." -- Rev. R. Furman, D.D., Baptist, of South Carolina "Behold a virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel" (Isa. 7:14). In Hebrew this actually reads: "Behold the young woman is with child and bareth a son and calleth his name Immanuel." Christians changed "almah" which means "a young woman" in Hebrew to "virgin." The actual Hebrew word for virgin is "bethulah." Wherever the word "virgin" appears in the KJV of the OT, it comes from "bethulah." Isa. 7:14 and Gen. 24:43 are the only exceptions. Almah means maid, damsel, or a young woman, which is how it is translated in Ex. 2:8, Prov. 30:19 and Psalm 68:25 of the KJV. The RSV and the Jewish Masoretic texts correctly translate Isa. 7:14 as "a young woman." Mistranslators also changed "harah" from its correct meaning of "has concieved" (i.e. is) to "shall conceive." The word "harah" (conceived) is the Hebrew perfect tense, which in English represents past and completed action. There is not the remotest hint of future time. The correct translation, "is with child," is in the present tense and shows it pertains to a woman then existing. "...and shall call his name Immanuel" (Isa. 7:14). Jesus was never called Immanuel except by those who do so in order to fulfill the prophecy. Never was Jesus referred to as Immanuel in the NT, except in Matt. 1:23 ("and they shall call his name Immanuel"). Nowhere in Isaiah does Isaiah call Immanuel a Messiah or Jesus Christ the son of God or Savior or Holy Redeemer. They are never equated or related in any way. Moreover, according to Luke 1:31 ("And behold, thou shalt conceive in thy womb, and bring forth a son, and shalt call his name JESUS") he was to be called Jesus, not Immanuel. Editor, Biblical Errancy, Issue No. 24, December, 1984 http://members.aol.com/darrwin2/bepart16.html As Jefferson stated, there are some moral teachings in the Bible, but they are few and far between. The rest of the Bible, however, can be described as a book of the five B's - Barbarism, Bestiality, Bigotry, Bloodshed, and Brutality. If you do not believe this then please read the following passages. (1) Barbarism: Num. 31:1-20, Hosea 13:8, 2 Kings 2:23-24 (2) Bestiality: Num. 21:21-25, 21:3, Ex. 22:18, Ezek. 5:10 (3) Bigotry: Ex. 11:1-2, Matt. 10:35-36, Luke 14:26, John 15:6 (4) Bloodshed: Ex. 32:27-28, (5) Brutality: Ex. 32:19-26, 34:7, 2 Sam. 12:14, Isa. 14:21, Mal. 2:3. -- my [CEB] modification of a letter to the editor of Biblical Errancy, Issue No. 141 September 1994 It has been frequently pointed out that if God thought errorless Scripture important enough to inspire its composition, he would surely also have further inspired its copying, so that it might remain error free. Surely a God who can inspire error-free composition could also inspire error-free copying. Since he did not, it would appear he did not think our possession of error-free Scripture very important. But if it is not important for us, why was it important originally? (pp. 71-72) -- Inspiration of Scripture: Problems and Proposals, Paul Achtemeier "You see, the religious people -- most of them -- really think this planet is an experiment. That's what their beliefs come down to. Some god or other is always fixing and poking, messing around with tradesmen's wives, giving tablets on mountains, commanding you to mutilate your children, telling people what words they can say and what words they can't say, making people feel guilty about enjoying themselves, and like that. Why can't the gods let well enough alone? All this intervention speaks of incompetence. If God didn't want Lot's wife to look back, why didn't he make her obedient, so she'd do what her husband told her? Or if he hadn't made Lot such a shithead, maybe she would have listened to him more. If God is omnipotent and omniscient, why didn't he start the universe out in the first place so it would come out the way he wants? Why's he constantly repairing and complaining? No, there's one thing the Bible makes clear: The biblical God is a sloppy manufacturer. He's not good at design, he's not good at execution. He'd be out of business if there was any competition." -- Carl Sagan, character Sol Hadden in _Contact_, 1985 "The next time believers tell you that 'separation of church and state' does not appear in our founding document, tell them to stop using the word 'trinity.' The word 'trinity' appears nowhere in the bible. Neither does Rapture, or Second Coming, or Original Sin. If they are still unfazed (or unphrased), by this, then add Omniscience, Omnipresence, Supernatural, Transcendence, Afterlife, Deity, Divinity, Theology, Monotheism, Missionary, Immaculate Conception, Christmas, Christianity, Evangelical, Fundamentalist, Methodist, Catholic, Pope, Cardinal, Catechism, Purgatory, Penance, Transubstantiation, Excommunication, Dogma, Chastity, Unpardonable Sin, Infallibility, Inerrancy, Incarnation, Epiphany, Sermon, Eucharist, the Lord's Prayer, Good Friday, Doubting Thomas, Advent, Sunday School, Dead Sea, Golden Rule, Moral, Morality, Ethics, Patriotism, Education, Atheism, Apostasy, Conservative (Liberal is in), Capital Punishment, Monogamy, Abortion, Pornography, Homosexual, Lesbian, Fairness, Logic, Republic, Democracy, Capitalism, Funeral, Decalogue, or Bible." Dan Barker, _Losing Faith in Faith: From Preacher to Atheist_ (Madison, WI: FFRF, 1992), p. 109. "If, when we perceive results similar to those that might be due to a wise man, we conclude that they have been produced by a being similar to a wise man, then, when we see results similar to those that might be due an idiot, shall we not conclude that they have been produced by an idiot?" E.M. McDonald, "Design Argument Fallacies" _An Anthology of Atheism and Rationalism_ (ed. Gordon Stein, Buffalo, NY: Prometheus, 1980), p. 91. "Either god should have written a book to fit my brain, or he should have made my brain to fit his book." -- Robert G. Ingersoll Roger Hutchinson, John Haley, Norman Geisler, Gleason Archer, William Arndt, and such like are able to relate Bible events in a way that eliminates inconsistencies, but somehow an omniscient, omnipotent deity just didn't seem to have the talent to do that. -- Farrell Till http://www.infidels.org/library/magazines/tsr/1996/3/3more96.html John Wesley said "If there be any mistakes in the Bible there may as well be a thousand. If there be one falsehood in that book it did not come from the God of truth." "THE GOOD BOOK - one of the most remarkable euphemisms ever coined." -- Ashley Montagu "I will not go out of the Bible for proof against the supposed authenticity of the Bible. False testimony is always good against itself." -- _The Age of Reason_, Thomas Paine, p. 105. "...it is, I believe, impossible to find in any story upon record so many and such glaring absurdities, contradictions, and falsehoods, as are in the books (Matthew, Mark, Luke & John). They are more numerous and striking than I had any expectation of finding, when I began this examination,..." -- Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason, page 167 "It must be remembered that a deviation from the literal sense is not justified unless the Scriptures themselves prescribe such a course." -- _Bible Difficulties_, W. Arndt, p. 133. "I have an Easter challenge for Christians. My challenge is simply this: tell me what happened on Easter. I am not asking for proof. My straightforward request is merely that Christians tell me exactly what happened on the day that their most important doctrine was born." -- Dan Barker, Losing Faith in Faith: From Preacher to Atheist (Madison, WI: FFRF, 1992), p. 178. [note -- for anyone willing to take up this challenge, several Freethought periodicals as well as numerous individuals have "sweetened" the pot with money! Sadly, it is an impossible task] "John was written for the Greek Christians of the beginning of the second century. These recent converts were more educated, wealthy, and despised the Diaspora Jews who resided in their cities and who enjoyed the respect of Rome. John removes the offensive references to Jesus as a Jewish Messiah that are particular to the earlier gospels, in order to present the Logos in more palatable form. In so doing, John creates a simulacrum that is barely human. The earlier Synoptic traditions are emphatic in presenting Jesus as the Jewish Messiah, descendent of David, and eschatological messenger of the end of the world where God collects his Chosen People. John removes the unpleasantness of Jewish genealogy as well as all references to Palestinian and Davidic descent. "Jesus is distanced from the Jews who are the children of darkness:" -- James Still, "The Gospel of John and the Hellenization of Jesus" On pages 52 and 53 in Lucifer's Handbook (A tactically questionable title) Lee Carter says, The great bulk of the Bible is made up of stories, poetry, and parables which are ambiguous enough to enable anyone to read anything he pleases into them.... no one can believe all the Bible; if one is to believe any of it, it is necessary to select a few passages which agree with each other on some point that one already believes anyway and ignore all the rest. However, any group of passages is just as valid (or as invalid) as any other, and the result is the thousands of Protestant sects, or denominations.... The very reason there are different sects is that they cannot agree on which parts are literal and which metaphor. Later on page 68 he says, "It should be apparent to all by now that the Bible is so ambiguous, and says so many different things, that anyone can take a passage out of context here, and another there, and piece them together to form any kind of doctrine he pleases, then claim the Scriptures prove him right." "The Bible serves quite well as a history of people's maturing beliefs about the world we live in." -- John Williams The Gospel authors admit they are writing religious propaganda (John 20:31) which is a clue that it should be taken with a grain of salt. "But these are written that you may believe the Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name" "The inspiration of the Bible depends on the ignorance of the person who reads it." --Robert G. Ingersoll William Shakespeare said, "Even the devil can cite scripture for his purpose." "It ain't those parts of the Bible that I can't understand that bother me, it's the parts that I do understand." -- Mark Twain Citing the Bible as evidence for anything is like saying that the sun is in fact a chariot of fire that races across the sky because we read about it in Greek mythology. -- Stephen Ban "Such speeches as Jesus makes in Matthew, Mark, and Luke are composed of aphorisms and parables strung together like beads on a string. In John, these speeches form coherent lectures on a specific theme, such as 'light'. Jesus as the way, the truth, the life, and the vine and the canes. The parables, which are so characteristic of Jesus in the synoptic tradition, do not appear in John at all. -- Robert W. Funk, Roy W. Hoover, and the Jesus Seminar, The Five Gospels ------------------------------------------------------------------**** Religion: Christianity: Bible: Verses: Contradictory: We could even extend the dilemma by noting that the passage in 1 Timothy clearly says that God wants all men to be saved. Since it is the will of God that all men be saved, in order to have all men be saved, one should only have to pray for the salvation of all men to happen. Otherwise, the statement in 1 John 5:14-15 is erroneous. However, the salvation of all men cannot occur without causing other problems for the Bible inerrancy doctrine. The Bible clearly teaches that some men will be lost; in fact, it teaches that most men will be lost (Matt. 7:13-14). If most men will be lost, then obviously all men can't be saved. If all men can't be saved, even though a faithful, believing Christian might pray for all men to be saved, then 1 Timothy 2:3-4 and 1 John 5:14-15 cannot both be true statements. Acts 5:30 -- Jesus hanged on a tree? Signs? -- Mark 8:12 (no sign) -- John 4:54 -- signs performed! For us -- Mark 9:39, Luke 9:50 Against us -- Jesus on Family: John 2:4 he rebukes his mother, saying, "O woman, what have I to do with thee?" Compare this to his frequent statements to "honour thy father and mother"; (see Matt 15:3) and then compare that again to his also frequent claim that he comes to set daughter against mother, son against father, etc. (see Luke 12:49-53) (see also Matt 12:48) John 5:22, 27 ("For the Father judgeth no man; but hath committed all judgment unto the Son: and hath given him authority to execute judgment also") and John 9:39 versus John 8:15 ("Ye judge after the flesh; I judge no man"), John 12:47 ("And if any man hear my words and believe not, I judge him not: for I came not to judge the world, but save the world"), and John 3:17. The order of events combining the four narratives is as follows: Three women, Mary Magdelene, and Mary the mother of James, and Salome, start for the sepulchre, followed by other women bearing spices. The three find the stone rolled away, and Mary Magdale goes to tell the disciples (LK 23. 55-24).9-; John 20.1,2). Mary, the mother of James and Joses, draws nearer the tomb and sees the angel of the Lord (Mt. 28:2). She goes back to meet the other women following with the spices. Meanwhile Peter and John warned by Mary Magdalene, arrive, look in, and go away (John 20: 3-10). Mary Magdalene returns weeping, sees the two angels and then Jesus (John 20.11-18), and goes as He bade her to tell the disciples. Mary (mother of James and Joses), meanwhile has met the women with the spices, and returning with them, they see the two angels (LK 24. 4,5; Mk 16:5). They also receive the angelic message, and going to seek the disciples, are met by Jesus (Mt. 28. 8-10) The order of his appearances seem to be: On the day of His resurrection: (1) to Mary Magdalene (John 20. 14-18). (2) to the women returning from the tomb with the angelic message (Mt. 28: 8-10). 3) To Peter, probably in the afternoon (Lk 24.34; 1 Cor 15.5) 4) to the Emmaus disciples toward evening (Lk 24: 13-31). 5) to the apostles, except Thomas (Lk24: 36-43; John 20:19-24). Eight days afterward: 1) to the apostles, Thomas being present (John 20:24-29). In Galilee: 1) to the seven by the Lake of Tiberias (John 21:1-23). 2) On a mountain to the apostles and 500 brethern (1 Cor. 15:6). At Jerusalem and Bethany again: 1) to James (1 Cor 15:7); 2) to the eleven (MT 28: 16-20; MK 16: 14-20; LK 24:33-53; Acts 1: 3-12). To Paul: 1) near Damascus (Acts 9:3-6; 1 Cor 15:8) 2) in the temple (Acts 22: 17-21; 23,11. To Stephen outside Jerusalem (Acts 7:5). To John on Patmos (Rev. 1: 10-19). These are Dr. Scofield's notes on the appearances of Lord after his resurrection. If Christians are supposed to respect all secular authority because it comes from God (Rom. 13:1-7, Titus 3:1, John 19:11, 1 Peter 2:13-14) and if the anti-Christ is to come with "all power" (2 Thess. 2:9), then should Christians in the Tribulation accept the mark of the beast? If they do, they face damnation (Rev. 14:9-10). If they do not, then they are resisting authority, and "he who resists the authorities resists what God has appointed, and those who resist will incur judgment" (Rom. 13:2) "Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; ...and ye shall find rest unto your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light" (Matt. 11:29-30) versus "But beware of men: for they will deliver you up to the councils, and they will scourge you in their synagogues; and ye shall be brought before governors and kings for my sake..." (Matt. 10:17-18) and "ye shall be hated of all men for my name's sake:...But when they persecute you in this city, flee ye to another," (Matt. 10:22-23) and ye shall be hated of all men for my name’s sake" (Luke 21:17) and "In the world ye shall have tribulation" (John 16:33). Being scourged, hated, and persecuted does not sound like a "light" and "easy" burden. (Josh. 19:2-6 RSV).(Josh. 15:21-32 RSV). -- can't count! Ezra 2:3 to Ezra 2:64 -- can't count! Neh. 7:8 and Neh. 7:66 -- can't count! And can't even AGREE! After receiving and reading my first issue of BE (Nov. 1983), I must write, mostly because of 1 Peter 3:15. My second reason would be to compliment you on possessing a logically functioning mind with the insight to develop questions of interest.... The questions you ask regarding the flood do not disturb or even interest me, because with God all things are possible (Matt. 19:26). Also, the Christian is not to be a disrupter or fighter with questions and disputes of words (1 Tim. 6:3, 4, 20) but rather to keep themselves in the love and peace of God (Jude 21-23), to show forth what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God.... 2 Tim. 4:2 ("...convince, rebuke, and exhort, be unfailing in patience and in teaching"), 1 Peter 3:15 ("Always be prepared to make a defense to any one who calls you to account...."), and 2 Tim. 2:24-25. Matt. 19:26 "With men this is impossible, but with God all things are possible" Judges 1:19 (English-KJV) And the LORD was with Judah; and he drave out the inhabitants of the mountain; but could not drive out the inhabitants of the valley, because they had chariots of iron. "And the serpent said unto the woman...For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil" (Gen. 3:4-5) and "the Lord God said, 'Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil'" (Gen. 3:22). -- the devil tells the truth! see John 8:44 II SAMUEL 24: And again the anger of the LORD was kindled against Israel, and he moved David against them to say, Go, number Isreal and Judah. I CHRONICLES 21: And SATAN stood up against Isreal, and provoked David to number Israel. 1 samuel 16:23 -- the spirit of God is an evil spirit? PRO 26:4 Answer not a fool according to his folly, lest thou also be like unto him. PRO 26:5 Answer a fool according to his folly, lest he be wise in his own conceit. Matt 5:16 "In the same way, let your light shine before men, that they may see your good deeds and praise your Father in heaven." (NIV) Matt 6:3-4 "But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your giving may be in secret. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you." (NIV) God is to be found by those who seek him. Prov.8:17 "Those that seek me early shall find me." God is not to be found by those who seek him. Prov.1:28 "Then shall they call upon me, but I will not answer; they shall seek me early, but they shall not find me." Isa.1:15 "And when you spread forth your hands, I will hide mine eyes from you; yea, when ye make many prayers, I will not hear." Ps.18:41 "They cried, but there was none to save them; even unto the LORD, but he answered them not." ACT 9:7 And the men which journeyed with him stood speechless, hearing a voice, but seeing no man. ACT 22:9 And they that were with me saw indeed the light, and were afraid; but they heard not the voice of him that spake to me. John 5:31: "If I testify about myself, my testimony is not valid" John 8:14: "Even if I testify on my own behalf, my testimony is valid" Judas Dies Twice Matt. 27:5 And he cast down the pieces of silver in the temple, and departed, and went and hanged himself. Acts 1:18 Now this man purchased a field with the reward of iniquity: and falling headlong, he burst asunder in the midst, and all his bowels gushed out. I read your piece on why Saul died, and it reminded me of the inconsistency of the Bible as to just who killed Saul. [1] Was it the LORD? Saul "enquired not of the LORD: therefore he slew him, and turned the kingdom unto David the son of Jesse" (1 Chron. 10:14 , KJV). [2] Was it the Philistine archers? "And the battle went sore against Saul, and the archers hit him; and he was sore wounded of the archers" (1 Sam. 31:3 ; 1 Chron. 10:3 ). [3] Was it suicide? Saul begged his armor-bearer to kill him, but he wouldn't. "Therefore Saul took a sword, and fell upon it" (1 Sam. 31:4-5 ; 1 Chron. 10:4-5 ). [4] Was it a young Amalekite? A young Amalekite man happened by and Saul begged him to "[s]tand, I pray thee, upon me, and slay me: for anguish is come upon me, because my life is yet whole in me." [The Amalekite told David], "So I stood upon him, and slew him, because I was sure that he could not live after that he was fallen" (2 Sam. 1:8-10 ). James 2:14 ("What doth it profit, my brethren, though a man say he hath faith, and have not works? Can faith save him?" ), 2:17 ("Even so faith, if it hath not works, is dead, being alone"), 2:20 ("...faith without works is dead"), and 2:26 ("For as the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without works is dead also") say both faith and works are necessary for salvation, verses 2:21 ("Was not Abraham our father justified by works..."), 2:24 ("Ye see then how that by works a man is justified, and not by faith only"), and 2:25 ("Likewise also was not Rahab the harlot justified by works...") Now compare to what Paul said Matt. 19:16-21 -- saved by works and faith -- WORKS FIRST Rom. 7:18 ("For I know that in me (that is, in my flesh) dwelleth no good thing") and Gal. 2:20 ("I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me"). James 1:13 -- god cannot be tempted John 1:1 -- Jesus is god Matt. 4:1; Luke 4:1-2; Mark 1:12-13; Hebrews 2:18; Hebrews 5:14-15 -- Jesus gets tempted! Hebrews 9:22, which says, "Without the shedding of blood, there is no remission of sins." Yet, sins were repeatedly forgiven in the OT by methods other than bloody sacrifices. Blood was by no means the only means by which sins could be forgiven. Lev. 5:11-13 states flour can make atonement for the soul. Money can atone for the soul according to Exodus 30:15-16; jewelry can atone for the soul as is apparent from Num. 31:50, and in Num. 14:17-20 and Hosea 14:3 we find that prayer can atone for the soul. Isa. 26:19 ("The dead men shall live, together with my dead body shall they arise") and 1 Cor. 15:21, 52 ("The trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible") on the one hand and Job 7:9 ("He that goeth down to the grave shall come up no more") and Isa. 26:14 ("They are dead, they shall not live; they are deceased, they shall not rise") John 3:13 ("No man hath ascended up to heaven, but he that came down from heaven, even the Son of man which is in heaven") with 2 Kings 2:11 ("Elijah went up by a whirlwind into heaven") ------------------------------------------------------------------**** Religion: Christianity: Bible: Verses: Kingdom at hand: Luke 17:20-21 -- Kingdom of God within you! Matt 4:1, Matt 10:23, Matt 16:28, Matt 24:34, Mark 9:1 Luke 9:27, Luke 21:20 ------------------------------------------------------------------**** Religion: Christianity: Bible: Verses: Errant: Matt 2:1-2 Now when Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judaea in the days of Herod the king, behold, there came wise men from the east to Jerusalem, Saying, Where is he that is born King of the Jews? for we have seen his star in the east, and are come to worship him. (the star should have been in the WEST when they were travelling to Jerusalem!) The Encyclopedia Americana, 1992, Vol. 3, p. 795 says, "The first year is the most difficult one in the life of a bird. In most species the mortality rate for young birds during the first year is about 50%, but in some species it may reach as high as 80% to 90%." New Scientist, Jan., 1969, pp. 121-122, reports that one third of adult birds and four fifths of their offspring die of starvation every year. Now go look at Matt. 6:26 and 6:34 Jesus told us to "Love your enemies, bless them that curse you" but ignored his own advice by repeatedly denouncing his opposition. Matt. 23:17 ("Ye fools and blind") , Matt. 12:34 ("O generation of vipers"), and Matt. 23:17 ("...hypocrites...ye are like unto whited sepulchers....") are excellent examples of hypocrisy. John 7:8-10[KJV] Go ye up unto this feast: I go not up yet unto this feast: for my time is not yet full come. When he had said these words unto them, he abode still in Galilee. But when his brethren were gone up, then went he also up unto the feast, not openly, but as it were in secret. (Jesus LIES to his disciples!) ------------------------------------------------------------------**** Religion: Christianity: Bible: Verses: Ridiculous: Editor's Note: According to ages given in the patriarchal genealogies of Genesis 5 , there were 1,656 years from the time of Adam's creation to Noah's flood. The postdiluvian genealogies of Genesis 11 list 297 years from the flood to the birth of Abraham, who was 100 years old when Isaac was born (Gen. 21:5 ). Isaac was 60 years old when Jacob was born (Gen. 25:26 ), and Jacob was 130 years old when Joseph presented him to Pharaoh shortly after the Israelite migration into Egypt (Gen. 47:9 ). Hence, 2,243 years passed from Adam to the descent into Egypt. The Israelites sojourned in Egypt 430 years (Exodus 12:40 ), and Solomon, in the fourth year of his reign, began to build the Temple 480 years after the Israelite exodus (1 Kings 6:1). Therefore, the Bible's own chronology teaches that 3,153 years transpired from Adam to the fourth year of Solomon's reign, when construction on the temple began. Bible chronologists assign 930 B.C. as the year of Solomon's death (see SOLOMON, Eerdmans Bible Dictionary, 1987, p. 959). Since Solomon reigned for 40 years (2 Chron. 9:30 ), construction on the temple would have begun 36 years earlier in 966B.C.E., so if the 966 years that separated the fourth year of Solomon's reign from the birth of Jesus are added to the above 3,153 years, we have only 4,119 years. Since Jesus was about 33 when he was allegedly crucified, we see that Bible chronology allows for only 4,152 years from Adam to the crucifixion. -- http://www.infidels.org/mag/sr/1994/4/4devol94.html Jer. 20:7 ("O Lord, thou hast deceived me, and I was deceived..."), and Ezek. 14:9 ("And if the prophet be deceived when he hath spoken a thing, I the Lord have deceived that prophet...") "I tell you the truth, if anyone says to this mountain, `Go, throw yourself into the sea,' and does not doubt in his heart but believes that what he says will happen, it will be done for him. Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours. Mark 11:23-24 "For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angles nor demons, neither the present nor the future nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor ANYTHING ELSE IN ALL CREATION, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord." Romans 8:38-39 "But the man who has doubts is condemned if he eats, because his eating is not from faith; and EVERYTHING that does NOT come from FAITH is SIN" Romans 14:23 Leviticus 20:13 "If a man lies with a man one lies with a woman, both of them have done what is detestable. They must be put to death; their blood will be on their own heads." Let your women keep silence in the churches: for it is not permitted unto them to speak; but they are commanded to be under obedience, as also saith the law. And if they will learn any thing, let them ask their husbands at home: for it is a shame for women to speak in the church. -- Paul [I Corinthians 14:34-35] 2 Thessalonians 2:11-12 Therefore God sends upon them a strong delusion, to make them believe what is false, so that all may be condemned who did not believe the truth but had pleasure in unrighteousness. Num.31:14, 17, 18: "And Moses was wroth...And Moses said unto them, "Have ye saved all the women alive? ... Now therefore kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman, ... But all the women children ... keep alive for yourselves." "There she lusted after her lovers, whose genitals were like those of donkeys and whose emission was like that of horses. So you longed for the lewdness of your youth, when in Egypt your bosom was caressed and your young breasts fondled." -- Ezekiel 23:20-21, NIV "But Rabshakeh said unto them, Hath my master sent me to thy master, and to thee, to speak these words? hath he not sent me to the men which sit on the wall, that they may eat their own dung, and drink their own piss with you? " -- 2 Kings 18:27 (KJV) 2nd Kings 2:23-24. KJV: (23) And he (the prophet Elisha) went up from thence unto Beth-el: and as he was going up by the way, there came forth little children out of the city, and mocked him, and said unto him, Go up, thou bald head, go up, thou bald head. (24) And he turned back, and looked on them, and cursed them in the name of the Lord. And there came forth two she bears out of the wood, and tare forty and two children of them. Mark 3:29 But whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit will never be forgiven; he is guilty of an eternal sin." Psalm 137:8-9 "O Daughter of Babylon, doomed to destruction, happy is he who repays you for what you have done to us -- he who seizes your infants and dashes them against the rocks" Prov 16:33 "The lot is cast into the lap, but it's every decision is from the LORD" Prov 20:30 "Blows and wounds cleanse away evil, and beatings purge the inmost being" Prov 22:6 "Train a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not turn from it" And you really should check out Mark 16:17-18. If I mix the poison, will you drink it? Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of Man, and drink his blood, ye have no life in you. John 6:53 (cannibalism?) To understand this, we have only to analyze the story in terms of the number of inches of rain per minute that would have had to fall on the entire surface of the earth to produce the results described in Genesis 7-8 . We now know, for example, that Mount Everest is the highest mountain "under the whole heaven." It reaches an altitude of 29,028 feet, which would be a height of 348,336 inches. For enough rain to fall in a period of 40 days to reach the peak of this mountain, the cloud formations would have to drop 8,708 inches of rain per day uniformly over all the earth. This would amount to 363 inches per hour or six inches per minute. Can any reasonable person believe that it once rained continuously for 40 days and nights at an average rate of six inches per minute? A rainfall of six inches in one day is a veritable downpour. What would six inches per minute sustained for 57,600 continuous minutes be like? "To the weak I became weak, to win the weak. I have become all things to all men so that by all possible means I might save some." -- 1 Corinthians 9:22 (English-NIV) Job 9:1-18 1Then Job replied: "Indeed, I know that this is true. But how can a mortal be righteous before God? Though one wished to dispute with him, he could not answer him one time out of a thousand. His wisdom is profound, his power is vast. Who has resisted him and come out unscathed? He moves mountains without their knowing it and overturns them in his anger. He shakes the earth from its place and makes its pillars tremble. He speaks to the sun and it does not shine; he seals off the light of the stars. He alone stretches out the heavens and treads on the waves of the sea. He is the Maker of the Bear and Orion, the Pleiades and the constellations of the south. He performs wonders that cannot be fathomed, miracles that cannot be counted. When he passes me, I cannot see him; when he goes by, I cannot perceive him. If he snatches away, who can stop him? Who can say to him, `What are you doing?' God does not restrain his anger; even the cohorts of Rahab cowered at his feet. "How then can I dispute with him? How can I find words to argue with him? Though I were innocent, I could not answer him; I could only plead with my Judge for mercy. Even if I summoned him and he responded, I do not believe he would give me a hearing. He would crush me with a storm and multiply my wounds for no reason. He would not let me regain my breath but would overwhelm me with misery. ------------------------------------------------------------------**** Religion: Christianity: Bible: Verses: Good: "for a man is slave to whatever has mastered him" 2 Peter 2:19b "Our love must not be a thing of words and fine talk; it must be a thing of action and sincerity." 1 John 3:18 Barclay Translation of the Holy Bible Test everything. Hold on to the good. 1 Thess. 5:21 "If we are out of our mind, it is for the sake of God..." -- 2 Cor 5:13 (NIV) "forgive, and you will be forgiven" (Luke 6:37-38). Song of Songs 8:6-7 Job 13:5 -- altogether silent -- wisdom! 1 Timothy 1:3-4 -- endless genealogies? Job 19:20 -- skin of my teeth! Job 28:28 -- wisdom is fear of the Lord Job 34:1-4 -- find right for ourselves Job 38:early -- Lord describes flat world "For what is a man profited if he shall gain the whole world and lose his own soul?" -- Matt. 16:26 Luke 6:30 -- in response to "absolute morality" "If anyone considers himself religious and yet does not keep a tight rein on his tongue, he deceives himself and his religion is worthless. Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world." James 1:26-27 For the fate of the sons of men and the fate of beasts is the same; as one dies, so dies the other. They all have the same breath, and man has no advantage over the beasts, for all is vanity. All go to one place, all are from the dust, and all turn to dust again. -- Ecclesiastes 3:19-20 "Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might, for in the grave, where you are going, there is neither working nor planning nor knowledge nor wisdom." -- Ecclesiastes 9:10 "The Law brings death, but the Spirit brings life." -- II Corinthians 3:6, CEV [God] has made us competent to be ministers of a new covenant, not in a written code but in the Spirit; for the written code kills, but the Spirit gives life. -- 2 Corinthians 3:6 "For the WORD of God is quick and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart." -- Hebrews 4:12 "as for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away. For our knowledge is imperfect and our prophecy is imperfect" -- 1 Corinthians 13:8-9 Matt 13:13: This is why I speak to them in parables: "Though seeing they do not see; "Though hearing they do not hear or understand" (actually, all of the parable of the sower) Isaiah 29:13, Matt 15:8,9: "These people honour me with their lips but their hearts are far from me. They worship me in vain; their teachings are but rules taught by men." "Why do you look at the speck of dust in your brothers eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? "How can you say to your brother, "Brother, let me take the speck out of your eye," when you yourself fail to see the plank in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, so that you might see clearly to remove the speck from your brothers eye." Luke 6:41-42 Matthew 5:22: "Whoever saith, Thou fool, shall be in danger of hell fire" [Jesus speaking]. Prov 10:17 "He who heeds discipline shows the way to life, but whoever ignores correction leads others astray." Prov 11:2 "When pride comes, then comes disgrace, but with humility comes wisdom" Prov 12:1 "Whosoever loves discipline loves knowledge, but he who hates correction is stupid" Prov 12:15 "The way of a fool seems right to him, but a wise man listens to advice" Prov 14:15 "A simple man believes anything, but a prudent man gives thought to his steps" Proverb 14:15, "The simple believeth every word: but the prudent man looketh well to his going." Prov 17:16 "Of what use is money in the hand of a fool, since he has no desire to get wisdom?" Prov 18:2 "A fool finds no pleasure in understanding, but delights in airing his own opinion." Prov 18:17 "The first to present his case seems right, till another comes forward and questions him" Prov 20:12 "Ears that hear and eyes that see -- the LORD has made them both" John 3:20 "Everyone who does evil hates the light, and will not come into the light for fear that his deeds will be exposed" John 15:22a "If I had not come and spoken to them, they would not be guilty of sin" A man dies, and is laid low; man breathes his last, and where is he? As waters fail from a lake, and a river wastes away and dries up, so man lies down and rises not again. -- Job, 14:7-12 "For truly, I say to you, till heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot, will pass the law until all is accomplished. Whoever then relaxes one of the least of these commandments and teaches men so, shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven; but who does them and teaches them shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven"--Matt. 5:18-19 RSV "Am I therefore become your enemy, because I tell you the Truth?" (Galatians 4:16) ------------------------------------------------------------------**** Religion: Christianity: Bible: Verses: Misc: Jesus said in John 10:35 "Scripture cannot be broken." Deut. 24:16 "Fathers shall not be put to death for their children, nor children put to death for their fathers; each is to die for his own sin." "God, I thank thee, that I am not as other men are." -- King James Bible, Luke 18:11 Ezek. 18:20 "The soul that sinneth, it shall die. The son shall not bear the iniquity of the father, neither shall the father bear the iniquity of the son: the righteousness of the righteous shall be upon him, and the wickedness of the wicked shall be upon him." Ezek.33:20 "O ye house of Israel, I will judge you every one after his ways." "For it is written, I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and will bring to nothing the understanding of the prudent." -- 1 Corinthians 1:19 But avoid foolish controversies and genealogies and arguments and quarrels about the law, because these are unprofitable and useless. Warn a divisive person once, and then warn him a second time. After that, have nothing to do with him. You may be sure that such a man is warped and sinful; he is self-condemned. Titus 3:9-11 anti-freethought Proverbs 3:5-7 Matthew 6:25-34 Proverbs 14:12 I Corinthians 10:5 Jer. 31:29-30 "In those days they shall say no more, The fathers have eaten a sour grape, and the children's teeth are set on edge. But every one shall die for his own iniquity: every man that eateth the sour grape, his teeth shall be set on edge." Rom. 2:6 "Who will render to every man according to his deeds." Ezek. 18:4 "... the soul that sinneth, it shall die." "I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the LORD do all these things." -- Isaiah 45:7 (English-KJV) "If there is calamity in a city, will not the Lord have done it?" -- Amos 3:6 EXO 15:3 The LORD is a man of war: the LORD is his name. Xtianity is a fairly effective morality to keep slaves subject and obedient (Luke 17:12, 1 Peter 2:18 etc.) and women (1 Corinthians 11, 1 Tim 2:11-15) as well as children (Dtn 21:18, Proverbs 13:1,24, Hebr 12:7) submissive. "Why callest thou me good? There is none good but one, that is God" (Matt. 19:17) ------------------------------------------------------------------**** Religion: Christianity: Bible: Verses: Terrible: THE FOLLOWING IS A PARTIAL LIST OF PEOPLE MURDERED BY THE CHRISTIAN GOD DIRECTLY OR THROUGH HIS COMMAND, ACCORDING TO THEIR BIBLE. "The bible is the most genocidal book in our canon" -- Noam Chomsky The entire population of the earth except for eight survivors (Genesis 7:23). Every inhabitant of Sodom and Gomorrah except for one family (Genesis 19:24). Every first born of Egypt (Exodus 12:29). All the hosts of the Pharaoh, including the captains of 600 chariots (Exodus 14:27,28). Amalek and his people (Exodus 17:11,16). 3,000 Israelites (Exodus 32:27). 250 Levite princes who had challenged the leadership of Moses (Numbers 16:140). 14,700 Jews in a plague who had rebelled against Moses following the killing of the princes (Numbers 16:41-49). All the people of Bashan, including the king Og (Numbers 21:32-36). 24,000 Israelites who lived with Moabite women (Numbers 25:4,9). All the males, kings, and nonvirgin females of the Midianites. (Numbers 31:7-18). The Ammonites (Deuteronomy 2:1921). The Horims (Deuteronomy 2:22). All the citizens of Jericho, except for a prostitute and her family (Joshua 6:17-25). 12,000 citizens of Ai. (Joshua 8: 25) Joshua hung the king on a tree. (Joshua 8: 29). All the people of Makkedah (Joshua 10:28). All the people of Libnah (Joshua 10:29,30) All the people of Gezer (Joshua 10:33). All the people of Lachish (Joshua 10:32). All the people of Eglon (Joshua 10:34, 35). All the people of Hebron (Joshua 10:36, 37). 50,000 men for looking into a forbidden ark (1 Sam. 6:19) 70 princes and the house of Ahab & friends. (2Kings 10:1-11) 42 children killed by bears for teasing a bald guy. (2 Kings 2:23) 70,000 Israelites by pestilence. (1Chron. 21:14) 120,000 Judeans (II Chronicles 28). 75,000 Persians (Esther 9:16). Discriminate slaughter. (has to be read to be believed!) (Ezekial 9:6) For a grand numerical total of 404361 people +1000000 (the flood, conservatively) + 10000 (the hosts of the Pharaoh, ") + 100000 (10 cities, ") + 100000 (the first born of Egypt, ") + 250000 (the five civilizations, ") + 1000 (house of Ahab and friends, ") + 10000 (discriminate slaughter, ") --------------- 1875361 Isn’t he just a swell guy? Matt 19:11-12 -- eunuchs for God! WHAT WE ARE BY NATURE. 1. Evil in our thoughts continually..........Gen. vi. 5. 2. Unclean...................................Job xiv. 4. 3. Shapen in iniquity........................Ps. .i. 5. 4. Unclean and as filthy rags................Isa. lxiv. 6. 5. Deceitful and desperately wicked..........Jere. xii. 9. 6. All under sin.................. Rom. iii. 9-23. 7. The children of wrath................... Eph. ii. 3. 8. Aliens from the commonwealth of Israel....Eph. ii. 12. 9. Alienated from the life of God............Eph. iv. 18. 10. Dead in trespasses and sin................Col. ii. 13. women in Bible -- ( 1 Cor. 14:34-35). ( 1 Tim. 2:12).( Eph. 5:22 ; Col. 3:18 ; Titus 2:5), ( 1 Pet. 3:1). Numbers 5:11-31 This means that the Bowers' Family Bible contains no scripture addressing Adultery (Deuteronomy 28:30), Prostitution (Deuteronomy 22:28,29), Sexual Mutilation (Samuel 18:25,27), Exhibitionism And Public Sexual Intercourse (II Samuel 16:21,22), Forced Sexual Slavery (Deuteronomy 21:11,13), Bestiality (Leviticus 20:16), Rape And Gruesome Sex Killing (Judges 19:22,29), Whoredom (Ezekiel 23:2,20), Sexually Aggressive Tramps (Genesis 39:7,12), Incestuous Rape (II Samuel I 3:1,14), Offering Daughters To Strangers as Sexual Door Prizes (Genesis 19:8), Drunken Incest (Genesis 19:31,36), Multiple Sex Partners (Kings 11:1,3), Infanticide and Abortion (Isaiah 13:16) (Ezekiel 9:6) (Psalms 137:8,9) (Amos 1:13) (I Kings 15:16), Cannibalism (Deuteronomy 28:53), and Masturbation and Coitus Interruptus (Genesis 38:9) -- just to name a few passages off the top of my head (I am too much of a lady to even allude to passage that relate to people eating their own feces!) -- "Mrs. Betty Bowers", http://bettybowers.com/Letter29a.html "If thy brother, the son of thy mother, or thy son, or thy daughter, or the wife of thy bosom, or thy friend, which is as thine own soul, entice thee secretly, saying, Let us go serve other gods, and ... Thou shalt not consent unto him, nor hearken unto him; neither shall thine eye pity him, neither shalt thou spare, neither shalt thou conceal him: But thou shalt surely kill him; thine hand shall be first upon him to put him to death, and afterwards the hand of all the people. And thou shalt stone him with stones, that he die" (Deut. xiii, 6--10)! Lev. 24:15,16 -- atheists and blasphemers must be KILLED When Yahweh your god has settled you in the land you're about to occupy, and driven out many infidels before you...you're to cut them down and exterminate them. You're to make no compromise with them or show them any mercy. -- Deut. 7:1-3 (KJV) Eternal sin -- Mark 3:29, Luke 12:10 ------------------------------------------------------------------**** Religion: Belief: One observed to act as if a statement X were true is said to believe X. -- "Reed Konsler" , on the CoV mailing list IT IS MY FIRM BELIEF THAT IT IS A MISTAKE TO HOLD FIRM BELIEFS. Consider this definition: belief is a state of mind in which confidence, trust, faith is placed in a person, idea, or thing (Dictionary of Philosophy). My own opinion is that belief is the death of intelligence. As soon as one believes a doctrine of any sort, or assumes certitude, one stops thinking about that aspect of existence. The more certitude one assumes, the less there is left to think about, and a person sure of everything would never have any need to think about anything and might be considered clinically dead under current medical standards, where absence of brain activity is taken to mean that life has ended. -- Robert Anton Wilson ******* "If two things don't fit, but you believe both of them, thinking that somewhere, hidden, there must be a third thing that connects them, that's credulity." -- Umberto Eco ******* "Fantastic doctrines (like Christianity or Islam or Marxism) require unanimity of belief. One dissenter casts doubt on the creed of millions. Thus the fear and hate; thus the torture chamber, the iron stake, the gallows, the labor camp, the psychiatric ward." -- Edward Abbey "I think what attracts me about the Electric Monk is that it's such an eloquent example of the futility of belief for belief's sake. I mean there's only any point in believing something if it's true." -- Richard Dawkins, interview with Douglas Adams This is, I think, much of the problem of the modern dilemma: direct experience had been discounted, and in its place all kinds of belief systems have been erected. I would prefer a kind of intellectual anarchy where whatever was pragmatically applicable was brought to bear on any situation; where belief was understood as a self-limiting function. Because, you see, if you believe something, you are automatically precluded from believing its opposite; which means that a degree of your human freedom has been forfeited in the act of committing yourself to this belief. -- Terrence McKenna "It is the things for which there is no evidence that are believed with passion. Nobody feels any passion about the multiplication table or about the existence of Cape Horn, because these matters are not doubtful. But in matters of theology or political theory, where a rational man will hold that at best there is a slight balance of probablity on one side or the other, people argue with passion and support their opinions by physical slavery imposed by armies and mental slavery imposed by schools." -- Bertrand Russell I don't believe anything I write or say. I regard belief as a form of brain damage, the death of intelligence, the fracture of creativity, the atrophy of imagination. I have opinions but no Belief System (B.S.). -- Robert Anton Wilson "'One can't believe impossible things.' 'I daresay you haven't had much practice,' said the Queen. 'When I was your age, I always did it for half-an-hour a day. Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.'" -- Lewis Carroll For what a man would like to be true, that he more readily believes. -- Francis Bacon, _Novum Oganum, bk. I, Aphor.49. As in the very word itself: be-LIE-ve. Belief is an obsolete Aristotelian category. -Dr. Jack Sarfatti, physicist ... the very bad habit of identification with our ideas -- David McDonagh I don't believe in "believing in" -- Richard Brodie ------------------------------------------------------------------**** Religion: Fear: Frank Herbert wrote in Dune(page 8): I must not fear Fear is the mindkiller Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration I will face my fear I will permit it to pass over and through me And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path Where the fear has gone there will be nothing Only I will remain Every form of causeless self-doubt, every feeling of inferiority and secret unworthiness is, in fact, man's hidden dread of his inability to deal with existence. But the greater his terror, the more fiercely he clings to the murderous doctrines that choke him. No man can survive the moment of pronouncing himself irredeemably evil; should he do it, his next moment is insanity or suicide. To escape it -- if he's chosen an irrational standard -- he will fake, evade and blank out; he will cheat himself or reality, of existence, of happiness, of mind; and he will ultimately cheat himself of self-esteem by struggling to preserve its illusion rather than to risk discovering its lack. To fear to face an issue is to believe that the worst it true. -- Ayn Rand, _Atlas Shrugged_, pg. 972 "A mystic is a man who surrendered his mind at its first encounter with the minds of others. Somewhere in the distant reaches of his childhood, when his own understanding of reality clashed with the assertions of others, with their arbitrary orders and contradictory demands, he gave in to so craven a fear of independence that he renounced his rational faculty. At the crossroads of the choice between 'I know' and 'They say,' he chose the authority of others, he chose to submit rather than to understand, to believe rather than to think. Faith in the supernatural begins as faith in the superiority of others. His surrender took the form of the feeling that he must hide his lack of understanding, that others possess some mysterious knowledge of which he alone is deprived, that reality is whatever they want it to be, through some means forever denied to him." -- Ayn Rand, _Atlas Shrugged_ ******* You can discover what your enemy fears most by observing the means he uses to frighten you. -- Eric Hoffer ******* T.S. Eliot: "I will show you fear in a handful of dust." I think fear is an alarm clock. The first thing you do when the alarm sounds is shut it off! *Then* respond to the alarm, collect yourself, take action. And that's step five: be aware. Don't ignore fear. Stamp it out, then stay awake. It should be obvious what caused the fear. Thinking about it is more likely to bury the awareness than promote it. If it isn't obvious, don't belabor it. Just stay awake. Keep your eyes open. Be alert. -- Paul Williams ------------------------------------------------------------------**** Religion: Freethought: General: "they boldly thought where no one had thought before," ******* "Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind." -- Ralph Waldo Emerson ******* ******* "When I became convinced that the Universe is natural-that all the ghosts and gods are myths, there entered into my brain, into my soul, into every drop of my blood, the sense, the feeling, the joy of freedom. The walls of my prison crumbled and fell, the dungeon was flooded with light and all the bolts, and bars, and manacles became dust. I was no longer a servant, a serf, or a slave. There was for me no master in all the wide world-not even in infinite space. I was free. -free to think, to express my thoughts -free to live to my own ideal -free to live for myself and those I loved -free to use all my faculties, all my senses -free to spread imagination's wings -free to investigate, to guess and dream and hope -free to judge and determine for myself -free to reject all ignorant and cruel creeds, all the "inspired" books that savages have produced, and all the barbarous legends of the past -free from popes and priests -free from all the "called" and "set apart" -free from sanctified mistakes and holy lies -free from the fear of eternal pain -free from the winged monsters of night -free from devils, ghosts, and gods For the first time I was free. There were no prohibited places in all the realms of my thought-no air, no space, where fancy could not spread her painted wings -no chains for my limbs -no lashes for my back -no fires for my flesh -no master's frown or threat -no following another's steps -no need to bow, or cringe, or crawl, or utter lying words. I was free. I stood erect and fearlessly, joyously, faced all worlds. And then my heart was filled with gratitude, with thankfulness, and went out in love to all the heroes, the thinkers who gave their lives for the liberty of hand and brain -for the freedom of labor and thought -to those who fell on the fierce fields of war, to those who died in dungeons bound with chains -to those who proudly mounted scaffold's stairs -to those whose bones were crushed, whose flesh was scarred and torn -to those by fire consumed -to all the wise, the good, the brave of every land, whose thoughts and deeds have given freedom to the sons of men. And I vowed to grasp the torch that they had held, and hold it high, that light might conquer darkness still." -- Robert G. Ingersoll (1833-1899) ******* ******* Thinking is man's only basic virtue, from which all the others proceed. And his basic vice, the source of all his evils, is the nameless act which all of you practice, but struggle never to admit: the act of blanking out, the willful suspension of one's consciousness, the refusal to think -- not blindness, but the refusal to see; not ignorance but the refusal to know. It is the act of unfocussing your mind and inducing an inner fog to escape the responsibility of judgement -- on the unstated premise that a thing will not exist if only you refuse to identify it, that A will not be A so long as you do not pronounce the verdict "It is:". -- Ayn Rand, _Atlas Shrugged_, pg.935 ******* ******* "To understand the things that are at our door is the best preparation for understanding what lies beyond." -- Hypatia(c. 370-415 CE) ******* "In the last analysis it is the theist who can find no ultimate meaning in this life and who denigrates it. For him life has no meaning per se. This life here and now is hopeless, barren, and forlorn; it is full of tragedy and despair. the theist can only find meaning by leaving this life for a transcendental world beyond the grave. The human world as he finds it is empty of "ultimate purpose" and hence meaningless. Theism thus is an attempt to escape from the human condition; it is a pathetic deceit. To the theist, death is not real; it is not final and tragedy is not irreparable. There is always hope of some saving grace. Living in this world, unable to cope with its problems, dilemmas, and conflicts, the theist leaps beyond it into another world, more akin to his fancy - though he has not come up with a clear notion of what the soul does in eternal paradise." -- Paul Kurtz, _Forbidden Fruit. The Ethics of Humanism_ Prometheus Books: Amherst, 1988, p.235 "If I were to speak your kind of language, I would say that man's only moral commandment is: Thou shalt think. But a 'moral commandment' is a contradiction in terms. The moral is the chosen, not the forced; the understood, not the obeyed. The moral is the rational, and reason accepts no commandments." -- Ayn Rand "Go around the world, and where you find the least superstition, there you will find the best men, the best women, the best children." -- Robert G. Ingersoll ******* THE GOD QUESTION: How do you impose a destiny on a human without removing their freedom? ******* ******* The word 'hero' is etymologically related to 'heresy' and 'heretic'. All three are derived from the Greek 'haretikos', meaning "able to choose." -- Laurence G. Boldt ******* ******* "When any government, or any church for that matter, undertakes to say to its subjects, 'This you may not read, this you may not see, this you are forbidden to know,' the end result is tyranny and oppression, no matter how holy the motives. Mighty little force is needed to control a man whose mind has been hoodwinked; contrariwise, no amount of force can control a free man, a man whose mind is free. No, not the rack, not fission bombs, not anything--you can't conquer a free man; the most you can do is kill him." -- Robert Heinlein ******* We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but on thing: the last of the human freedoms--to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way. -- Victor E. Frankl "A human being is not one thing among others; things determine each other, but man is self-determining. What he becomes within the limits of endowment and environment he has made out of himself." (pg. 134) -- Viktor E. Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning: an introduction to logotherapy. Those who seek truth/rightness may find happiness but the reverse is highly unlikely. We conjecture that happiness comes with being in the process of solving problems -- becoming more right, getting closer to the truth. -- TCS comment (Sarah Lawrence) How can I develop a set rules which support rational thinking in an inspiring and helpful way for myself and other CoF members? -- John C. 'Buck' Field , on the NTCOF talk list "Pluralitas non est ponenda sine necessitate." -- William of Ockham (c. 1280-1349) "I am not going to question your opinions. I am not going to meddle with your belief. I am not going to dictate to you mine. All that I say is, examine, inquire. Look into the nature of things. Search out the grounds of your opinions, the for and the against. Know why you believe, understand what you believe, and possess a reason for the faith that is in you." -- Frances Wright, from "Divisions of Knowledge" An adult who ceases after youth to unlearn & relearn his facts & to reconsider his opinions is a menace. -- Edward Thorndike "W. V. O. Quine has been one of the most ruthless of recent appliers of this principle [Ockham's razor.] I recall an exchange in print (a fest-schrift, around 1980) where someone quoted Shakespeare's "There are more things on heaven and earth, than are dreamed of in your philosophy" at Quine. Quine responded something like, "Possibly, but my concern is that there not be more things in my philosophy than are in heaven and earth." -- David Lyndes "I believe in honesty and truthfulness, not because I fear a god or a devil, but because I think it is the best way for people to live together. I believe in helping others because when we cooperate with our neighbors we make life easier for all. I believe in treating others as I want to be treated - but I certainly do not believe in turning the other cheek and the truth is I never knew any Christians who did either." -- James Hervey Johnson Whoever continually strives to achieve a clearer and clearer vision of reality and our place in it -- whoever is pulled forward by a passion for such clarity -- is, to that extent leading a spiritual life. -- Nathaniel Branden "The idea of God implies the abdication of human reason and justice; it is the most decisive negation of human liberty and necessarily ends in the enslavement of mankind both in theory and practice. He who desires to worship God must harbor no childish illusions about the matter but bravely renounce his liberty and humanity." -- Mikhail Bakunin, from "Federalism, Socialism, and Anti-Theologism" "Give me the storm and tempest of thought and action, rather than the dead calm of ignorance and faith! Banish me from Eden when you will; but first let me eat of the fruit of the tree of knowledge!" -- Robert G. Ingersoll, "The Gods", 1872 "They [religious idealists] say in a single breath: "God and the liberty of man," "God and the dignity, justice, equality, fraternity, prosperity of men" -- regardless of the fatal logic by virtue of which, if God exists, all these things are condemned to nonexistence. For, if God is, he is necessarily the eternal, supreme, absolute master, and, if such a master exists, man is a slave. Now, if he is a slave, neither justice, nor equality, nor fraternity, nor prosperity are possible for him. In vain, flying in the face of good sense and all the teachings of history, do they represent their God as animated by the tenderest love of human liberty. A master, whoever he may be and however liberal he may desire to show himself, remains none the less always a master." -- Mikhail Bakunin, "God and the State", 1874 "Hands that help are better than lips that pray" -- Ingersoll A clash of doctrine is not a disaster - it is an opportunity. All sensible men are of the same religion. But what religion that is, no sensible man will ever say. -- Benjamin Disraeli (1804-1881) "If God has spoken, why is the world not convinced." -- Percy Bysshe Shelley, English poet (1792-1822) Since rationality is the most reliable means of thinking, a rational skeptic may be defined as: One who questions the validity of particular claims of knowledge by employing or calling for statements of fact to prove or disprove claims, as a tool for understanding causality. -- http://www.skeptic.com/01.1.shermer-skep-manifesto.html ******* "Look at the God idea from any angle, and it is foolish, it doesn't make sense, but extravagantly proposes more mysteries than it assumes to explain. For instance, is it sensible that a real God would leave mankind in such confusion and debate about his character and his laws? There have been many alleged revelations of God. There have, indeed, been many Gods as there have been many Bibles. And in different ages and different lands an endless game of guessing and disputing has gone on. Men have argued blindly about God. They still argue -- just as blindly. And if there is a God, we must conclude that he has willfully left men in the dark. He has not wanted men to know about him. Assuming his existence, then it would follow that he would have perfect ability to give a complete and universal explanation of himself, so that all men could see and know without further uncertainty. A real God could exhibit himself clearly to all men and have all men following his will to the last letter without a doubt or a slip. But when we examine even cursorily the many contradictory revelations of God, the many theories and arguments, the many and diverse principles of piety, we perceive that all this talk about God his been merely the natural floundering of human ignorance. There has been no reality in the God idea which men could discover and agree upon. The spectacle has been exactly what we should expect when men deal with theories of something which does not exist. Hidden Gods -- no Gods -- all we see is man's poor guesswork." -- E. Haldeman-Julius, "The Meaning Of Atheism" ******* The history of free men is never really written by chance but by choice -- their choice. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower "Necessity requires me to be a honking goose in a sea of singing swans." -- Martin Luther "The past belonged to religion. The future belongs to science." -- Coleman Smith "I cannot believe in a God who wants to be praised all the time." -- Friedrich Nietzsche No society, however sophisticated or liberal, is wholly free of superstition, and superstition is most likely to lurk unnoticed in assumptions that have rooted in language. Unwarranted assumptions about the nature of thought are particularly subtle and debilitating, and of these, perhaps most dangerous is the assumption that our thought is free. -- Robert Grudin "A humanist is an atheist who cares." -- Dr. Wendell Watters "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines...Speak what you think now in hard words and to-morrow speak what to-morrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict every thing you said to-day..." -- Ralph Waldo Emerson "There is no evidence at all for the existence of a supernatural Supreme Being. Some people say they know God exists because they feel him in their hearts. Again that is just childhood conditioning. Others are fond of saying that there had to be someone, or something to act as a First Cause, but even a child can see through that argument. If you tell a child "God made the world" he will usually ask "Then who made God?" If we reply, as the catechism states, "No one made God. He always was," then why couldn't we just say that about the world in the first place?... No, man is the measure of all things. It's only fear of death and egotism that makes us invent a God who will give us everlasting life. Religious people often accuse atheists of being arrogant and of placing ourselves in the position of God, but really it is the theist who has all the vanity. He can't stand to think that he will ever cease to exist. As Freud said, Christianity is the most egotistical of the religions. It is based on the premise "Jesus saves me." -- Marian Noel Sherman, M.D. Toronto Star Weekly, Sept. 11, 1965 "For those who believe in God, most of the big questions are answered. But for those of us who can't readily accept the God formula, the big answers don't remain stone-written. We adjust to new conditions and discoveries. We are pliable. Love need not be a command or faith a dictum. I am my own God. We are here to unlearn the teachings of the church, state, and our educational system. We are here to drink beer. We are here to kill war. We are here to laugh at the odds and live our lives so well that Death will tremble to take us." -- Charles Bukowski "By the year 2000 we will, I hope, raise our children to believe in human potential, not God..." -- Gloria Steinem, Saturday Review of Education, March 1973 "A very pious friend of mine, having heard that I had said the world was full of imperfections, asked me if the report was true. Upon being informed that it was, he expressed great surprise that any one could be guilty of such presumption. He said that, in his judgement, it was impossible to point out an imperfection "Be kind enough," said he, "to name even one improvement that you could make, if you had the power." "Well," said I, "I would make good health catching, instead of disease." The truth is, it is impossible to harmonize all the ills, and pains, and agonies of this world with the idea that we were created by, and are watched over and protected by an infinitely wise, powerful and beneficent God, who is superior to and independent of nature." -- Robert G. Ingersoll, "The Gods", 1872 All religious vows, codes, and commitments are null & void herein. Please refrain from contaminating the ideosphere with harmful memes through prayer, reverence, holy books, proselytizing, prophesying, faith, speaking in tongues or spirituality. Fight the menace of second-hand faith! Humanity sincerely thanks you! -- Greg Erwin, _The Nullifidian_ "Prayer is like a pump in an empty well, it makes lots of noise, but brings no water." -- Lemuel K. Washburn, _Is The Bible Worth Reading And Other Essays_ "They know that strength is not in force, but in thought and in clear expression of it, and, therefore, they are more afraid of the expression of independent thought than of armies; hence they institute censorships, bribe the press, and monopolize the control of religion and the schools." -- Leo Tolstoy "A good world needs knowledge, kindliness, and courage; it does not need a regretful hankering after the past or a fettering of the free intelligence by the words uttered long ago by ignorant men. It needs a fearless outlook and a free intelligence. It needs hope for the future, not looking back all the time toward a past that is dead, which we trust will be far surpassed by the future that our intelligence can create." -- Bertrand Russell "I do not believe in God. My mind finds no grounds on which to build up a reasonable faith. My heart revolts against the spectre of an Almighty Indifference to the pain of sentient beings. My conscience rebels against the injustice, the cruelty, the inequality, which surround me on every side. But I believe in Man. In man's redeeming power; in man's remoulding energy; in man's approaching triumph, through knowledge, love and work." -- Annie Besant (1847-1933) "Reserve your right to think, for even to think wrongly is better than not to think at all," Hypatia is credited with saying. "To teach superstitions as truth is a most terrible thing." "Fable should be taught as fable, myth as myth, and miracles as poetic fancies. To teach superstitions as truth is horrifying. The mind of a child accepts them and only through great pain, perhaps tragedy, can the child be relieved of them. Men will fight for superstition as quickly as for the living truth - even more so, since a superstition is intangible you can't get at it to refute it, but truth is a point of view, and so is changeable." -- Hypatia "Superstition [is] cowardice in the face of the Divine," wrote Theophrastus, who lived during the founding of the Library of Alexandria "Where all thinking is the same, there is very little thinking," -- Confucius "People demand freedom of speech to make up for the freedom of thought which they avoid." -- Soren Aabye Kierkegaard (1813-1855) When we're free to love anyone we choose When this world's big enough for all different views When we all can worship from our own kind of pew Then we shall be free (Garth Brooks) "Every sensible man, every honest man, must hold the Christian sect in horror. But what shall we substitute in its place? you say. What? A ferocious animal has sucked the blood of my relatives. I tell you to rid yourselves of this beast, and you ask me what you shall put in its place?" -- Voltaire (1694-1778) "A final example of Jefferson's separationism may be drawn from his founding of the University of Virginia in the last years of his life. Prepared to transform the College of William and Mary into the principal university of the state, Jefferson would do so only if the college divested itself of all ties with sectarian religion--that is, with its old Anglicanism now represented by the Protestant Episcopal Church. The college declined to make that break with its past, and Jefferson proceeded with plans for his own university well to the west of Anglican-dominated tidewater Virginia. In Charlottesville this new school ("broad & liberal & modern," as Jefferson envisioned it in a letter to [Joseph] Priestly of 18 January 1800) opened in 1825 with professorships in languages and law, natural and moral philosophy, history and mathematics, but not in divinity. In Jefferson's view, as reported in Robert Healey's Jefferson on Religion in Public Education, not only did Virginia's laws prohibit such favoritism (for divinity or theology was inevitably sectarian), but high-quality education was not well served by those who preferred mystery to morals and divisive dogma to the unities of science. Too great a devotion to doctrine can drive men mad; if it does not have that tragic effect, it at least guarantees that a man's education will be mediocre. What is really significant in religion, its moral content, would be taught at the University of Virginia, but in philosophy, not divinity. If Almighty God has made the mind free, one of the ways to keep it free is to protect young minds from the clouded convolutions of theologians. Jefferson wanted education separated from religion because of his own conclusions concerning the nature of religion, its strengths and its weaknesses, its dark past and its possibly brighter future." -- E. S. Gaustad, "Religion," in Merrill D. Peterson, ed., Thomas Jefferson: A Reference Biography, New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1986, pp. 282-283. "It is necessary to the happiness of man that he be mentally faithful to himself. Infidelity does not consist in believing, or in disbelieving; it consists in professing to believe what one does not believe. It is impossible to calculate the moral mischief, if I may so express it, that mental lying has produced in society. When man has so far corrupted and prostituted the chastity of his mind, as to subscribe his professional belief to things he does not believe, he has prepared himself for the commission of every other crime." -- Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason Well, there might be several reasons. First of all, many of us are inquisitive people, interested in making up our own minds about the world we live in; not because someone or something says so, but because we trust our reasoning abilities. After all, the question "is there a God or isn't there" is a BIG question. People have always asked themselves these big questions, and I for one believe that is what has led to progress through the centuries. The second reason is more practical. My life is affected by religious people and their beliefs in many ways, every day. I grew up in Europe, where shops closed at 6:00 p.m. and all day Sunday because of pressure from the churches. If I ever get cancer, I cannot be put out of my misery at the end even if I myself, my family and my physician want it, because of a religion-based morality imposed on me. Matters like birth control, abortion, even the books available in my local libraries are decided on the basis of Christian morality and beliefs. I think it is my right to examine these beliefs, and question the truth of the tenets they are based on. -- Michael Willems, http://www.infidels.org/infidels/feedback/1998/june.html There are two ways to slide easily through life: to believe everything or to doubt everything. Both ways save us from thinking. -- Alfred Korzybski "Christianity will go. It will vanish and shrink. I needn't argue about that. I'm right and I will be proved right. We're more popular than Jesus now; I don't know which will go first--rock'n'roll or Christianity. Jesus was all right, but his disciples were thick and ordinary. It's them twisting it that ruins it for me." -- John Lennon, London Evening Standard of March 4, 1966, repeated in Time magazine, Aug 12, 1966 In any case, the argument against the persecution of opinion does not depend upon what the excuse for persecution may be. The argument is that we none of us know all truth, that the discovery of new truth is promoted by free discussion and rendered very difficult by suppression, and that, in the long run, human welfare is increased by the discovery of truth and hindered by action based on error. New truth is often inconvenient to some vested interest; the Protestant doctrine that it is not necessary to fast on Fridays was vehemently resisted by Elizabethan fishmongers. But it is in the interest of the community at large that new truth should be freely promulgated. And since, at first, it cannot be known whether a new doctrine is true, freedom for new truth involves equal freedom for error. -- Bertrand Russell (1872-1970) Religion and Science, Henry Holt and Company, New York, 1935, pp. 262-263. Maybe God does exist, but I really don't think that our petty sniveling would cause him, she, or it to take much notice. -- James Michael Schley , http://www.infidels.org/infidels/feedback/1998/april.html "Science has done more for the development of western civilization in one hundred years than Christianity did in eighteen hundred years." -- John Burroughs (1837-1921) American naturalist, _The Light of Day_ "A crime against god is a demonstrated impossibility." -- Robert G. Ingersoll "As the caterpillar chooses the fairest leaves to lay her eggs on, so the priest lays his curse on the fairest joys." -- William Blake, from All Religions are One, 1788 ...we become unique individuals only in relation to other human beings. This runs counter to our usual individualistic model of the person. It deeply recognizes that one of the most fundamental tensions of human existence is the tension between our relatedness and our uniqueness. -- Hycner, p.29 OK, I seek to eliminate the meme: "There is one subjective truth". Therefore I'm against churches and institutional religion in every form I have encountered it. I'm absolutely not against spiritual experience... I just want my delusions to have equal weight with the Pope's. After all, I have as much proof. -- Reed Konsler konsler@ascat.harvard.edu, on the CoV mailing list In my family, ritual was defined as the struggle for self-preservation, which if viewed as a kind of religion, was the sort of spirituality that placed the struggle for community at the center of the universe. That's how I came to understand religion as a child. Again, it's far from the understanding of religion most Americans share, where the church is officially separated from the state and where religion is regarded as an experience of reassuring, aesthetic inferiority which makes life seem more deep and meaningful, if not moral. I have no sympathy for that perspective, because I've always believed that the world is a deep and meaningful place regardless of whether or not we can perceive that reality through the lens of religion. If we can't, it's only because there's something constraining us from seeing it. -- Joel Schalit; http://eserver.org/bs/38/schalit.html "The destroyer of weeds, thistles and thorns is a benefactor whether he soweth grain or not." -- Robert G. Ingersol "The hardest part about gaining any new idea is sweeping out the false idea occupying that niche. As long as that niche is occupied, evidence and proof and logical demonstration get nowhere. But once the niche is emptied of the wrong idea that has been filling it -- once you can honestly say, 'I don't know,' then it becomes possible to get at the truth." -- R.A. Heinlein, _The Cat Who Walks Through Walls_ "I received your letter of June 10th. I have never talked to a Jesuit priest in my life and I am astonished by the audacity to tell such lies about me. From the viewpoint of a Jesuit priest I am, of course, and have always been an atheist." -- Albert Einstein to Guy H. Raner Jr, July 2, 1945, responding to a rumor that a Jesuit priest had caused Einstein to convert from atheism. Article by Michael R. Gilmore in Skeptic magazine, Vol. 5, No. 2, 1997 "If the Bible proves that God exists then comic books prove the existence of Superman." "would you want to see, if seeing meant that you would have to believe in things like heaven and in Jesus and the saints and all the prophets" -- One of Us "The fact that a believer may be happier than a skeptic is no more to the point than the fact that a drunk is happier than a sober man." -- George Bernard Shaw As for "a creation implies a creator," that's tautological but not helpful, because we have no reason other than habit to think of the universe as a "creation." -- Vicki Rosenzweig , on the CoV mailing list "If you want to teach you children they are tools of God, you had better not teach them that they are God's rifles, or we will have to stand firmly opposed to you: your doctrine has no glory, no special rights, no intrinsic and inalienable merit. If you insist on teaching your children falsehoods... then you must expect, at the very least, that those of us who have freedom of speech will feel free to describe your teachings as the spreading of falsehoods, and will attempt to demonstrate this to your children at our earliest opportunity. Our future well being... depends on the education of our descendants." -- Daniel C. Dennett, Darwin's Dangerous Idea, p519 Miracle Madness Bible folks worked miracles, According to "the book." They parted waters of the seas, All axioms forsook. They raised the dead and talked to snakes, Turned water into wine. A stick became a serpent, The sun refused to shine. The dead were raised and donkeys spoke, And rivers became blood. Polar bears in Palestine, And rabbits chewed the cud. The mountains moved, the sun stood still, A virgin girl gave birth. The rain came down for forty days, And flooded all the earth. A person walked on water and Didn't even sink. A man was dead for half a week, And then was in the pink. But if nature's laws were voided, By religious tittle tattle, The universe would be unhinged, And up a creek without a paddle. -- Dorothy B. Thompson ???; http://www.infidels.org/library/magazines/tsr/1997/5/5mail97.html We can get a little fresh air into the discussion by considering a delectable parody version, by the novelist Tom Robbins, in _Even Cow Girls get the Blues_: For Christmas that year, Julian gave Sissy a miniature Tyrolean Village. The craftmanship was remarkable. There was a tiny cathedral whose stained-glass windows made fruit salad of sunlight. There was a plaza and ein Biergarten. The Biergarten got quite noisy on Saturday nights. There was a bakery that always smelled of hot bread and strudel. There was a town hall and a police station, with cutaway sections that revealed standard amounts of red tape and corruption. There were little Tyroleans in leather britches, intricately stitched, and, beneath the britches, genitalia of equally fine workmanship. There were ski shops and many other interesting things, including an orphanage. The orphanage was designed to catch fire every Christmas Eve. Orphans would dash out into the snow with their nightgowns blazing. Terrible. Around the second week of January, a fire inspector would come and poke through the ruins, muttering, "If they had only listened to me, those children would be alive today." [Robins 1976, pp. 191-92] The craftmanship of this passage itself is remarkable. The repetition of the orphanage drama year after year seems to rob the little world of any real meaning. But why? Why exactly should it be the repetition of the fire inspectors lament the makes it sound so hollow? Perhaps if we looked closely at what entails we would find the sleight of hand that makes the passage "work". Do the little Tyroleans rebuild the orphanage themselves, or is there a RESET button on the miniature village? What difference would that make? Well, where do the new orphans come from? Do the "dead" ones come back to life (Dennett 1984, pp. 9-10)? Notice Robbins says that the orphanage was designed to catch on fire and burn down every Christmas Eve. The creator of this miniature world is clearly taunting us, ridiculing the seriousness with which we face our life problems. The moral seems clear: if the meaning of this drama must come from on high, from a Creator, it would be an obscene joke, a trivialization of the strivings of the individuals in that world. But what if the meaning is somehow the creation of the individuals themselves, arising anew in each incarnation rather than as a gift from on high? This might open up the possibility of meaning that was not threatened by repetition. This is the defining theme of existentialism in its various species: the only meaning that can be is the meaning you (somehow) create for yourself. -- Daniel C. Dennett, _Darwin's Dangerous Idea_, pg. 183-4 "...it is all over with priests and gods when man becomes scientific. Moral: science is the forbidden as such -- it alone is forbidden. Science is the first sin, seed of all sin, the original sin. This alone is morality. 'Thou shalt not know' -- the rest follows." -- Nietzsche, "Antichrist" Whoever you are -- you who are alone with my words in this moment, with nothing but your honesty to help you understand -- the choice is still open to be a human being, but the price is to start from scratch, to stand naked in the face of reality and, reversing a costly historical error, to declare: 'I am, therefore I'll think'. -- Ayn Rand, _Atlas Shrugged_, pg. 972 "The priests of the present day profess to believe it (the story of Christ-ed). They gain their living by it, and they exclaim against something they call infidelity. I will define what it (infidelity-ed) is. HE THAT BELIEVES IN THE STORY OF CHRIST IS AN INFIDEL TO GOD." (The Life and Works of Thomas Paine, Vol 9, page 292) "Man is a marvelous curiosity ... he thinks he is the Creator's pet ... he even believes the Creator loves him; has a passion for him; sits up nights to admire him; yes and watch over him and keep him out of trouble. He prays to him and thinks He listens. Isn't it a quaint idea." -- Mark Twain, _Letters from the Earth_ From a profile by Liam Fay entitled Depraved Heart: "I wanted to write about faith and the nature of belief," explains Iain Banks. "I find that fascinating, being an evangelical atheist myself. There was also the sheer fun of making up a new religion. I felt like L. Ron Hubbard. He did it for real, I know. But he started out being serious about it and then he eventually started saying things that were just so utterly absurd that he thought, `Well, they can't possibly swallow this. It's so stupid'. There is considerable fun to be had devising a religion. I recommend it." By education most have been misled; So they believe, because they were so bred. The priest continues what the nurse began, And thus the child imposes on the man. -- John Dryden "For ages, a deadly conflict has been waged between a few brave men and women of thought and genius upon the one side, and the great ignorant religious mass on the other. This is the war between Science and Faith. The few have appealed to reason, to honor, to law, to freedom, to the known, and to happiness here in this world. The many have appealed to prejudice, to fear, to miracle, to slavery, to the unknown, and to misery hereafter. The few have said, "Think!" The many have said, "Believe!" -- Robert G. Ingersoll, "The Gods", 1872 Them of old time have given us Westerners a dominant religious paradigm as false as it is seductive, as stultifying as it is unscientific, as enduring as it is unsupportable. In the belief that truth is more functional than falsehood, even if not as satisfying emotionally, I bid you all to go forth to subvert the dominant paradigm. -- Delos McKown, Ph.D., http://www.infidels.org/org/ffrf/fttoday/august96/mckown.html A zealot's stones will break my bones, but gods will never hurt me. The universe as a totality is without cause, without origin, without end. -- Karl DuPrel In 1987, he [Dan Barker] married Annie Laurie Gaylor, author of "Woe to the Women, The Bible Tells Me So" and an active member in the Freedom From Religion Foundation, Inc. In a public testimony read by a judge at Freethought Hall, they eschewed matrimony as "an historically unjust institution" that refuses to recognize the wife as an independent, rational being, while conferring upon the husband an injurious and unnatural superiority. They each announced their intentions to retain their respective birth names and to avoid the labels "husband" and "wife" as much as possible. They simply stated that being "peers, friends, and lovers", their marriage was a "loving contract . . . that requires no blessing above or beyond the mutual respect, admiration and trust of two individuals who cannot imagine not spending the rest of their lives together." -- The Canadian Atheist Issue 10 Summer 1997 You cannot teach a man anything; you can only help him find it within himself. -- Galileo A lot of people may say to just be yourself. But, if you really do that, it is the most threatening, subversive thing you can possibly do. -- K. Lambert. The work of the individual remains the spark that moves humankind forward. -- Igor Sikorsky You never question the solutions. If you really question the solutions you will have to question the ones who have offered you those solutions. But sentimentality stands in the way of your rejecting not only the solutions, but those who have offered you the solutions. Questioning that requires a tremendous courage on your part. You can have the courage to climb the mountain, swim the lakes, go on a raft to the other side of the Atlantic or Pacific. That any fool can do, but the courage to be on your own, to stand on your two solid feet, is something which cannot be given by somebody. You cannot free yourself of that burden by trying to develop that courage. If you are freed from the entire burden of the entire past of mankind, then what is left there is the courage. -- U.G. "Of course I believe in free will. Do we have a choice?" -- Isaac Bashevis Singer. "As men's prayers are a disease of the will, so are their creeds a disease of the intellect." -- Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) U.S. essayist, poet treat others the way they want to be treated, so they treat you the way you want to be treated. Stewart Brand said "We are as gods and might as well get good at it." "Thou Art God," -- Robert Heinlein's _Stranger in a Strange Land_, (may also be found in the Bible Psalms 82:6; John 10:34) "Don't appeal to mercy to God the Father up in the sky, little man, because he's not at home and never was at home, and couldn't care less. What you do with yourself, whether you are happy or unhappy-- live or die-- is strictly your business and the universe doesn't care. In fact you may be the universe and the only cause of all your troubles. But, at best, the most you can hope for is comradeship with comrades no more divine (or just as divine) as you are. So quit sniveling and face up to it-- 'Thou art God!'" -- Robert A. Heinlein Oct. 21, 1960 ... For we are the Gods! "Perhaps religion might be dismissed as unimportant if it were merely theoretical. If it were merely theoretical. It is difficult, however, if not impossible to separate theory and practice. Religion, to be sure, is full of inconsistencies between theory and practice; but there is and has always been sternly and largely a disposition of religion to enforce its theory in the conduct of life; religion has meant not simply dogmatism in abstract thinking but intolerance in legal and social action. Religion interferes with life and, being false, it necessarily interferes very much to the detriment of the sound human interests of life." -- E. Haldeman-Julius, "The Meaning Of Atheism" Any belief worth having must survive doubt. "If god doesn't like the way I live, Let him tell me, not you." "To explain the unknown by the known is a logical procedure; to explain the known by the unknown is a form of theological lunacy." -- David Brooks, "The Necessity of Atheism" "There is but one way to demonstrate the existence of a power independent of and superior to nature, and that is by breaking, if only for one moment, the continuity of cause and effect. Pluck from the endless chain of existence one little link; stop for one instant the grand procession and you have shown beyond all contradiction that nature has a master. Change the fact, just for one second, that matter attracts matter, and a god appears. The rudest savage has always known this fact, and for that reason always demanded the evidence of miracle. The founder of a religion must be able to turn water into wine -- cure with a word the blind and lame, and raise with a simple touch the dead to life. It was necessary for him to demonstrate to the satisfaction of his barbarian disciple, that he was superior to nature. In times of ignorance this was easy to do. The credulity of the savage was almost boundless. To him the marvelous was the beautiful, the mysterious was the sublime. Consequently, every religion has for its foundation a miracle -- that is to say, a violation of nature -- that is to say, a falsehood. No one, in the world's whole history, ever attempted to substantiate a truth by a miracle. Truth scorns the assistance of miracle. Nothing but falsehood ever attested itself by signs and wonders. No miracle ever was performed, and no sane man ever thought he had performed one, and until one is performed, there can be no evidence of the existence of any power superior to, and independent of nature. The church wishes us to believe. Let the church, or one of its intellectual saints, perform a miracle, and we will believe. We are told that nature has a superior. Let this superior, for one single instant, control nature, and we will admit the truth of your assertions." -- Robert G. Ingersoll, "The Gods", 1872 "The doctrine that future happiness depends upon belief is monstrous. It is the infamy of infamies. The notion that faith in Christ is to be rewarded by an eternity of bliss, while a dependence upon reason, observation and experience merits everlasting pain, is too absurd for refutation, and can be relieved only by that unhappy mixture of insanity and ignorance, called "faith." What man, who ever thinks, can believe that blood can appease God? And yet, our entire system of religion is based upon that belief. The Jews pacified Jehovah with the blood of animals, and according to the Christian system, the blood of Jesus softened the heart of God a little, and rendered possible the salvation of a fortunate few. It is hard to conceive how the human mind can give assent to such terrible ideas, or how any sane man can read the Bible and still believe in the doctrine of inspiration." -- Robert G. Ingersoll, "The Gods", 1872 For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring. -- Carl Sagan (The Demon-Haunted World) 1) The Bible said that God gave us the universe in six days. Physics later showed that to be wrong. This doesn't mean the universe doesn't exist. 2) The Bible said that God created all living beings. Evolution later showed that to be wrong. This doesn't mean life doesn't exist. 3) The Bible says that God gives meaning to our life. Memes later showed that to be wrong. This doesn't mean meaning doesn't exist. -- David Leeper "There is, in fact, nothing about religious opinions that entitles them to any more respect than other opinions get. On the contrary, they tend to be noticeably silly." -- H.L. Mencken "The universe is not hostile, nor yet is it friendly. It is simply indifferent." -- John H. Holmes, A Sensible Man's View of Religion, 1933 "What I conclude is that religion has nothing to do with experience or reason but with deep and irrational needs." -- Richard Taylor, "Will Secularism Survive?", Free Inquiry "Where are the sons of gods that loved the daughters of men? Where are the nymphs, the goddesses of the winds and waters? Where are the gnomes that lived inside the earth? Where are the goblins that used to play tricks on mortals? Where are the fairies that could blight or bless the human heart? Where are the ghosts that haunted this globe? Where are the witches that flew in and out of the homes of men? Where is the devil that once roamed over the earth? Where are they? Gone with the ignorance that believed in them." -- Lemuel K. Washburn, 'Is The Bible Worth Reading And Other Essays', 1911 In the Preface to Contemporary Materialism: A Reader, Paul Moser and J. D. Trout write: "Materialism, put broadly, affirms that all phenomena are physical... Materialism is now the dominant systematic ontology among philosophers and scientists, and there are currently no established alternative ontological views competing with it" (p. ix) "Some two-and-a-half-thousand years after its debut in Western culture, materialism stands in the final decade of the twentieth century as a complete and well-defined philosophy in many respects. Its core assumption that there is no reality other than the material order exhibiting itself in what exists around and within us distinguishes it from competing philosophies today just as sharply as it did for Lucretius. The notion of supernatural or immaterial states of being that are alien to nature seems just as incoherent to materialists in the 1990s as it did to d'Holbach, who first worked out materialism's atheistic implications. The conviction not just that the laws of nature are knowable but that human science is capable, at least in principle, of knowing them is no less central now than it was for Buechner. And the assumption that all thought and feeling, human and otherwise, is a material process is still as key an element in materialism as it has been for the mind-brain reductionists of the twentieth century. In these four and many related ways, the materialist vision is what it has always been: the clearest and most consistent effort to comprehend and demystify nature and humanity's place in it that human intelligence has ever made." -- Richard C. Vitzthum, 'Materialism: An Affirmative History and Definition' (Buffalo, NY: Prometheus Books, 1995), p. 176 Emmanuel Levinas and Jacques Derrida elevate difference and otherness to an ontological a priori. -- http://www.voicenet.com/~grassie/Fldr.Articles/Postmodernism.html "Reason is powerless to found religions, although it is alone competent to judge them." -- George Santayana It is often said that those that put rationality on a pedestal minimize the validity of emotion. I do not agree with this. I think that seekers of reason, for the most part, are looking for the underlying source of their emotions in order to better understand them and not be completely at the mercy of the emotions of the moment. -- Duane Daniel Hewitt , on the CoV mailing list We have to make provisional assumptions based on incomplete information in order to act. Maybe the evils we see around us are ultimately beneficial in the long run or from a wider perspective, but that doesn't mean we should sit back and watch them happen. -- David McFadzean A great deal of intelligence can be invested in ignorance when the need for illusion is great. I agree with The Church of the Virus and Luciferians on the social value of most religions and their behavioral mandates. I'd much rather live in a society based on genuine recognition and understanding of a social contract. Religious dogma can sometimes make people act AS IF they recognized the value of cooperation and self-restraint, but it also generates an environment ripe for exploitation. I'd much rather teach people WHY they should act with moderation than simply lay down the laws and threaten those who don't toe the line with eternal torment. -- c538128@mizzou1.missouri.edu (KMO), on the CoV mailing list "Think critically, act rationally" "Feel sincerely, live authentically"? "Absence of an Absolute Standard does not imply absence of standards." I think it's interesting that if you come across a Christian who says to you, "Well you can't say that God doesn't exist!", you might ask the Christian an interesting question: "Do you believe in the god of Zoroastrianism? Do you believe in Allah? Do you believe in Zeus?" There are literally hundreds of gods that the Christian himself does not believe in. The Christian himself would say that these gods do not exist. Well how does the Christian know that? If he is so hot to trot to say that we cannot know that a god does not exist, then how can he say that Zeus does not exist? Well, of course, the Christian is liable to say in response, "Well that's ridiculous! Everyone knows that Zeus doesn't exist. It's a mythical idea." He'll go on at some length and give some very good arguments which, if applied to his own beliefs, would demolish them entirely. Monotheists, the people who believe in one god, are very close to being atheists. They are only one step removed from atheism. They're just a hairline away from being an atheist. All I have to do is get rid of that one last god and he's made it over the line. This is a rather novel way of looking at monotheism but I think it's justified. -- http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/george_smith/defending.html Library: Modern: George Smith: How to Defend Atheism (1976) At level 2, one _is_ ones memes. Not that X believes in the validity of Christianity, but rather that X _is_ a Christian. No matter how long and hard I look at Christianity, I can never become like that. I will never seriously believe that there is a God. I may adopt the belief, but it will never be more than just a rational "yes" to the God meme. -- Eric Boyd Intelligence is no longer on the side of power. -- Sadie Plant, http://www.aec.at/meme/symp/contrib/sadie.html "Existence is the first cause. The universe is the total of that which exists. Within the universe, the emergence of new entities can be explained in terms of the actions of entities that already exist. All actions presuppose the existence of entities. All causality presupposes the existence of something that acts as a cause. To demand a cause for all of existence is to demand a contradiction: if the cause exists, it is part of existence: if it does not exist, it cannot be a cause. Nothing cannot be the cause of something. Nothing does not exist. Nothing is not just another kind of something - it is nothing. Existence exists; you cannot go outside it, you cannot get under it, on top of it or behind it. Existence exists - and only existence exists; there is nowhere else to go. The universe did not begin - it did not, at some point in time, spring into being. Time is a measurement of motion. Motion presupposes entities that move. If nothing existed, there could be no time. Time is 'in' the universe; the universe is not 'in' time." -- Nathaniel Branden I believe in the primacy of Existence over Consciousness (and I see this manifest in the Quantum Physics). -- David King And so, when a doctor saves someone's life, we truly owe our thanks to the doctor, and the society that made her education possible. It is insulting to both when a god is thanked for something that he could have done himself but didn't. If a loving god really existed, we would not need doctors in the first place. -- Richard Carrier, http://www.columbia.edu/~rcc20/atheism.html "The history of the rise of Christianity has everything to do with politics, culture, and human frailties and nothing to do with supernatural manipulation of events. Had divine intervention been the guiding force, surely two millennia after the birth of Jesus he would not have a world where there are more Muslims than Catholics, more Hindus than Protestants, and more nontheists than Catholics and Protestants combined." -- John K. Naland, "The First Easter", Free Inquiry magazine, Vol. 8, No. 2 95% of the people want to be told what to do and what to say. (and that's what we need to FIX!) "Do good, for good is good to do; Spurn bribe of heaven and threat of hell." If you've ever tried to fight ignorance with logic you know how futile it is. The mind is what the brain does. -- Eric Boyd, on the CoV list [although I'm certainly not the first to say it, even in these exact words!] If you see in any given situation only what everybody else can see, you can be said to be so much a representative of your culture that you are a victim of it. -- S. I. Hayakawa "You see these dictators on their pedestals surrounded by the bayonets of their soldiers and the junctions of the police, yet in there hearts, there is unspoken, unspeakable fear. They are afraid of words and thoughts. Words spoken abroad, thoughts stirring at home. All the more powerful because forbidden. These terrify them, a little mouse a little tiny mouse of thought appears in the room, and even the mightiest dictators are thrown into panic" -- Winston Churchill This is an example of clinging to dictionary definitions of words, as if such definitions are a static truth--an unquestionable authority from which true knowledge is derived. In this mode of thinking, knowledge is purportedly gained by putting together words in their dictionary meaning. One problem with this mode of thinking is that new knowledge is not gained by taking discrete concepts, (i.e. words) and putting them together to form a big picture, but by seeing the big picture first and then breaking it down into its components. Another problem with this type of thinking is that there is a stagnating dogmatism when a word, or any concept (i.e. God, scriptures, etc.) is given status as ultimate authority. As far as the thinking process is concerned, there is no important difference between which "authorities" are exalted since the activity of deciding that there is an ultimate truth or authority leads to a closed mentality that is not open to different ways of seeing. -- David Rosdeitcher "For at least some theists, this difficulty is made even more acute by some of their further beliefs: I mean those who envisage a happier or more perfect state of affairs than now exists, whether they look forward to the kingdom of God on earth, or confine their optimism to the expectation of heaven. In either case they are explicitly recognizing the possibility of a state of affairs in which created beings always freely choose the good. If such a state of affairs is coherent enough to be the object of a reasonable hope or faith, it is hard to explain why it does not obtain already." http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/niclas_berggren/theodicy.html "For instance, he could have made the world such that each new individual started afresh, like Adam and Eve, with a perfectly neutral nature, on the basis of which truly free choices could then be made. It bears noting that if he had done this, there would have been less evil and a freer human will!" http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/niclas_berggren/theodicy.html To prejudge other's notions before we have looked into them is not to show their darkness, but to put out our own eyes. -- John Locke I think that diversity is always preferable to monotony, that immunity due to exposure is better than ignorance, and that the fastest way to accomplish our goals here at virus is to talk to people just like you, and learn what will work and what won't. -- Eric Boyd, to a theist on the CoV mailing list "If not for that god-full-of-compassion, there would be some compassion in the world and not only in god" -- Yehuda Amichay, Israeli poet "Nothing happens in contradiction to nature; only in contradiction to what we know of it." -- Agent Sculley, "X-Files" It is a feature of any good natured group in our society (TCS, Atheism, even democracy to some extent) that we are always afraid of offending people who don't share our beliefs, but you'll notice that they are never careful to avoid offending us. -- Nick If you want to hear my own views on the voices some people claim to hear, I'll re-assure you that I-too believe the individual is merely speaking to himself, so to speak. I've told a few Christians, in fact, that they should stop externalizing their own sense of authority; to reclaim their sense of worth; to return their morality to where it belongs.. within themselves. I have great pity for them.. to be so insecure that they have to externalize their worth to a metaphorically entity. -- , on the CoV mailing list, mar24/98 My only wish is. . . to transform friends of God into friends of man, believers into thinkers, devotees of prayer into devotees of work, candidates for the hereafter into students of the world, Christians who, by their own procession and admission, are "half animal, half angel" into persons, into whole persons. -- Ludwig Feuerbach (Lectures on the Essence of Religion) "He is less remote from the truth who believes nothing, than he who believes what is wrong." -- Thomas Jefferson "Remember me affectionately to good Dr. Price, and to the honest heretic Dr. Priestley. I do not call him honest by way of distinction, for I think all the heretics I have known have been virtuous men. They have the virtue of fortitude, or they could not venture to own their heresy; and they cannot afford to be deficient in any of the other virtues, as that would give advantage to their many enemies; and they have not, like orthodox sinners, such a number of friends to excuse or justify them. Do not, however, mistake me. It is not to my good friend's heresy that I impute his honesty. On the contrary, 'tis his honesty that brought upon him the character of a heretic" -- Benjamin Franklin, letter to Benjamin Vaughan of England, in 'Works, Vol.x.', p.365 "There was no deathbed conversion," Druyan says. "No appeals to God, no hope for an afterlife, no pretending that he and I, who had been inseparably for twenty years, were not saying goodbye forever." "Didn't he want to believe?" she was asked. "Carl never wanted to believe," she replies fiercely. "He wanted to KNOW." -- Ann Druyan, Carl Sagan's wife, from Newsweek magazine "Not only is there nothing to be gained by believing an untruth, but there is everything to lose when we sacrifice the indispensable tool of reason on the altar of superstition." -- Freedom From Religion Foundation "I viewed my fellow man not as a fallen angel, but as a risen ape" -- Desmond Morris, "The Naked Ape" "There is, in fact, no reason to believe that any given natural phenomenon, however marvelous it may seem today, will remain forever inexplicable. Soon or later the laws governing the production of life itself will be discovered in the laboratory, and man may set up business as a creator on his own account. The thing, indeed, is not only conceivable; it is even highly probable." -- H. L. Mencken, 1930 "Freethinkers are those who are willing to use their minds without prejudice and without fearing to understand things that clash with their own customs, privileges, or beliefs. This state of mind is not common, but it is essential for right thinking; where it is absent, discussion is apt to become worse than useless." -- Leo Tolstoy, "On Life and Essays on Religion" "Infidels in all ages have battled for the rights of man, and have at all times been the fearless advocates of liberty and justice." -- Robert Green Ingersoll "You have no right to erect your toll-gate upon the highways of thought." -- Robert G. Ingersoll, 'The Ghosts' "As long as man believes the Bible to be infallible, that book is his master. The civilization of this century is not the child of faith, but of unbelief -- the result of free thought." -- Robert G. Ingersoll, "The Gods", 1872 "A few weeks ago a hurricane struck the little religious community of Bethany, Okla. A number of pious citizens of the little town were killed. Houses were destroyed -- homes in which prayer and devotion reigned. A church was demolished. Only a few miles away is the large, wicked city of Oklahoma City -- at least we can certainly assume that, from the religious viewpoint, many sinners live in Oklahoma City. Assuming also (which is a great deal riskier assumption) that there is a God, why should he perpetrate this grim and sardonic joke? The sinners in the big city were left untouched. The godly folk in the little nearby village were punished by the evidences of God's wrath. How do the religious people interpret this calamity? Often and often they explain such calamities as flood, fire and storm by saying that God is angry at the sinful people and is warning them or destroying them for their sins. Was the hurricane in Bethany a sign of the love of God for his faithful worshipers? And God missed an even better chance, if there were a God who wished to punish rebels against his majesty and inscrutability. Just a few hundred miles north and east of Bethany, Okla., is Girard -- the home of The American Freeman: and The Debunker and The Joseph McCabe Magazine and the Little Blue Books -- the center of American free thought where an enormous stream of atheistic literature and godless modern knowledge pours forth to enlighten the masses. If there were a God directing hurricanes and he wanted to really "get" an uncompromising foe, whom he has no chance of persuading in the ordinary way, it would have been a devastating stroke for him to send his howling punitive blasts through the town of Girard. It would be a more remarkable suggestion of the avenging act of a God if only the Haldeman-Julius plant were destroyed and the rest of the town left unhurt -- and, as good neighbors, we shouldn't wish the Christian and respectable, people of Girard nor those who are respectable and not so Christian nor those who are Christian and not exactly respectable to suffer from our proximity and our propaganda of atheism. Is God a joker? No -- let us whisper it -- the joke is that there is no God. Hurricanes come upon the just and the unjust, the pious and the impious." -- E. Haldeman-Julius, "The Meaning Of Atheism" "The influences that have lifted the race to a higher moral level are education, freedom, leisure, the humanizing tendency of a better-supplied and more interesting life. In a word, science and liberalism - the two forces, fundamentally skeptical, that we have seen continuously at work in human progress- have accomplished the very things for which religion claims the credit." -- E. Haldeman-Julius, "The Outline of Bunk" "Man is forbidden to eat from the tree of knowledge of good and evil. He acts against God's command... From the standpoint of the Church, which represents authority, this is essentially sin. From the standpoint of man, however, this is the beginning of human freedom." -- Erich Fromm (1900-1980) "The most ridiculous concept ever perpetrated by H.Sapiens is that the Lord God of Creation, Shaper and Ruler of the Universes, wants the sacharrine adoration of his creations, that he can be persuaded by their prayers, and becomes petulant if he does not receive this flattery. Yet this ridiculous notion, without one real shred of evidence to bolster it, has gone on to found one of the oldest, largest and least productive industries in history." -- Lazarus Long, from "Time Enough For Love" by R. Heinlein "Most humans feel what Paul Kurtz has called the "transcendent temptation," the emotional drive to festoon the universe with large-scale meaning.... Secular humanists suspect there is something more gloriously human about resisting the religious impulse; about accepting the cold truth, even if that truth is only that the universe is as indifferent to us as we are to it; about facing the existential vacuum in all its horrible majesty; and constructing a life of compassion and exuberance on its brink without relying on the dubious shelter of faith." -- Tom Flynn, "The Difference a Word Makes",Free Inquiry "In dark ages people are best guided by religion, as in pitch-black night a blind man is the best guide; he knows the roads and paths better than a man who can see. When daylight comes, however, it is foolish to use blind, old men as guides." -- Heinrich Heine, Gedanken und Einfalle, Volume 10 "What is more, it appears to be generally realized that some of the world's foremost philosophers, scientists, and artists have been avowed atheists and that the increase in atheism has gone hand in hand with the spread of education." -- Encyclopedia of Philosophy [W]e don't perform religious rituals because we believe in God. We believe in God because we perform religious rituals -- Robert M. Persig, _Lila: an enquiry into morals_ "The god who is reputed to have created fleas to keep dogs from moping over their situation must also have created fundamentalists to keep rationalists from getting flabby. Let us be duly thankful for out blessings." -- Garrett Hardin, in _Science and Creationism_, ed. Ashley Montague "If judged only by the results that challenge the laws of probabilities, then the power of prayer is nil." -- Judith Hayes, U.S. freethinker, author "What I have done is to show that it is possible for the way the universe began to be determined by the laws of science. In that case, it would not be necessary to appeal to God to decide how the universe began. This doesn't prove that there is no God, only that God is not necessary." -- Stephen W. Hawking, Der Spiegel, 1989 "To think is to differ." -- Clarence Darrow, Scopes trial, July 1925 I believe that religion, generally speaking, has been a curse to mankind--that its modest and greatly overestimated services on the ethical side have been more than overborne by the damage it has done to clear and honest thinking. I believe that no discovery of fact, however trivial, can be wholly useless to the human race, and that no trumpeting of falsehood, however virtuous in intent, can be anything but vicious... I believe that the evidence for immortality is no better than the evidence for witches, and deserves no more respect... I believe in complete freedom of thought and speech, alike for the humblest to the mightiest, and in the utmost freedom of conduct that is consistent with living in an organized society. But the whole thing, after all, may be put very simply. I believe that it is better to tell the truth than to lie. I believe that it is better to be free than to be a slave. And I believe that it is better to know than to be ignorant. -- H. L. Mencken "It is very important not to mistake hemlock for parsley, but to believe or not believe in God is not important at all." -- Denis Diderot "You will find men like him in all of the world's religions. They know that we represent reason and science, and, however confident they may be in their beliefs, they fear that we will overthrow their gods. Not necessarily through any deliberate act, but in a subtler fashion. Science can destroy a 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, "Childhood's End" "Skepticism... is the agent of truth." -- Joseph Conrad "He who will not reason, is a bigot; He who cannot, is a fool; And he who dares not, is a slave." -- William Drummond "If you have a faith, it is statistically overwhelmingly likely that it is the same faith as your parents and grandparents had. No doubt soaring cathedrals, stirring music, moving stories and parables, help a bit. But by far the most important variable determining your religion is the accident of birth. The convictions that you so passionately believe would have been a completely different, and largely contradictory, set of convictions, if only you had happened to be born in a different place. Epidemiology, not evidence." -- Richard Dawkins "On the contrary, if the universe were just electrons and selfish genes, meaningless tragedies like the crashing of this bus [full of children from a Roman Catholic school and for no apparent reason but with wholesale loss of life] are exactly what we should expect, along with equally meaningless good fortune. Such a universe would be neither evil nor good in intention. It would manifest no intentions of any kind. In a universe of blind physical forces and genetic replication, some people are going to get hurt, other people are going to get lucky, and you won't find any rhyme or reason in it, nor any justice. The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, and no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference." -- Richard Dawkins, 'River Out of Eden: A Darwinian View of Life', 1995, BasicBooks, New York; ISBN 0-465-01606-5 "Science offers us an explanation of how complexity (the difficult) arose out of simplicity (the easy). The hypothesis of God offers no worthwhile explanation for anything, for it simply postulates what we are trying to explain. It postulates the difficult to explain, and leaves it at that. We cannot prove that there is no God, but we can safely conclude that He is very, very improbable indeed." -- Richard Dawkins, from the 'New Humanist', the Journal of the Rationalist Press Association, Vol 107 No 2 "As "you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make one drink," so also, "You can drag a Christian to the truth, but you can't make one think." -- Delmar Coughlin "If a man, holding a belief which he was taught in childhood or persuaded of afterwards, keeps down and pushes away any doubts which arise about it in his mind, purposely avoids the reading of books and the company of men that call into question or discuss it, and regards as impious those questions which cannot easily be asked without disturbing it--the life of that man is one long sin against mankind. " -- W. K. Clifford, "Ethics of Belief" "A faith that cannot survive collision with the truth is not worth many regrets." -- Arthur C. Clarke "The word heretic ought to be a term of honour..." -- Charles Bradlaugh "If you're gonna do business with a religious son of a bitch.. GET IT IN WRITING. His word ain't worth shit, not with the good Lord telling him how to fuck you on the deal" -- William S. Burroughs, from the CD "Spare Ass Annie and Other Tales" "I do understand what love is, and that is one of the reasons I can never again be a Christian. Love is not self denial. Love is not blood and suffering. Love is not murdering your son to appease your own vanity. Love is not hatred or wrath, consigning billions of people to eternal torture because they have offended your ego or disobeyed your rules. Love is not obedience, conformity, or submission. It is a counterfeit love that is contingent upon authority, punishment, or reward. True love is respect and admiration, compassion and kindness, freely given by a healthy, unafraid human being." -- Dan Barker, "Losing Faith in Faith" Calvin: Well. I've decided I do believe in Santa Claus, no matter how preposterous he sounds. Hobbes: What convinced you? Calvin: A simple risk analysis. I want presents. Lots of presents. Why risk not getting them over a matter of belief? Heck, I'll believe anything they want. Hobbes: How cynically enterprising of you. Calvin: It's the spirit of Christmas. -- Calvin & Hobbes comic by Bill Waterson (think now about Pascal's Wager...) "The priests used to say that faith can move mountains, and nobody believed them. Today the scientists say that they can level mountains, and nobody doubts them." -- Joseph Campbell "If anyone can show me, and prove to me, that I am wrong in thought or deed, I will gladly change. I seek the truth, which never yet hurt anybody. It is only persistence in self-delusion and ignorance which does harm." -- Marcus Aurelius A Humanist or an Atheist can't tell you to go to hell but a Christian can and will. "If you were taught that elves caused rain, every time it rained, you'd see the proof of elves." -- Ariex "A God who kept tinkering with the universe was absurd; a God who interfered with human freedom and creativity was tyrant. If God is seen as a self in a world of his own, an ego that relates to a thought, a cause separate from its effect. "he" becomes a being, not Being itself. An omnipotent, all- knowing tyrant is not so different from earthly dictators who make everything and everybody mere cogs in the machine which they controlled. An atheism that rejects such a God is amply justified." -- Karen Armstrong, 'A History of God', pg. 383, speaking on Paul Tillich "Nothing is more humbling than to look with a strong magnifying glass at an insect so tiny that the naked eye sees only the barest speck and to discover that nevertheless it is sculpted and articulated and striped with the same care and imagination as a zebra. Apparently it does not occur to nature whether or not a creature is within our range of vision, and the suspicion arises that even the zebra was not designed for our benefit." -- Rudolf Arnheim "Humanity has the stars in its future, and that future is too important to be lost under the burden of juvenile folly and ignorant superstition." -- Isaac Asimov "Imagine the people who believe such things and who are not ashamed to ignore, totally, all the patient findings of thinking minds through all the centuries since the Bible was written. And it is these ignorant people, the most uneducated, the most unimaginative, the most unthinking among us, who would make themselves the guides and leaders of us all; who would force their feeble and childish beliefs on us; who would invade our schools and libraries and homes. I personally resent it bitterly and warn the people of Canada..." -- Isaac Asimov, Canadian Atheists Newsletter, 1994 "...if I were not an atheist, I would believe in a God who would choose to save people on the basis of the totality of their lives and not the pattern of their words. I think he would prefer an honest and righteous atheist to a TV preacher whose every word is God, God, God, and whose every deed is foul, foul, foul." -- Isaac Asimov, 'I. Asimov: A Memoir' I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish church, by the Roman church, by the Greek church, by the Protestant church, nor by any church that I know of. My own mind is my [own] church. -- Thomas Paine _The Age of Reason_ "Reason cannot establish values, and its belief that it can is the stupidest and most pernicious illusion." -- Alan Bloom _The Closing of the American Mind_ pg.194 "Atheism leaves a man to sense, to philosophy, to natural piety, to laws, to reputation; all of which may be guides to an outward moral virtue, even if religion vanished; but religious superstition dismounts all these and erects an absolute monarchy in the minds of men." -- Francis Bacon Man can count on no one but himself; he is alone, abandoned on Earth in the midst of his infinite responsibilities, without help, with no other aim than the one he sets for himself, with no other destiny than the one he forges for himself on this Earth. -- Jean-Paul Sartre Insofar as I may be heard by anything, which may or may not care what I say, I ask, if it matters, that you be forgiven for anything you may have done or failed to do which requires forgiveness. Conversely, if not forgiveness but something else may be required to insure any possible benefit for which you may be eligible after the destruction of your body, I ask that this, whatever it may be, be granted or withheld, as the case may be, in such a manner as to insure your receiving said benefit. I ask this in my capacity as your elected intermediary between yourself and that which may not be yourself, but which may have an interest in the matter of your receiving as much as it is possible for you to receive of this thing, and which may in some way be influenced by this ceremony. Amen. -- Thomas Huxley To you I'm an atheist; to God, I'm the Loyal Opposition. -- Woody Allen "I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use." -- Galileo Galilei The opposite of the religious fanatic is not the fanatical atheist but the gentle cynic who cares not whether there is a God or not. -- Eric Hoffer A heretic is a man who sees with his own eyes. -- Gotthold Ephraim Lessing "The time appears to me to have come when it is the duty of all to make their dissent from religion known." -- John Stuart Mill Skeptical scrutiny is the means, in both science and religion, by which deep thoughts can be winnowed from deep nonsense. -- Carl Sagan Just think of the tragedy of teaching children not to doubt! -- Clarence Darrow "Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is absurd." -- Voltaire "To fear to face an issue is to believe the worst is true." -- Ayn Rand "Organize your priorities: make a list of all the things you need or want to do, in order of their importance, and then proceed to do them in that order. Then if you run out of time before you are finished, you will have accomplished what most needed to be accomplished. Bearing in mind that you are not immortal, what could be more desirable?" -- father of H. V. Grey, http://www.infidels.org/org/ffrf/fttoday/nov96/grey.html "And there is pansies, that's for thoughts." -- Ophelia On the inside back cover [of an old brochure of the American Secular Union] was a long explanation of the history under the title "The Pansy Badge": "There is . . . need of a badge which shall express at first glance, without complexity of detail, that basic principle of freedom of thought for which Liberals of all isms are contending. This need seems to have been met by the Freethinkers of France, Belgium, Spain and Sweden, who have adopted the pansy as their badge (French pensee, meaning thought). We join with them in recommending this flower as a simple and inexpensive badge of Freethought. "Let every patriot who is a Freethinker in this sense, adopt the pansy as his badge, to be worn at all times, as a silent and unobtrusive testimony of his principles. In this way we shall recognize our brethren in the cause, and the enthusiasm will spread; until, before long, the uplifted standard of the pansy, beneath the sheltering folds of the United States flag, shall everywhere thrill men's hearts as the symbol of religious liberty and freedom of conscience." -- http://www.infidels.org/org/ffrf/fttoday/june_july97/gaylor.html "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence." [Carl Sagan] It is the final proof of God's omnipotence that he need not exist in order to save us. -- Peter De Vries There is no God. But it does not matter. Man is enough. -- Edna St. Vincent Milay One cartoon shows two aging "hippie" types sitting at a bar, commiserating. One is saying to the other: "You know, nihilism just isn't enough anymore." (I often think of much of western culture in this image.) -- http://www.webcom.com/ctt/wtpgmm.html free thought, n.: opinions about questions of religion formed independently of tradition, authority, or established belief. freethinker, n.: a person who forms his opinions about religion independently of tradition, authority, or established belief. Maxim of Freethought: "He who cannot reason is defenseless; he who fears to reason has a cowardly mind; he who will not reason is willing to be deceived and will deceive all who listen to him." "Do you want real TRUTH in capital letters? Then search yourself for why you believe the things you do. Don't be afraid to analyze why your religion gives you the high it does. Answer yourself this question: Is TRUTH important enough for me to give up my religion if that is required? Until you answer yes to this you are not being honest with yourself." -- Dave Trissel And after all of the spewing of irrational hatred for imagined sins that their silly mythology claims are bad, religionists typically have the gall to say: "Oh, we don't hate the sinner! We hate the sin!". As atheists, we don't hate the stupid. We hate the stupidity. That's why we bother. -- The Editors of The Canadian Atheist, Issue 2 "It is curious that, in the absence of direct evidence, religious thinkers can conclude that the universe or some creative power beyond the universe is concerned with our well-being or future. From all appearances, it seems more logical to conclude that it is only we who are concerned for our well-being and future." -- Humanist Philosophy "I have something to say to the religionist who feels atheists never say anything positive: You are an intelligent human being. Your life is valuable for its own sake. You are not second-class in the universe, deriving meaning and purpose from some other mind. You are not inherently evil--you are inherently human, possessing the positive rational potential to help make this a world of morality, peace and joy. Trust yourself." -- Dan Barker, "Losing Faith in Faith". The New Ten Commandments: Thou shall not have FAITH Thou shall not practice self-deception Thou shall not be elitist Thou shall not fear what thou doesn't understand Thou shall not practice complacency Thou shall not make remake reality in thine own image Thou shall love thy neighbor, brother, sister, fellow human etc... Thou shall not participate in "mob mentality" Thou shall not over-reproduce Thou shall not waste valuable resources -- William Roh I will live by what I see and reason, not for a pie-in-the-sky possibility of a god's existence and His liking me enough to confer immortality on me for kissing His ass... Brick Pillow The word "heresy" originally meant "choice" "When I became convinced that the Universe is natural--that all ghosts and gods are myths, there entered into my brain, into my soul, into every drop of my blood, the sense, the feeling, the joy of freedom. The walls of my prison crumbled and fell, the dungeon was flooded with light and all the bolts, and bars, and manacles became dust. I was no longer a servant, a serf, or a slave. There was for me no master in all the wide world--not even in infinite space. I was free... "And then my heart was filled with gratitude, with thankfulness, and went out in love to all the heroes, the thinkers who gave their lives for the liberty of hand and brain... And I vowed to grasp the torch that they had held, and hold it high, that light might conquer darkness still." -- Robert Greene Ingersoll Personally, I would much rather admit to my own ignorance of the world than to invent, as an absolution for that ignorance, a Divinity to account for things I cannot yet explain. Reason is fearless thought, undeterred by legal, spiritual, or social penalties. Dissenting viewpoints do not alarm those who seek truth. The knowledge seeker who has a passion for truth fears nothing except error. -- Bob Hypes; http://www.infidels.org/mag/sr/1995/1/1lost95.html To know what you prefer instead of humbly saying Amen to what the world tells you you ought to prefer, is to have kept your soul alive. -- Robert Louis Stevenson "The Lessons of History" (1968), by Will and Ariel Durant: "The historian will not mourn because he can see no meaning to human existence except that which man puts into it; let it be our pride that we ourselves may put meaning into our lives, and sometimes a significance that transcends death. If a man is fortunate he will, before he dies, gather up as much that he can of his civilized heritage and transmit it to his children. And to his final breath, he will be grateful for this inexhaustible legacy, knowing that it is our nourishing mother and our lasting life." Convinced that there is no eternal life awaiting him man will strive all the more to brighten his life on earth and rationally improve his condition in harmony with that of his fellows. -- Ernst Haeckel "William James used to preach the 'will to believe.' For my part, I should wish to preach the 'will to doubt.' ... What is wanted is not the will to believe, but the will to find out, which is the exact opposite." -- Bertrand Russell, _Skeptical_Essays_, 1928 "What makes a free thinker is not his beliefs, but the way in which he holds them. If he holds them because his elders told him they were true when he was young, or if he holds them because if he did not he would be unhappy, his thought is not free; but if he holds them because, after careful thought, he finds a balance of evidence in their favor, then his thought is free, however odd his conclusions may seem." Bertrand Russell, "The Value of Free Thought: How to Become a Truth-Seeker and Break the Chains of Mental Slavery" -- _Bertrand Russell on God and Religion_ (Buffalo, NY: Prometheus), pp. 239-40. Don't strew me with roses after I'm dead. When Death claims the light of my brow No flowers of life will cheer me: instead You may give me my roses now! -- Thomas F. Healey Secular humanism is a philosophical and practical stance which emphasizes the application of human intelligence to solving human problems. It does not appeal to supernatural forces for solutions, but rests the responsibility of improving life on humans. Secular humanists value: free and critical inquiry into all areas of human experience, freedom of conscience and speech, personal responsibility, tolerance of diverse viewpoints, and the application of science and reason to ameliorating the human condition. H.L. Mencken declared in Treatise on the Gods. ------------------------------------------------------------------**** Religion: Freethought: Awareness: Consciousness: Experience: Only when each instant is seen for what it truly is, does the soul begin to feel its power to change itself, and the world as well. With each breath, the mystery of the universe unfolds as a vast web of perpetual change; death is certain, and transformation is everywhere around us. Each moment becomes a unique opportunity, never to be repeated in the life of a soul, or even in the life of the earth. When the passage of time is felt and understood, the smallest deed becomes an act of power, its consequences irrevocable. When the finality of death is accepted, time becomes infinitely precious, and all life becomes sacred. In this extraordinary world, real responsibility begins with proper reverence for the limitations of life. -- http://www.envirolink.org/orgs/coe/e-sermons/sermon10.html If the expansion of consciousness does not loom large in the human future, what kind of future is it going to be? -- Terrence McKenna Acquire the courage to believe in yourself. Many of the things that you have been taught were at one time the radical ideas of individuals who had the courage to believe what their own hearts and minds told them was true, rather than accept the common beliefs of their day. -- Ching Ning Chu One man awake Can awaken another: The second can awaken his next-door brother: The three awake can rouse the town, By turning the whole place upside down. And the many awake, make such a fuss, They finally awaken the rest of us. One man up with the dawn in his eyes - multiplies. -- Helen Kromer The aspirin approach: I think that some of it has to do with our times. Have a headache? Pop a pill. The aspirin approach, as it pertains to religious or ethical conundra, seductively eliminates the need for us to take time-consuming responsibility for our doubts -- to work them out for ourselves, in light of everything else we know. Charles Eastman, Ojibway, explains that the Indian "believes profoundly in silence--the sign of a perfect equilibrium. Silence is the absolute poise or balance of body, mind, and spirit." No amount of information can substitute for experience. -- Robin Faichney Until you are able to serve men, how can you serve spiritual beings? Until you know about life, how can you know about death? -- Confucius, 11:11 of The Analects Not one of us knows what effect his life produces, and what he gives to others; that is hidden from us and must remain so, though we are often allowed to see some little fraction of it, so that we may not lose courage. -- Albert Schweitzer "Religions tend to form around the spiritual high points of the path. And until a person falls into sin and is excommunicated there is no further progress. The last step before sainthood is to commit an unpardonable sin. It creates compassion and empathy for the sins of one's fellows. How can someone who always does good understand someone else's failure to do good? Not doing good would seem very odd to someone who always did good." -- http://www.starsedge.com/IApath.html I have sung with choirs of Baptists at revivals, chanted with yogis at dawn, and screamed for the blood of the opposing team's first line forward. But while I may have felt it within definitional prerogative to call any of these 'religious' experiences, I do not. I include all of them within the realm of human emotion and experience however, and do not differentiate. I deny them to no-one, and expect them of all. -- Wade T. Smith, wade_smith@harvard.edu Jesus phrased it, what your hand finds to do, do it with a whole heart. At the start of a Gyoto Monks "concert": "When a culture sets itself to a task it can accomplish amazing things. Western culture undertook the task of understanding the natural world through science and it has since harnessed the power of the sun and put a man on the moon. A thousand years ago the Tibetan culture set itself to the equally difficult task of understanding and mastering the non-physical world. With similarly impressive results." ------------------------------------------------------------------**** Religion: Freethought: Science: Einstein: the religiousness of Reason: "In Ranec's eye the finest and most perfect example of anything was beautiful, and anything beautiful was the finest and most perfect example of spirit; it was the essence of it. That was his religion. Beyond that, at the core of his aesthetic soul, he felt that beauty had an intrinsic value of its own, and he believed there was a potential for beauty in everything. While some activities or objects could be simply functional, he felt that anyone who came close to achieving perfection in any activity was an artist, and the results contained the essence of beauty. But the art was as much in the activity as in the results. Works of art were not just the finished product, but the thought, the action, the process that created them." -- Jean Auel [Ranec was an artist, thus his supreme value was the process by which art is created.] "There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle." -- Albert Einstein "I believe in the religion of reason -- the gospel of this world; in the development of the mind, in the accumulation of intellectual wealth, to the end that man may free himself from superstitious fear, to the end that he may take advantage of the forces of nature to feed and clothe the world." -- Robert G. Ingersoll No bird soars too high if he soars with his own wings. -- William Blake "My placement of the Enlightenment founders in mythic roles of an epic adventure..." -- Edward O. Wilson, _Consilience_ The larger the island of knowledge, the longer the shoreline of wonder. -- Ralph W. Sockman "To love justice, to long for the right, to love mercy, to pity the suffering, to assist weak, to forget wrongs and remember benefits. -- to love the truth, to be sincere, to utter honest words, to love liberty, to wage relentless war against slavery in all its forms, to love wife and child and friend, to make a happy home, to love the beautiful in art, in nature, to cultivate the mind, to be familiar with the mighty thoughts that genius has expressed, the noble deeds of all the world, to cultivate courage and cheerfulness, to make others happy, to fill life with the splendor of generous acts, the warmth of loving words, to discard error, to destroy prejudice, to receive new truths with gladness, to cultivate hope, to see the calm beyond the storm, the dawn beyond the night, to do the best that can be done and then to be resigned -- this is the religion of reason, the creed of science. This satisfies the heart and brain." -- Robert G. Ingersoll, "The Foundations of Faith" "We want to stand upon our own feet and look fair and square at the world -- its good facts, its bad facts, its beauties, and its ugliness; see the world as it is and be not afraid of it. Conquer the world by intelligence and not merely by being slavishly subdued by the terror that comes from it." -- Bertrand Russell, "Why I Am Not A Christian" Student: Is there anything in the world more marvelous than the forces of Nature? Master: There is - the power of comprehending those natural forces. "I stand here on the summit of the mountain. I lift my head and I spread my arms. This, my body and spirit, this is the end of the quest. I wished to know the meaning of things. I am the meaning. I wished to find a warrant for being. I need no warrant for being, and no word of sanction upon my being. I am the warrant and the sanction. It is my eyes which see, and the sight of my eyes grants beauty to the earth. It is my ears which hear, and the hearing of my ears gives its song to the world. It is my mind which thinks, and the judgement of my mind is the only searchlight that can find the truth. It is my will which chooses, and the choice of my will is the only edict I must respect. Many words have been granted me, and some are wise, and some are false, but only three are holy: 'I will it!' This miracle of me is mine to own and keep, and mine to guard, and mine to use, and mine to kneel before. And now I see the face of god." -- Ayn Rand "The road to this paradise was not as comfortable and alluring as the road to the religious paradise; but it has shown itself reliable, and I have never regretted having chosen it." -- Albert Einstein "I cannot conceive of a God who rewards and punishes his creatures, or has a will of the kind that we experience in ourselves. Neither can I nor would I want to conceive of an individual that survives his physical death; let feeble souls, from fear or absurd egoism, cherish such thoughts. I am satisfied with the mystery of the eternity of life and with the awareness and a glimpse of the marvelous structure of the existing world, together with the devoted striving to comprehend a portion, be it ever so tiny, of the Reason that manifests itself in nature." -- Albert Einstein,_The World as I See It_ He who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe is as good as dead; his eyes are closed. -- Albert Einstein ...I have learned that there is no religious revelation more satisfying than the hard won fruits of simple understanding. And there is no liberation to compare with freeing oneself from the illusions and delusions of the age in which one lives. -- Terrence McKenna True brilliance is noticing the little gleam of light that flashes through your own mind from within, not the neon signs of experts and world leaders. -- http://www.brodietech.com/rbrodie/emsr01.htm The stars are made of the same atoms as the earth." I usually pick one small topic like this to give a lecture on. Poets say science takes away from the beauty of the stars -- mere gobs of gas atoms. Nothing is "mere." I too can see the stars on a desert night, and feel them. But do I see less or more? The vastness of the heavens stretches my imagination -- stuck on this carousel my little eye can catch one-million-year-old light. A vast pattern -- of which I am a part -- perhaps my stuff was belched from some forgotten star, as one is belching there. Or see them with the greater eye of Palomar, rushing all apart from some common starting point when they were perhaps all together. What is the pattern, or the meaning, or the *why?* It does not do harm to the mystery to know a little about it. For far more marvelous is the truth than any artists of the past imagined! Why do the poets of the present not speak of it? What men are poets who can speak of Jupiter if he were like a man, but if he is an immense spinning sphere of methane and ammonia must be silent? -- Richard P. Feynman (1918-1988) To know that what is impenetrable to us really exists, manifesting itself as the highest wisdom and the most radiant beauty, which our dull faculties can comprehend only in the most primitive forms -- this knowledge, this feeling, is at the center of true religiousness. In this sense, and this sense only, I belong to the ranks of the devoutly religious men. -- Albert Einstein My religion consists of a humble admiration of the unlimitable superior who reveals Himself in the slight details we are able to perceive with our frail and feeble minds. That deeply emotional conviction of the presence of a superior reasoning power, which is revealed in the incomprehensible universe, forms my idea of God -- Albert Einstein "I do not believe in immortality of the individual, and I consider ethics to be an exclusively human concern with no superhuman authority behind it." -- Albert Einstein, _The Human Side_ "A man's ethical behavior should be based effectually on sympathy, education, and social ties and needs; no religious basis is necessary. Man would indeed be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hope of reward after death." [Albert Einstein, "Religion and Science", New York Times Magazine, 9 November 1930] "If one wants to feel more than inarticulate wonder before mountains or buildings, it helps to understand the invisible mechanisms that support the visible beauty." -- James Hogan Carl Sagan: "Understanding is a kind of ecstasy." "I wanted to convey an emotion I have about the beauty of the world. It's analogous to the feeling one has in religion that has to do with a god that controls everything in the whole universe: there's a generality aspect that you feel when you think about how things that appear so different and behave so differently are all run 'behind the scenes' by the same organization, the same physical laws. It's an appreciation of the mathematical beauty of nature, of how she works inside; a realization that the phenomena we see result from the complexity of the inner workings between atoms; a feeling of how dramatic and wonderful it is. It's a feeling of awe - of scientific awe - this feeling about the glories of the universe." -- Richard Feynman "I will ask you to project the look on a child's face when he grasps the answer to some problem he has been striving to understand. It is a radiant look of joy, of liberation, almost of triumph, which is unself-conscious, yet self-assertive, and its radiance seems to spread in two directions: outward, as an illumination of the world - inward, as the first spark of what is to become the fire of an earned pride. If you have seen this look, or experienced it, you know that if there is such a concept as 'sacred' - meaning: the best, the highest possible to man - this look is the sacred, the not-to-be-betrayed, the not-to-be-sacrificed for anything or anyone. This look is not confined to children. Comic-strip artists are in the habit of representing it by means of a light bulb flashing on, above the head of a character who has suddenly grasped an idea. In simple, primitive terms, this is an appropriate symbol: an idea is a light turned on in a man's soul. It is the steady confident reflection of that light that you look for in the faces of adults - particularly of those to whom you entrust your most precious values. That light-bulb look is the flash of a human intelligence in action; it is the outward manifestation of man's rational faculty; it is the signal and symbol of man's mind. And, to the extent of your humanity, it is involved in everything you seek, enjoy, value or love." -- Ayn Rand The artist said, "I, as an artist, can see how beautiful a flower is. But you, as a scientist, take it all apart and it becomes dull." Richard Feynman replied, "First of all, the beauty that he sees is available to other people - and to me, too, I believe. Although I might not be quite as refined aesthetically as he is, I can appreciate the beauty of a flower. But at the same time, I see much more in the flower than he sees. I can imagine the cells inside, which also have a beauty. There's beauty not just at the dimension of one centimeter; there's also beauty at a smaller dimension. There are the complicated actions of the cells, and other processes. The fact that the colors in the flower have evolved in order to attract insects to pollinate it is interesting; that means insects can see the colors. That adds a question: does this aesthetic sense we have also exist in lower forms of life? There are all kinds of interesting questions that come from a knowledge of science, which only adds to the excitement and mystery and awe of a flower. It only adds." -- Feynman was a scientist, thus his supreme value was the process of gaining knowledge of the world of nature. "You see, one thing is, I can live with doubt and uncertainty and not knowing. I think it's much more interesting to live not knowing than to have answers which might be wrong. I have approximate answers and possible beliefs and different degrees of uncertainty about different things, but I am not absolutely sure of anything and there are many things I don't know anything about, such as whether it means anything to ask why we're here... I don't have to know an answer. I don't feel frightened not knowing things, by being lost in a mysterious universe without any purpose, which is the way it really is as far as I can tell. It doesn't frighten me." -- Richard P. Feynman, "Genius, the life and science" "The level of awe that you get by contemplating the modern scientific view of the universe: deep time (by which I mean geological time), deep space, and what you could call deep complexity, living things... that level of awe is just orders of magnitude greater and more awe-inspiring than the sort of pokey medieval world-view which the church still actually has. I mean, they sort of pay lip-service to the scientific world-view, but if you listen to what they say on Thought For The Day [a religious program on BBC Radio] and things like that, it is medieval. It's a small world, a small universe, with the sky up there, very little advance since that time. So I yield to nobody in my awe for the universe and for life, but I also have a deep desire to understand it, in terms of what makes it work, what makes it tick, and not to take refuge in spurious non-explanations like "I just believe it because I believe it," that sort of thing." -- Richard Dawkins, interview with Douglas Adams "Religion closes off the central questions of existence by attempting to dissuade us from further enquiry by asserting that we cannot ever hope to comprehend. We are, religion asserts, simply too puny. Through fear of being shown to be vacuous, religion denies the awesome power of human comprehension. It seeks to thwart, by encouraging awe in things unseen, the disclosure of the emptiness of faith. Religion, in contrast to science, deploys the repugnant view that the world is too big for our understanding. Science, in contrast to religion, opens up the great questions of being to rational discussion, to discussion with the prospect of resolution and elucidation. Science, above all, respects the power of the human intellect. Science is the apotheosis of the intellect and the consummation of the Rennaissance. Science respects more deeply the potential of humanity than religion ever can." -- P.W. Atkins, "The Limitless Power of Science" essay in "Nature's Imagination", John Cornwell, ed.; 1995 Oxford University Press, p.125 A longer quote from Einstein appears in Science, Philosophy, and Religion, A Symposium, published by the Conference on Science, Philosophy, and Religion in Their Relation to the Democratic Way of Life, Inc., New York, 1941. In it he says: The more a man is imbued with the ordered regularity of all events the firmer becomes his conviction that there is no room left by the side of this ordered regularity for causes of a different nature. For him neither the rule of human nor the rule of divine will exists as an independent cause of natural events. To be sure, the doctrine of a personal God interfering with natural events could never be refuted, in the real sense, by science, for this doctrine can always take refuge in those domains in which scientific knowledge has not yet been able to set foot. But I am convinced that such behavior on the part of representatives of religion would not only be unworthy but also fatal. For a doctrine which is to maintain itself not in clear light but only in the dark, will of necessity lose its effect on mankind, with incalculable harm to human progress. In their struggle for the ethical good, teachers of religion must have the stature to give up the doctrine of a personal God, that is, give up that source of fear and hope which in the past placed such vast power in the hands of priests. In their labors they will have to avail themselves of those forces which are capable of cultivating the Good, the True, and the Beautiful in humanity itself. This is, to be sure, a more difficult but an incomparably more worthy task ... "The film /Apollo 13/, based on his book /Lost Moon/, was about to be released. In a quietly understated way, Lovell told of the explosion of an oxygen tank that turned the mission into a race for survival against one potential catastrophe after the another -- from a rapidly diminishing supply of breathable air to a battery strength insufficient for a return to earth -- in a deteriorating spacecraft hurtling through the cosmos to almost certain destruction. What was thrilling about the interview was the sense one got of the magnificent teamwork between the men on board the spacecraft and the support crew on earth interacting at a height of disciplined intelligence and passionate competence -- which resulted in the craft and its inhabitants being brought safely home. [...] "I do not know how rational any of those people were in the rest of their lives, but in this situation, reality was an absolute (no one imagined the problem would go away if they simply didn't think of it), reason was an absolute (no one phoned his astrologer for suggestions) and the relationship between rationality and survival was understood by all. "If one wanted to see the spirituality of reason in action, I thought, this was it." From: "The Art of Living Consciously, the Power of Awareness to Transform Everyday Life" by Nathaniel Branden. "It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious convictions, a lie which is being systematically repeated. I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it." -- Albert Einstein, _The Human Side_ ------------------------------------------------------------------**** Religion: Freethought: 65 Million Years of Mammalian Experience: The reasons you cite are all highly explicit and conscious. But eating is, for almost everyone, dependent on very inexplicit areas of their personality -- their aesthetic side, their sensual side -- and who knows what else. In trying to replace (as opposed to merely supplementing, which is harmless and desirable) such theories by aims derived from one's conscious values, one risks simply *overriding* the inexplicit values, which is of course irrational/self-coercive. One of the particular dangers is that the inborn inexplicit values include feedback mechanisms that prevent runaway fatness or thinness. To replace those entirely by consciously designed criteria that actually work, takes quite a lot of sophistication. -- David Deutsch, on the TCS mailing list "It's hard for some people to understand how one can enjoy life when living at the bottom of the pile. Yet I think that that is the most important thing that ever happened to me, to be without anything, no crutch of any kind, cut off completely from all help. You have to find it every day, this help; you have to learn to live from day to day. Sure, you suffer and you're miserable, but it's so fascinating that you become thoroughly alive. You live by your instincts, just like the animal. That's a great thing for us overcivilized people to know, how to be a bird of prey, an animal, wolfing every meal, begging, being humiliated time and again, accepting it, being pushed down and then bouncing back again. Each day you get through is something of a miracle." -- Henry Miller "the biological forces deep within our organism that speak to us in a wordless language we have barely begun to decipher." -- Nathaniel Branden As George Williams notes, not only is cannibalism (eating conspecifics, even close relatives) common, but in many species sibling-cide (we won't call it murder, since they know not what they do) is almost the rule, not the exception. (For instance, when two or more eagle chicks are born in a single nest, the first to hatch is very likely to kill its younger siblings, if it can, by pushing the eggs out of the nest, or even pushing the hatchlings out.) When a lion acquires a new lioness who is still nursing cubs from an earlier mating, the first order of business is to kill those cubs, so that the lionness will more quickly come into estrus. Chimpanzees have been known to engage in mortal combat against their own kind, and langur-monkey males often kill the infants of the other males to gain reproductive access to females -- so even out closest relatives engage in horrible behaviour. Williams points out that, in all the mammalian species that have so far been carefully studied, the rate at which their members engage in killing of conspecifics is several thousand times greater than the highest homicide rate measured in any American city. -- Daniel C. Dennett, _Darwin's Dangerous Idea_, pg. 478 The mind is a complicated thing. It makes shortcuts for us all the time. I don't have to consciously get my lungs to move in order to breath although I could do so. A lot of ones thinking occurs behind the scenes without oneself even being aware of it. (Ever try and remember something only to have it pop into your head a little while later?). I see emotions as something like Read Only Memory in a computer, it gives us certain responses to situations automatically. But they are also programmable to a certain extent depending on our experience. The program is your philosophy. (Around here in this list they'd call it a "meme complex") If one makes it a point to examine one's beliefs and to acquire a reasonable philosophy then your emotions can give you a short cut answer to having to think something through. But if you have an invalid belief (Zeus is one of the many gods controlling my fate for example) then your emotions will give you improper responses to reality. You will never seem to get anything right and fear will be your constant companion. -- Nathaniel Hall , on the CoV mailing list 'All right, then,' said the Savage defiantly, 'I'm claiming the right to be unhappy.' 'Not to mention the right to grow old and ugly and impotent; the right to have syphilis and cancer; the right to have too little to eat; the right to be lousy; the right to live in constant apprehension of what may happen tomorrow; the right to catch typhoid; the right to be tortured by unspeakable pains of every kind.' There was a long silence. 'I claim them all,' said the Savage at last. (Pg.273, Brave New World, Aldous Huxley) "What you need," the Savage went on, "is something WITH tears for a change. Nothing costs enough here." ------------------------------------------------------------------**** Religion: Freethought: Agnosticism: There is only one greater folly than that of the fool who says in his heart there is no God, and that is the folly of the people that says with its head that it does not know whether there is a God or not. -- Otto von Bismarck Agnosticism simply means that a man shall not say he knows or believes that for which he has no grounds for professing to believe. I am an agnostic; I do not pretend to know what many ignorant men are sure of. -- Clarence Darrow Don't be an agnostic--be something. -- Robert Frost "Agnostic, n. A person who feels superior to atheists by merit of his ignorance of the rules of logic and evidence." -- Chaz Bufe, The American Heretic's Dictionary Agnosticism is the philosophical, ethical and religious dry-rot of the modern world. -- F. E. Abbot "When I reached intellectual maturity and began to ask myself whether I was an atheist, a theist, or a pantheist; a materialist or an idealist; a Christian or a freethinker; I found that the more I learned and reflected, the less ready was the answer; until, at last, I came to the conclusion that I had neither art nor part with any of these denominations, except the last. The one thing in which most of these good people were agreed was the one thing in which I differed from them. They were quite sure they had attained a certain 'gnosis,' -- had, more or less successfully, solved the problem of existence; while I was quite sure I had not, and had a pretty strong conviction that the problem was insoluble. And, with Hume and Kant on my side, I could not think myself presumptuous in holding fast by that opinion." Thomas Henry Huxley, "Agnosticism" _Agnosticism and Christianity and Other Essays_ (1889, Buffalo, NY: Prometheus, 1992), p. 162. "Agnosticism is not properly described as a 'negative' creed, nor indeed as a creed of any kind, except in so far as it expresses absolute faith in the validity of a principle, which is as much ethical as intellectual. This principle may be stated in various ways, but they all amount to this: that it is wrong for a man to say that he is certain of the objective truth of any proposition unless he can produce evidence which logically justifies that certainty. This is what Agnosticism asserts; and, in my opinion, it is all that is essential to Agnosticism. That which Agnostics deny, and repudiate as immoral, is the contrary doctrine, that there are propositions which men ought to believe, without logically satisfactory evidence." Thomas Henry Huxley, "Agnosticism and Christianity and Other Essays" (1889, Buffalo, NY: Prometheus, 1992), p. 193. Atheism: a lack of theistic belief. Not synonymous with an active believe in the non-existence of God which is defined as anti-theism. Agnosticism: the belief that humans CANNOT KNOW the truth about the existence and non-existence of God. When you cast the debate in those terms, don't you find that agnosticism makes the much stronger claim and is therefore harder to support? The question of the God's existence or non-existence MAY be beyond the scope of empirical science, but this is not necessarily so. ------------------------------------------------------------------**** Religion: Freethought: Atheism: atheism outlives all gods atheism: 1a: a disbelief in the existence of deity 1b: the doctrine that there is no deity Most Atheists/Agnostics (including me, for a time) went through this low-level and rudimentary argument: God is all good (belief). God is all powerful (belief). Bad things happen all the time (truth). Bad things happen when you are being good (judgement call). Therefore God must either be: a) not all Good. b) not all powerful. c) not. -- John Williams "I am an atheist, out and out. It took me a long time to say it. I've been an atheist for years and years, but somehow I felt it was intellectually unrespectable to say one was an atheist, because it assumed knowledge that one didn't have. Somehow it was better to say one was a humanist or an agnostic. I finally decided that I'm a creature of emotion as well as of reason. Emotionally I am an atheist. I don't have the evidence to prove that God doesn't exist, but I so strongly suspect he doesn't that I don't want to waste my time." -- Isaac Asimov, "Free Inquiry", Spring 1982, vol.2 no.2, p.9 1) God is a being with these properties: a) all powerful b) wants to save humanity c) wants nothing else that would prevent him from doing b) d) is rational 2) If such a God exists, all men would be saved. 3) all men are not saved 4) therefore God (as defined in 1) does not exist -- Eric Boyd [I call it the argument from hell] "Either God wants to abolish evil, and cannot; Or he can, but does not want to; Or he cannot and does not want to. If he wants to, but cannot, he is impotent. If he can, but does not want to, he is wicked. But, if God both can and wants to abolish evil, Then how come evil in the world?" -- Epicurus, 350-?270 BC "Either god would remove evil out of this world and cannot, or he can and will not, or he has not the power nor will, or lastly he has both the power and will. If he has the will and not the power, this shows weakness, which is contrary to the nature of god. If he has the power and not the will, it is malignity, and this is no less contrary to his nature. And if he is neither able nor willing he is both impotent and malignant and consequently cannot be god. And if he is both willing and able, which alone is consonant with the nature of god, whence comes evil? Or why does he not prevent it?" -- Epicurus ugly self-righteous atheist "I haven't rejected god, I've never met him." -- Trevor Hick on alt.atheism As atheists, we control our own divinity... "[N]o philosophy, no religion, has ever brought so glad a message to the world as this good news of Atheism." -- Annie Besant, "The Gospel of Atheism" "Atheism has one doctrine: To Question Atheism has one dogma: To Doubt The Atheist Bible has but one word: THINK." -- Emmet F. Fields Why would it follow that we are not justified in believing that the human onlooker acted wrongly by failing to intervene? Because *and here is the crucial premise* "[t]he reason beyond our ken that would justify God in allowing [the evil act] could be the same reason which would justify the onlooker" (Russell 1996:198). -- The Moral Argument against the existence of God. http://infidels.org/library/modern/dean_stretton/mae.html "...What need have you of a second difficulty when you are unable to resolve the first, and once it is possible that Nature may have all alone done what you attribute to your god, why must you go looking for someone to be her overlord? The cause and explanation of what you do not understand may perhaps be the simplest thing in the world. Perfect your physics and you will understand Nature better, refine your reason, banish your prejudices and you’ll have no further need of your god." -- The Marquis de Sade (1782) "There are no atheists in foxholes" isn't an argument against atheism, it's an argument against foxholes." -- James Morrow "Is god an atheist? If not, who created him? And if so, why can I not agree with him in unbelief?" -- John Nicholson "The advent of the Christian God, as the maximum god attained so far, was... accompanied by the maximum feeling of guilty indebtedness on Earth. Presuming we gradually enter upon the reverse course, there is no small probability that with the irresistible decline of faith in the Christian god, there is now a considerable decline in mankind's feeling of guilt; indeed, the prospect cannot be dismissed that the complete and definitive victory of Atheism might free mankind of this whole feeling of guilty in-debtedness towards its origin... Atheism and a kind of second innocence belong together." -- Friedrich Nietzsche, from The Genealogy of Morals "Have you not heard of that madman who lit a lantern in the bright morning hours, ran to the market place and cried incessantly: 'I am looking for God! I am looking for God!' - As many of those who did not believe in God were standing together there he excited considerable laughter. Have you lost him then? said one. Did he lose his way like a child? said another. Or is he hiding? Is he afraid of us? Has he gone on a voyage? or emigrated? - thus they shouted and laughed. The madman jumped into their midst and pierced them with his eyes. "Whither is God?" he cried; "I will tell you. WE HAVE KILLED HIM - you and I. All of us are his murderers. But how did we do this? How could we drink up the sea? Who gave us the sponge to wipe away the entire horizon? What were we doing when we unchained this earth from its sun? Whither is it moving now? Whither are we moving? Away from all suns? Are we not plunging continually? Backward, sideward, foreward, in all direction? Is there still any up or down? Are we not straying as through an infinite nothing? Do we not feel the breath of empty space? Has it not become colder? Is not night continually closing in on us? Do we not need to light candles in the morning? Do we hear nothing as yet of the noise of the gravediggers who are burying God? Do we smell nothing as yet of the divine decomposition? Gods, too, decompose. God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him." -- Friedrich Nietzsche "YOUR PETITIONERS ARE ATHEISTS and they define their life-style as follows. An Atheist loves himself and his fellowman instead of a god. An Atheist knows that heaven is something for which we should work now -- here on earth -- for all men together to enjoy. An Atheist thinks that he can get no help through prayer but that he must find in himself the inner conviction and strength to meet life, to grapple with it, to subdue, and enjoy it. An Atheist thinks that only in a knowledge of himself and a knowledge of his fellowman can he find the understanding that will help to a life of fulfillment. Therefore, he seeks to know himself and his fellowman rather than to know a god. An Atheist knows that a hospital should be build instead of a church. An Atheist knows that a deed must be done instead of a prayer said. An Atheist strives for involvement in life and not escape into death. He wants disease conquered, poverty vanquished, war eliminated. He wants man to understand and love man. He wants an ethical way of life. He knows that we cannot rely on a god nor channel action into prayer nor hope for an end to troubles in the hereafter. He knows that we are our brother's keeper and keepers of our lives; that we are responsibile persons, that the job is here and the time is now." -- Madalyn Murray (later O'Hair), preamble to Murray v. Curlett, April 27, 1961 "Just as one theist may disagree with another theist on important issues, so one atheist may disagree with another atheist on important issues. An atheist may be a capitalist or a communist, and ethical objectivist or subjectivist, a producer or a parasite, an honest man or a thief, psychologically healthy or neurotic. The only thing incompatible with atheism is theism." -- George H. Smith, "Atheism: The Case Against God" This sort of seesaw play with the language is fine for a useless Sunday morning, but atheism is an approach to _life_, not an approach to magic. -- "Wade T. Smith" , on the CoV mailing list The basic point I wanted to make about atheism in regard to this is: atheism is important only when viewed in this larger context which I will call the "habit of reasonableness." Atheism is significant only if and when it results from this habit of reasonableness. The American child who grows up to be a Baptist simply because his parents were Baptist and he never thought critically about those beliefs is not necessarily any more irrational than the Soviet child who grows up to be an atheist simply because his parents were atheist and because the state tells him to be an atheist. The fact that the Soviet child in this particular case may have the correct position is irrelevant. So it's no so much what one believes, or the content, as it is why one believes as one does. So the issue of reasonableness pertains to the concern for truth, concern for the correct methodology of reasoning. And just because a person espouses atheism is no guarantee -- believe me -- that person is necessarily reasonable. -- http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/george_smith/defending.html Library: Modern: George Smith: How to Defend Atheism (1976) All the hours and years that theists apply themselves to prayer and devotion and the perusal of scripture, atheists apply themselves to the study of the universe, to the refinement of their understanding of things, and to their mastery of clear and successful thinking. -- http://www.columbia.edu/~rcc20/ought.html "There is a new definition of atheism not found among the current orthodox: it is the non-experience of deity. It is not anti-theist, it is supportive of the natural quest for meaning in myth, symbol and practice, and challenges any construct that places itself in the position of worship or unquestioning obedience, whether it be called deity or law. Atheism is substantiated by the experience of no-god, or the lack of experience, not by belief or rational counter-arguments to theism. This definition comes, in part, from Pascal who conceives of a person so made that s/he cannot believe - a person who by nature is experientially limited to atheism." -- (Pensées, translated by W. F. Trotter, Chicago 1952) "Atheists are now here to stay. We are ready to take over the culture and move it ahead for the benefit of all mankind. Religion has ever been anti-human, anti-woman, anti-life, anti-peace, anti-reason, and anti-science. The god idea has been detrimental not only to humankind but to the earth. It is time now for reason, education, and science to take over." -- Madalyn O'Hair, "Atheists: The Last Minority" "Atheists are often charged with blasphemy, but it is a crime they cannot commit... When the Atheist examines, denounces, or satirizes the gods, he is not dealing with persons but with ideas. He is incapable of insulting God, for he does not admit the existence of any such being... We attack not a person but a belief, not a being but an idea, not a fact but a fancy." -- G.W. Foote, "Who are the Blasphemers?" in Flowers of Freethought We have often seen reliable statistics showing that the percentage of the North American population who hold no religious beliefs ranges between 13% and 37% (in BC); the percentage of prison inmates who are atheists is about 1%. -- The Canadian Atheist Issue 9 Winter 1996/97 IF ATHEISM IS A RELIGION, THEN: Silence is a language. Dead is a state of mind. Hunger is a gourmet meal. Health is a disease. Bald is a hair colour. "If Atheism is a religion, then health is a disease!" -- Clark Adams To be an atheist requires strength of mind and goodness of heart found in not one of a thousand. -- Samuel Coleridge (1772-1834) "If the belief in god were natural, there would be no need to teach it. Children would possess it as well as adults, the layman as the priest, the heathen as much as the missionary. We don't have to teach the general elements of human nature; -- the five senses, seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, and feeling. They are universal; so would religion be were it natural, but it is not. On the contrary, it is an interesting and demonstrable fact, that all children are Atheists, and were religion not inculcated into their minds they would remain so. Even as it is, they are great skeptics, until made sensible of the potent weapon by which religion has ever been propagated, namely, fear -- fear of the lash of public opinion here, and of jealous, vindictive God hereafter. No; there is no religion in human nature, nor human nature in religion. It is purely artificial, the result of education, while Atheism is natural, and, were the human mind not perverted and bewildered by the mysteries and follies of superstition, would be universal." Ernestine L. Rose, "A Defense of Atheism" (1878, _Women Without Superstition_ ed. Annie Laurie Gaylor, Madison, WI: FFRF, 1997), p. 82. "Whatever good you would do out of fear of punishment, or hope of reward hereafter, the Atheist would do simply because it is good; and being so, he would receive the far surer and more certain reward, springing from well-doing, which would constitute his pleasure, and promote his happiness." Ernestine L. Rose, "A Defense of Atheism" (1878, _Women Without Superstition_ ed. Annie Laurie Gaylor, Madison, WI: FFRF, 1997), p. 85. Atheism is the world of reality, it is reason, it is freedom, atheism is human concern, and intellectual honesty to a degree that the religious mind cannot begin to understand. And yet it is more than this. Atheism is not an old religion, it is not a new and coming religion, in fact it is not, and has never been, a religion at all. The definition of atheism is magnificent in its simplicity: Atheism is merely the bed-rock of sanity in a world of madness. -- Atheism: An Affirmative View, by Emmett F. Fields "Atheism, therefore, is the absence of theistic belief. One who does not believe in the existence of a god or supernatural being is properly designated as an atheist. Atheism is sometimes defined as "the belief that there is no God of any kind," or the claim that a god cannot exist. While these are categories of atheism, they do not exhaust the meaning of atheism -- and are somewhat misleading with respect to the basic nature of atheism. Atheism, in its basic form, is not a belief: it is the absence of belief. An atheist is not primarily a person who believes that a god does not exist, rather he does not believe in the existence of a god." -- George Smith In The Women's Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets, Barbara G. Walker notes that Oriental thinkers consider atheism to be just as "religious" and "spiritual" as what we commonly call "belief" if not more so. The fool says in his heart, "There is no God." The Wise Man Says it to the World. "An atheist is a man who has no invisible means of support." Bishop Fulton Sheen (or) "An atheist is a man who has no invisible means of support." [John Buchan (1875-1940) British author, statesman] "Since experiences of God are good grounds for the existence of God, are not experiences of the absence of God good grounds for the nonexistence of God? After all, many people have tried to experience God and have failed. Cannot these experiences of the absence of God be used by atheists to counter the theistic argument based on experience of the presence of God?" Michael Martin, Atheism: A Philosophical Justification, (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1990), p. 159. "If you look up 'atheism' in a dictionary, you will probably find it defined as the belief that there is no God. Certainly many people understand atheism in this way. Yet many atheists do not, and this is not what the term means if one consider it from the point of view of its Greek roots. In Greek 'a' means 'without' or 'not' and 'theos' means 'god.' From this standpoint an atheist would simply be someone without a belief in God, not necessarily someone who believes that God does not exist. According to its Greek roots, then, atheism is a negative view, characterized by the absence of belief in God." -- Michael Martin, Atheism: A Philosophical Justification, (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1990), p. 463. "There is a new definition of atheism not found among the current orthodox: it is the non-experience of deity. It is not anti-theist, it is supportive of the natural quest for meaning in myth, symbol and practice, and challenges any construct that places itself in the position of worship or unquestioning obedience, whether it be called deity or law. Atheism is substantiated by the experience of no-god, or the lack of experience, not by belief or rational counter-arguments to theism. This definition comes, in part, from Pascal who conceives of a person so made that s/he cannot believe - a person who by nature is experientially limited to atheism." -- (Pensées, translated by W. F. Trotter, Chicago 1952) "I'm an atheist, and truth to myself is first, empathy for all of humanity is second, and reverence of life today is third." -- Marci Chitwood "If there is a God, atheism must strike Him as less of an insult than religion." -- Edmond and Jules de Goncourt "Freethinkers who accompany their statement of unbelief with a "wistful regret"... express their unbelief in so mournful a manner as to furnish some little support to the religious theorist. But the fully-fledged Atheist will not live up to the character. Instead of weeping, he laughs. Instead of being miserable, he is happy. Instead of regretting the loss of his old faith, he unblushingly declares his joy of having got rid of it. Instead of being grateful for the sympathy of the Christian, he confounds his impertinence and expresses his sympathy with the deluded believer by seeking to convince him of the error of his ways." -- Chapman Cohen "If God is love, and if God is also omnipresent, then the Devil cannot exist. If the Devil exists, God cannot be love and also be omnipresent. Yet, an omnipresent God of love and the Devil are both said to exist. It doesn't take Sherlock Holmes to figure that there is something wrong here!" -- Rev. Donald Morgan, Atheologian "I have been looking for god for fifty years and I think if he had existed I should have discovered him." -- Thomas Hardy "For centuries men have fought in the most unusual and devious ways to prove the existence of a God. But evidently a God, if there were a God, has been hiding out. He has never been discovered or proved. One would think a God, if any, should have revealed himself unmistakably. Isn't this non-appearance of a God (the non-appearance of a God in the shape of a single bit of evidence for his existence) a pretty, strong, sufficient proof of non-existence?" -- E. Haldeman-Julius, "The Meaning Of Atheism" "Once upon a time two explorers came upon a clearing in the jungle. In the clearing were growing many flowers and many weeds. One explorer says, "Some gardener must tend this plot." The other disagrees, "There is no gardener." So, they pitch their tents and set a watch. No gardener.... So they set up a barbed wire fence. They electrify it. They patrol it with bloodhounds... But no shrieks even suggest that some intruder intruder has received a shock. No movements of the wire ever betray an invisible climber. The bloodhounds never give cry. Yet still the Believer is not convinced. "But there is a gardener, invisible, intangible, insensible to electric shocks, a gardener who has no scent and makes no sound, a gardener who comes secretly to look after the garden which he loves." At last the Skeptic despairs, "But what remains of your original assertion? Just how does what you call an invisible, intangible, eternally elusive gardener differ from an imaginary gardener or even no gardener at all?" -- Anthony Flew "When you understand why you reject the 9,999 other gods you will understand why I reject all 10,000." - unknown "I contend that we are all atheists. I just believe in one fewer god than you. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours." -- Stephen Roberts Theism is doomed... the advance of civilization to its heights has brought an increasing disbelief in all religion. The prospect is clear. No refinement of the idea of god can save it from disappearance. -- Joseph McCabe The fundamental argument for the existence of God is that theists whine about causality. I believe that since causality is dependent on time itself, that things outside of time (like the cause of the Big Bang) can violate it all they want. But theists demand an intelligent "uncaused cause". I have come up with what I believe to be a unique variant of Deism that can satisfy us all. Assume that before there was time, in the depths of eternity, there existed a God named Athe. He named himself, since there was no one else around. Though He was most certainly a mighty God, He was far from infinite in every respect (knowledge and goodness maybe, but not in power). Knowing the consequences of his actions would be much more interesting than his current state, Athe decided that He would create a universe, with time, space, matter, and ultimately intelligent beings would evolve. But unfortunately, there was nothing to create the universe from, except from His own Self. So with the noblest of sacrifices and in a mighty BANG! the universe was created and Athe was no more. Since his power was not infinite, He could not maintain both His own consciousness and the universe. So now we are left with a universe, but no God to run it. Athe had the foresight, of course, to prescribe natural laws so that the universe could run itself, and chemical laws that would allow inorganic substances to become organic substances and ultimately form life and intelligence from His remains. We atheists acknowledge His loving sacrifice when we affirm daily that no God exists, and we pay homage to him by adopting His sacred name. The End. Any questions? -- Daniel Clark , http://www.infidels.org/infidels/feedback/1998/february.html ------------------------------------------------------------------**** Religion: Freethought: Extropy: Extropians: (www.extropy.com) DISASTERBATION: Idly fantasizing about possible catastrophes (ecological collapse, full-blown totalitarianism) without considering their likelihood or considering their possible solutions and preventions. [David Krieger, 1993] EVOLUTURE: An organism produced through evolution; the antonym of creature. [Mark Plus, June 1991] EXTROPY: A measure of intelligence, information, energy, life, experience, diversity, opportunity, and growth. The collection of forces which oppose entropy. [T.O. Morrow, 1988] NEG: Someone who typically complains, moans, and whines, Someone practicing the opposite of dynamic optimism. The Extropians use "eupraxophy" (good practice, active wisdom), a philosophy of life. -- David McFadzean , on the CoV mailing list We cannot hope to build a better world without improving the individual. Toward this end, each of us must work toward his own highest development, accepting at the same time his share of responsibility in the general life of humanity. -- Marie Curie Meliorism n. [Latin 'melior', better, and '-ism'.] 1. the belief that the world naturally tends to get better and, especially, that it can be made better by human effort. 2. the betterment of society by improving people's health, living conditions, etc. Within thirty years, we will have the technological means to create superhuman intelligence. Shortly after, the human era will be ended. -- Vernor Vinge, http://www-rohan.sdsu.edu/faculty/vinge/misc/singularity.html Our commitment to positive self-transformation requires us to critically analyze our current beliefs, behaviors, and strategies. -- from the Extropian Principle of Self-Transformation (v2.5) "When technology allows us to reconstitute ourselves physiologically, genetically, and neurologically, we who have become transhuman will be primed to transform ourselves into posthumans -- persons of unprecedented physical, intellectual, and psychological capacity, self-programming, potentially immortal, unlimited individuals." THE EXTROPIAN PRINCIPLES V. 2.6 1. Boundless Expansion: Seeking more intelligence, wisdom, and effectiveness, an unlimited lifespan, and the removal of political, cultural, biological, and psychological limits to selfactualization and self-realization. Perpetually overcoming constraints on our progress and possibilities. Expanding into the universe and advancing without end. 2. Self-Transformation: Affirming continual moral, intellectual, and physical self-improvement, through reason and critical thinking, personal responsibility, and experimentation. Seeking biological and neurological augmentation. 3. Dynamic Optimism: Fueling dynamic action with positive expectations. Adopting a rational, action-based optimism, shunning both blind faith and stagnant pessimism. 4. Intelligent Technology: Applying science and technology creatively to transcend "natural" limits imposed by our biological heritage, culture, and environment. 5. Spontaneous Order: Supporting decentralized, voluntaristic social coordination processes. Fostering tolerance, diversity, long-term thinking, personal responsibility, and individual liberty. -- Max More, http://www.primenet.com/~maxmore/extprn26.htm No mysteries are sacrosanct, no limits unquestionable; the unknown will yield to the ingenious mind. -- Max More, http://www.primenet.com/~maxmore/extprn26.htm The principle of spontaneous order is embodied in the free market system a system that does not yet exist in a pure form. We are evolving away from tribalism, feudalism, authoritarianism, and democracy towards a polycentric system of distributed power shared among autonomous agents, their plans coordinated by the economic network. -- Max More; The Extropian Principles v2.6; http://www.primenet.com/~maxmore/extprn26.htm ------------------------------------------------------------------**** Religion: Freethought: Extropy: Singularity: I used to say we create more choices for us as technology progresses, I am no longer sure that that's true. One of the points of Singularity making it somewhat resemble the high-quality bit bucket of spacetime singularities, that it is probably an attractor erasing a lot of information about previous trajectory/set of precursor states. In a sense, ultimatively intelligent matter is a degenerate state. Advanced aliens will be us, and us them. -- steve wishnevsky , on the nanotech list John von Neumann, one of the pioneers of modern computing, glimpsed this headlong flight into the future as early as the 1950s, and his thoughts are recalled by his friend Stanislaw Ulam: "One conversation centred on the ever-accelerating progress of technology and changes in the mode of human life, which gives the appearance of approaching some essential singularity in the history of the race beyond which human affairs, as we know them, could not continue." ------------------------------------------------------------------**** Religion: Freethought: Extropy: Transhumanism: "Of course, I never wrote the 'important' story, the sequel about the first amplified human. Once I tried something similar. John Campbell's letter of rejection began: 'Sorry - you can't write this story. Neither can anyone else.'" -- Vernor Vinge ------------------------------------------------------------------**** Religion: Freethought: Virus: Virian: Empathy: (virus.lucifer.com) "There is only one eternal truth (this one)." "If the account given in Genesis is really true, ought we not, after all, to thank this serpent? He was the first schoolmaster, the first advocate of learning, the first enemy of ignorance, the first to whisper in human ears the sacred word liberty, the creator of ambition, the author of modesty, of inquiry, of doubt, of investigation, of progress and of civilization." -- Robert G. Ingersoll, "The Gods", 1872 "If you think I have the answers, you're asking the wrong questions." -- Sadie Dankens "Conversations have a life of their own, and their agenda is seldom the same as ours." -- Sadie Dankens "A dogma is the hand of the dead on the throat of the living." -- Lemuel K. Washburn, _Is The Bible Worth Reading And Other Essays_ "Loyalty to a petrified opinion never yet broke a chain or freed a human soul." -- Mark Twain The Church of Virus is (1) a memetically engineered atheistic religion (2) a synthesis of religion and evolution (3) a forum for rational discourse. The Church of Virus has been designed to infect you... the Church of Virus will free you from the shackles of dogmatic faith, and bring you to level three; it will enlighten you, and finally, it will harness you to propagate itself yet further... The Church of Virus wishes to be all things to all people! Ah there's the beauty of this maxims project. It's intended purpose is to provide us with a framework that will enable us to avoid falling into the gravity wells of the same old discussions time and again, but in actual fact, pursuit of this project forces us to systematically re-visit each of those old saws and get pulled in all over again. -- KMO, on the CoV mailing list, mes. 1009, All statements of truth are embedded in a particular frame of reference from which they cannot be separated without becoming suppositions. "Nothing is more dangerous than a dogmatic worldview-- nothing more constraining, more blinding to innovation, more destructive of openness to novelty." -- Stephen Jay Gould, "Dinosaur in a Haystack" "We cannot reason ourselves out of our basic irrationalities. All we can do is to learn the art of being irrational in a reasonable way" -- Aldous Huxley, _Island_ (/Notes on What's What/) Better a library in hell than a throne in heaven.... -- "Wade T.Smith" on the CoV mailing list "It is very difficult," he said, "to recline alongside dogma with serenity." -- Harry Partch, http://www.corporeal.com/hprvrb_1.html Aphorist's Dilemma: All truths are half truths. There _is_ no one sentence answer to "life the universe and everything". In other words: think for yourself. Existence seems to be a quality we attribute to reified patterns, i.e. information considered to be an object for conceptual convenience. -- David McFadzean dbm@merak.com, on the CoV mailing list Basically a teleological acid trip with elements of Omega Point doctrine... -- Damien R. Sullivan, describing virus (not accurately, by the way, but it's funny anyway... and it *is* an accurate description of the Extropian religion, of which Virus is said to be a militant off-shoot) "Faith is something very different from belief. Belief is the systematic taking of unanalysed much to seriously. Paul's words, Mohammed's words, Marx's words, Hitler's words -- people take them too seriously, and what happens? What happens is the senseless ambivalence of history -- sadism versus duty, or (incomparable worse) sadism /as/ duty; devotion counterbalanced by organized paranoia; sisters of charity self-lessly tending the victim's of their own church's inquisitors and crusaders. Faith, on the contrary, can never be taken too seriously. For Faith is the empirically justified confidence in our capacity to know who in fact we are, to forget the belief-intoxicated Manichee in Good Being. Give us this day our daily Faith, but deliver us, dear God, from Belief." -- Aldous Huxley, _Island_ (virions: Huxley is talking of "phaith") The first name for a modern match was "lucifer". Can I see another's woe And not be in sorrow too? Can I see another's grief And not seek for kind relief? -- William Blake If "theism is mental inbreeding", then our display was nothing short of a "philosophical circle jerk". -- "Tim Rhodes" , on the CoV mailing list When you purchase an objective reality at the Almighty Creator Shoppe, you get a matching absolute truth book bound in genuine Corinthian leather. -- "Jason McVean" , on the CoV mailing list Is there a baptism I've missed out on? What're the rites of passage? -- Dave Pape , on the CoV mailing list I once read a characterization of religions as 'Apollonian' and 'Dionysian'. Apollonian is 'high church' -- rational, philosophic, the divine harmonies, etc. Dionysian is ecstatic -- revelry, passionate preaching, dancing, even ritual sex. Have you noticed how prone the very emotional media preachers are to sexual mistakes? -- da6d@beauty1.phy.olemiss.edu, on the CoV mailing list "The supernatural, be it spirits, souls or Gods, find their existence solely in myths, memes and the mind." -- Prof. Tim (Tim Rhodes, proposing a new Virus Dogma!) "the supernatural exists only in minds, myths and memes" -- David McFadzean (again proposing a new dogma for a dogmaless religion) Just a quick note to show off my 'useless' knowledge. "Lucifer" comes from the latin words "Lux" which means light and "fer" meaning to bring, bear or carry. So how did the bearer of light come to represent 'darkness'? Recent advances in knowledge have created an ecological niche in the idea-space of humanity for a rational, atheistic religion. Virus fills the void with an integrated conceptual framework that is self-consciously adaptive, engaging the invigoration of constant renewal through directed evolution of memes (ideas). -- David McFadzean, on the CoV mailing list I'm inclined to agree. I would also point out that ultimately, one can point at a lack of empathy as the source of "moral" evil, and that we (society) attempt to *use* justice and equity to *enforce* empathy on those who have neglected it. Perhaps not the wisest way to go, but I don't see any *practical* alternatives. -- Eric Boyd, on the CoV mailing list Another one that really bugs me in advertising is "up to" as in: You can save up to 90%! You can make up to $30,000 a month! You can lose up to 25 pounds! If you substitute the equivalent "no more than" you will see that the advertisers are not making much of a claim at all (of course). I guess what bugs me isn't so much the advertisers as the general public who don't even bother examining the claim. -- David McFadzean, on the CoV mailing list Are true isosemantic statements about objective reality non-contradictory? Yes or no? -- David McFadzean, on the CoV mailing list The memetic world view is profoundly anti-religious, though extreme purveyors have deemed it a religious "Church of Virus," sanctifying Darwin as a saint. -- Craig Simon CraigSimon@aol.com, on the CoV mailing list Lately I've been thinking of defining existence as a pattern that is instantiated in matter and/or energy, i.e. information manifested. -- David McFadzean ------------------------------------------------------------------**** Religion: Freethought: Parallel: Lateral: Bottomup: The ability to laterally think plummets markedly after 2 semesters of exposure, *without* a concurrent increase in linear/conventional thinking ability. While it is a good idea to become used to linear thinking as a problem-solving metaphor, axing the other metaphor cannot be neglected as a factor in the absence of *obvious* geniuses born after 1920 or so. -- Kenneth Boyd, zaimoni@ksu.edu, on the CoV mailing list Associated State: Inside an experience, seeing through your own eyes, fully in your senses. -- http://www.nlp.com/cgi-bin/mfs/05/NLP/gloss1.html (O'Connor & Seymour) love is a horizontal emotion -- http://home.istar.ca/~wkrossa/main.html 8. Given a large enough beta-tester and co-developer base, almost every problem will be characterized quickly and the fix obvious to someone. -- http://tuxedo.org/~esr/writings/cathedral-bazaar/ cathedral-bazaar-4.html (``Debugging is parallelizable'' -- Jeff Dutky) 19: Provided the development coordinator has a medium at least as good as the Internet, and knows how to lead without coercion, many heads are inevitably better than one. -- http://tuxedo.org/~esr/writings/cathedral-bazaar/ cathedral-bazaar-10.html There is a fundamental distinction between these two routes of transmission of the DNA information, vertical and horizontal transmission. The information is transmitted vertically to other DNA in cells (that make other cells) that make sperms or eggs. Hence it is transmitted vertically to the next generation and then, vertically again, to an indefinite number of future generations. I shall call this 'archival DNA'. It is potentially immortal. The succession of cells along which archival DNA travels is called the germ line. The germ line is that set of cells, within a body, which is ancestral to sperms or eggs and hence ancestral to future generations. DNA is also transmitted sideways or horizontally: to DNA in non-germ-line cells such as liver cells or skin cells; within such cells to RNA, thence to protein and various effects on embryonic development and therefore on adult form and behaviour. -- Richard Dawkins, _The Blind Watchmaker_ SYSTEMIC To do with systems, looking at relationships and consequences over time and space rather than linear cause and effect. -- http://www.nlp.com/cgi-bin/mfs/05/NLP/glossary.html#S FOUR TUPLE (OR 4-TUPLE) A shorthand method used to notate the structure of any particular experience. The concept of the four tuple maintains that any experience must be composed of some combination of the four primary representational classes -- where A = auditory, V = visual, K = kinaesthetic and O = olfactory/gustatory. -- http://www.nlp.com/cgi-bin/mfs/05/NLP/glossary.html#F I would contend that art is a primal communication -- Wade T. Smith morbius@us1.channel1.com, on the CoV mailing list Analogue Having shades of meaning, as opposed to Digital which has discrete (On/off) meaning. As in an analogue watch (a watch with minute and hour hands). Synaesthesia The process of overlap between representational systems, characterized by phenomena like see-feel circuits, in which a person derives feelings from what he sees, and hear-feel circuits, in which a person gets feelings from what they hear. Any two sensory modalities may be linked together. OVERLAP Using one representational system to gain access to another, for example, picturing a scene and then hearing the sounds in it. SUB-MODALITIES The special sensory qualities perceived by each of the senses. For example, visual sub-modalities include colour, shape, movement, brightness, depth, etc. auditory sub-modalities include volume, pitch, tempo, etc., and kinaesthetic sub-modalities include pressure, temperature, texture, location, etc. -- http://www.nlp.com/cgi-bin/mfs/05/NLP/glossary.html `Revealatori-ness,' if I may be permitted a particularly absurd construction, is the state of creating a sense of `revelation,' that `I didn't know THAT before,' effect. Very useful as a measure when evaluating data-mining techniques and, in my personal philosophy, in judging ideas about other ideas. -- Alex Williams , on the CoV mailing list What I ended up abstracting from "Stranger in a Strange Land" about "grok" is simultaneous understanding via several modes at once. Instead of sequentially using modes of understanding, take several modes that all could be used sequentially, and use them in parallel. -- Kenneth Boyd zaimoni@ksu.edu, on the CoV mailing list To grok is to understand intuitively. -- kmoprime@juno.com (KMO prime), on the CoV mailing list Zen master Roshu was visited by a university professor who had studied Zen writings. The professor asked if it was true that the essence of Zen was the statement "This mind is Buddha"? Roshu replied, "If I answer yes, you will think you understand without understanding. If I answer no, I will be denying something that many know to be true." -- Richard Brodie RBrodie@brodietech.com, on the CoV mailing list ------------------------------------------------------------------**** Religion: Psychology: "Beliefs, including religious ones, are learned. Which makes atheism a normal state of affairs and religious beliefs a learned "abnormality". No psychological theory is necessary to explain the causes of a normal base state. Any psychological theory of learning, attitude change or socialization can explain the causes of religious belief." -- Rosemary Lyndall, clinical neuro-psychologist Ignorance is the Mother of Devotion. -- Robert Burton "It's no measure of health to be well-adjusted to a profoundly sick society." -- Krishnamurti If the brain were so simple that we could understand it, we would be so simple that we couldn’t "Nothing defines humans better than their willingness to do irrational things in the pursuit of phenomenally unlikely payoffs. This is the principle behind lotteries, dating, and religion." -- Scott Adams, "The Dilbert Principle" "How on earth can religious people believe in so much arbitrary, clearly invented balderdash?....The acceptance of a creed, any creed, entitles the acceptor to membership in the sort of artificial extended family we call a congregation. It is a way to fight loneliness. Any time I see a person fleeing from reason and into religion, I think to myself, There goes a person who simply cannot stand being so goddamned lonely anymore." -- Kurt Vonnegut Jr., quoted in "2000 Years of Disbelief, Famous People with the Courage to Doubt", by James A. Haught, Prometheus Books, 1996 "I am not espousing atheism or any other religious stance. I am merely setting down a series of conclusions based upon the observations of case histories that are representative of literally thousands of others..they are, rather, typical cases seen every day in the offices of privately practicing psychiatrists and on the wards of most mental health facilities. ...The range of emotional difficulty in these patients varies from the existence of subtle disturbances to major ones in which at times the person does not know who he is but, rather, thinks that he is Jesus Christ, the Virgin Mary, or God. In each instance... tenacious religious beliefs can be an active thread interwoven into the tapestry of a disturbed thinking process..." -- Eli S. Chese "If you can impress any man with an absorbing conviction of the supreme importance of some moral or religious doctrine; if you can make him believe that those who reject that doctrine are doomed to eternal perdition; if you then give that man power, and by means of his ignorance blind him to the ulterior consequences of his own act,-he will infallibly persecute those who deny his doctrine." -- Henry Thomas Buckle, "History of Civilization in England" "I have never met a religious person, no matter how devout, who has not at one time in their life thought that maybe there is no god, maybe I'm talking to myself, maybe this prayer isn't answered. We are despised because we are a walking, talking personification of the doubts that are harbored in the subconscious of every religious person. And what religionists can't stand about us is that by and large we are happy when we're supposed to be unhappy without a god." -- Jon Murray, interviewed by Tony Semerad of the Salt Lake Tribune, 21 December 1991 Religion is the last refuge of human savagery. -- Alfred North Whitehead "Religion...can exercise a severe crippling and inhibiting effect upon the human mind, by fostering irrational anxiety and guilt, and by hampering the free play of the intellect". -- Dr J C Flugel "Surprisingly, recent research suggests that a religious person is more likely to commit a crime than a non-religious person. One can even argue that the more religious the society, the more likely it is to have high crime rates." -- "Religion and Crime: Do They Go Together?", by Lisa Conyers and Philip D. Harvey, Summer 1996 issue of _Free Inquiry_ Understanding contempt for life helps us to understand how so many wars have been fought in the name of religion, how so many good ideals have been used in destructive ways. The fault is not with the religion or the ideal, but with the practitioner's hatred of himself and of life. -- Laurence G. Boldt The techniques available to manipulate the vulnerable are legion. One technique is to give them love, the love they feel they do not get elsewhere. Convince them that through you and your community they can find what they're looking for, even if they haven't got a clue that they're looking for anything. Convince them that they need faith in you and that you have faith in them. Convince them that their friends and family outside of the cult are hindrances to their salvation. Isolate them. Only you can give them what they need. You love them. You alone love them. You would die for them. So why wouldn't they die for you? But love alone can only get you so far in winning them over. Fear is a great motivator. Fear that if they leave they'll be destroyed. Fear that if they don't co-operate they'll be condemned. Fear that they can't make it in this miserable world alone. Make them paranoid. But love and fear may not be enough, so guilt must be used, too. Fill them with so much guilt that they will want to police their own thoughts. Remind them that they are nothing alone, but with you and God they are Everything. Fill them with contempt for themselves, so that they will want to be egoless, selfless, One with You and Yours. You not only strip them of any sense of self, you convince them that the ideal is be without a self. And keep the pressure up. Be relentless. Humiliate them from time to time. Soon they will consider it their duty to humiliate themselves. Control what they read, hear, see. Repeat the messages for eyes and ears. Gradually get them to make commitments, small ones at first, then work your way up until you own their property, their bodies, their souls. And don't forget to give them drugs, starve them, or have them meditate or dance or chant for hours at a time until they think they've had some sort of mystical experience. Make them think that "It was you, Lord, who made me feel so good." They won't want to give it up. They've never felt so good. Though they look like they are in Hell to those of us on the outside, from the inside it looks like Heaven. -- The Skeptics Dictionary; Mind Control http://wheel.ucdavis.edu/~btcarrol/skeptic/mindcont.html "The truth is that people will always demand a religion phrased in imagery and haloed with the supernatural. They don't want science; they are in mortal terror of it, for the one sermon of science is that all life eats other life and that all life must die. The masses will never accept science until it gives them an earthly paradise. As long as there is poverty, there will be gods." -- Will Durant, "The Mansions of Philosophy", 1929 Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction. -- Blaise Pascal (Pensees, 1670) "As long as people believe in absurdities they will continue to commit atrocities." -- Voltaire "What...can we surmise about the likelihood of someone's being caring and generous, loving and helpful, just from knowing that they are a believer? Virtually nothing, say psychologists, sociologists, and others who have studied that question for decades." -- Alfie Kohn, in "Psychology Today" "Most studies show that conventional religion is not an effective force for moral behavior or against criminal activity." -- "The Psychology of Religion", by Bernard Spilka, Ralph Hood, and Richard Gorsuch, standard psychology text "I'm willing to bet that when we finally discover the root causes for most sexual problems facing people today, that Christianity will top the list." -- "Psycho" Dave, Psycho0@ix.netcom.com "Indifference to religion, due to thought, strengthens character," -- W.T. Root, Prof. of Psychology at Univ. of Pittsburg, after examining 1,916 prisoners "I thought, if I murdered them all, my family would all go to heaven, and at least later on, I would have a chance to go to heaven; however, if I committed suicide, it would be 100% automatic that I would go to hell." -- John List, who murdered his mother, wife, and three children "Priests and preachers have tricked, terrified and exploited mankind. They have lied for glory of God." They have collected immense financial tribute for "the glory of God." Whatever may be said about the character of individuals among the clergy, the character of the profession as a whole has been distinctly and drastically anti-human. And of course the most sincere among the clergy have been the most dangerous, for they have been willing to go to the most extreme lengths of in tolerance for "the glory of God." -- E. Haldeman-Julius, "The Meaning Of Atheism" "Whenever religion is involved, terrorists kill more people." -- Dr. Bruce Hoffman, director of the Center for the Study of Terrorism and Political Violence at St. Andrews University, Scotland "Convicts register their religious affiliation when they're processed into prison. And about 99.5% of the huge U.S.A. prison population consists of inmates who identified themselves as members of religious denominations." -- Gene M. Kasmar Out of convicted rapists, 57% admitted to reading pornography. 95% admitted to reading the Bible. "Another set of preachers tell their congregations that God predestined and selected, from all eternity, a certain number to be saved, and a certain number to be damned eternally. If this were true, the day of judgement is past: their preaching is in vain, and they had better work at some useful calling for their livelihood. This doctrine has a direct tendency to demoralize mankind." -- The Life and Works of Thomas Paine, Vol 9, p. 208 "God says do what you wish, but make the wrong choice and you will be tortured for eternity in hell. That sir, is not free will. It would be akin to a man telling his girlfriend, do what you wish, but if you choose to leave me, I will track you down and blow your brains out. When a man says this we call him a psychopath and cry out for his imprisonment/execution. When god says the same we call him "loving" and build churches in his honor." -- William C. Easttom II, skeptic@icon.net "Here is a trustworthy saying that deserves full acceptance: Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners... But for that very reason, I was shown mercy so that in me... Jesus Christ might display His unlimited patience as an example for those who would believe in him and receive eternal life. Now to the king eternal, immortal, invisible, the only God, be honor and glory forever and ever." -- Jeffrey Dahmer, convicted serial killer, in a statement to the court, Milwaukee, WI, February 17, 1992] "I talk to my only friend Jesus our LORD! I know JESUS understands my terrible desires and etc. I have tords little boys! And the main reason I murdered them little BOYS, is because our society is so AGAINST the fact of CHILDREN-DOING-SEX together or with anybody! I believe children should be ABLE to do sex! And I can ARGUE that all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court! SEX is a great GIFT that Jesus gave us all!!!!" -- Freddy Goode, serial killer, in a letter to one of his lawyers "A disturbing fact continues to surface in sex abuse research. The first best predictor of abuse is alcohol or drug addiction in the father. But the second best predictor is conservative religiosity, accompanied by parental belief in traditional male-female roles. This means that if you want to know which children are most likely to be sexually abused by their father, the second most significant clue is whether or not the parents belong to a conservative religious group with traditional role beliefs and rigid sexual attitudes. (Brown and Bohn, 1989; Finkelhor, 1986; Fortune, 1983; Goldstein et al, 1973; Van Leeuwen, 1990). -- "Sexual Abuse in Christian Homes and Churches", by Carolyn Holderread Heggen, Herald Press, Scotdale, PA, 1993 p. 73] Christ died for our sins. Dare we make his martyrdom meaningless by not committing them? -- Jules Feiffer Isaac Asimov observed (1989, p. 6): They assume that human beings have no feeling about what is right and wrong. Is the only reason you are virtuous because that's your ticket to heaven? Is the only reason you don't beat your children to death because you don't want to go to hell? It seems to me that it's insulting to human beings to imply that only a system of rewards and punishments can keep you a decent human being. Isn't it conceivable that a person wants to be a decent human being because that way he feels better? Because that way the world is better? "A major function of fundamentalist religion is to bolster deeply insecure and fearful people. This is done by justifying a way of life with all of its defining prejudices. It thereby provides an appropriate and legitimate outlet for one's anger. The authority of an inerrant Bible that can be readily quoted to buttress this point of view becomes an essential ingredient to such a life. When that Bible is challenged, or relativized, the resulting anger proves the point categorically." Bishop John Shelby Spong, _Rescuing the Bible From Fundamentalism_ (San Fransisco: Harper Collins, 1991), p. 5. "If, in any culture, children are taught, 'We are all equally unworthy in the sight of God' "If, in any culture, children are taught, 'You are born in sin and are sinful by nature' "If children are given a message that amounts to 'Don't think, don't question, believe' "If children are given a message that amounts to 'Who are you to place your mind above that of the priest, the minister, the rabbi?' "If children are told, 'If you have value it is not because of anything you have done or could ever do, it is only because God loves you' "If children are told, 'Submission to what you cannot understand is the beginning of morality' "If children are instructed, 'Do not be "willful", self-assertiveness is the sin of pride' "If children are instructed, 'Never think that you belong to yourself' "If children are informed, 'In any clash between your judgement and that of your religious authorities, it is your authorities you must believe', "If children are informed, 'Self-sacrifice is the foremost virtue and the noblest duty' "- then consider what will be the likely consequences for the practice of living consciously, or the practice of self-assertiveness, or any of the other pillars of healthy self-esteem." -- Nathaniel Branden, _The Six Pillars of Self-Esteem_, Bantam Books, (New York, 1994), p. 295-296] The beauty of religious mania is that it has the power to explain everything. Once God (or Satan) is accepted as the first cause of everything which happens in the mortal world, nothing is left to chance... logic can be happily tossed out the window. -- Stephen King _The Stand_ (Rev. Ed.), 1990 Anyone who engages in the practice of psycho- therapy confronts every day the devastation wrought by the teachings of religion. -- Nathanial Branden Ph.D. "The Psychology of Self-esteem." Answering Christianity’s Most Puzzling Questions, "People do strange things when they are cornered by facts. When evidence cannot be denied, men who care nothing for the truth simply become illogical. Minds become willfully ignorant and emotions turn hostile." -- Richard Sisson The Christian view that all intercourse outside marriage is immoral was, as we see in the above passages from St. Paul, based upon the view that all sexual intercourse, even within marriage, is regrettable. A view of this sort, which goes against biological facts, can only be regarded by sane people as a morbid aberration. The fact that it is embedded in Christian ethics has made Christianity throughout its whole history a force tending towards mental disorders and unwholesome views of life. -- Bertrand Russell The principal circumstance, however, which led to the conception of a divine Savior was the desire to find some way to continue in sin and wrong-doing and escape its natural and legitimate consequences; in other words, to evade the penalty. Hence, it came to be believed that people might run riot in sin, and plunge into the indulgence of their passions and their lusts, till the hour of death approached, when they would have nothing to do but to ask forgiveness, and cast the burden of their sins and sufferings on the merits of "a crucified Savior and Redeemer," who "suffered once for all, that we might escape," and thus dodge the penalty for sin. It was, as Mr. Fleurbach expresses it, "A realized wish to be free from the laws of morality, and escape the natural consequences of wrong doing." -- Kersey Graves: The World's Sixteen Crucified Saviors: Chapter 9 "What is it about the idea of a god that gives it its stability and penetrance in the cultural environment? The survival value of the god meme in the meme pool results from its great psychological appeal. It provides a superficially plausible answer to deep and troubling questions about existence. It suggests that injustices in this world may be rectified in the next. The 'everlasting arms' hold out a cushion against our own inadequacies which, like a doctor's placebo, is none the less effective for being imaginary. These are some of the reasons why the idea of God is copied so readily by successive generations of individual brains. God exists, if only in the form of a meme with high survival value, or infective power, in the environment provided by human culture." -- Richard Dawkins, _The Selfish Gene_ (New edition, New York: Oxford University Press, 1989), p. 193. "Religious bondage shackles and debilitates the mind and unfits it for every noble enterprise." - James Madison U.S. President and Father of the U.S. Constitution "Only with great difficulty does a shaft of light pierce the armor of self-righteousness." -- Lois Wilson "One set of preachers make salvation to consist in believing. They tell their congregations that if they believe in Christ their sins shall be forgiven. This, in the first place, is an encouragement to sin, in a similar manner as when the prodigal young fellow is told his father will pay all his debts, he runs into debt faster, and becomes the more extravagant. Daddy says he pays all, and on he goes: just so in the other case, Christ pays all, and on goes the sinner." -- The Life and Works of Thomas Paine Vol 9, p. 27 While discussing religion and mental health, Lee Carter (Lucifer's Handbook ) makes the following blunt comments on page 75, Until the advent of modern psychiatry, the deranged have always been considered holy men. In fact, according to historian Vardis Fisher, the Hebrew word for 'prophet,' and 'lunatic' was one and the same. Epileptics were thought to be seized by God--catatonics to have left their bodies--hebephrenics to be speaking in angelic tongues. Psychotics have always been the shamen, seers, prophets, witch-doctors, wizards, and oracles--up until now. Today, a potential Jeremiah, or John the Baptist is simply kept under sedation. But since we cannot reach the ones of the past to examine their blood chemistry..., many assume they must have been the real article. On the next page he states, "In point of fact, much sociological data is now available which indicates that the more devoutly 'religious' a person, the more likely he is to be mentally disturbed." And he concludes his powerful assault by saying on page 66, Any psychologist, social worker, and prison warden can easily explain the simplest way to make a criminal. Take one otherwise normal child, or adult, and repeatedly humiliate him until he has no pride, dignity, or self-respect left. We then have an ideal Christian. We also have a criminal. A person who no longer respects himself can no longer respect anything. One who does not love himself, cannot love anything. If he hates himself, he hates the world. "What harm would it do, if a man told a good strong lie for the sake of the good and for the Christian church...a lie out of necessity, a useful lie, a helpful lie, such lies would not be against God, he would accept them." -- Martin Luther (yikes!!!) A fanatic is someone who redoubles his effort when he has forgotten his aim. -- George Santayana Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, but expecting different results. -- Rita Mae Brown "A fanatic is a person who won't change his mind or change the topic" -- Winston Churchill Notes on the Significance of Intellectual Context Why is it that so frequently when you are speaking to a person who believes in authoritarian, statist ideas, the person appears to listen but does not really hear what you are saying? Governmental Authority is, for him, an axiomatic concept. He literally cannot see any other starting point - cannot conceive of a society which is not founded on coercion - and if you try to go beyond his frame of thinking, he merely accuses you of expressing vague generalities. It is as Orwell said it would be: "You will lose the ability to think certain ideas, and then you will be totally incapable of ever trying to act on those ideas." In such a discussion, most people quickly reach a point where they are not able to respond even when they have the discussion in front of them in writing. This is because they have reached the boundary of their intellectual frame of reference and they cannot cope with the questions without the mental flexibility to expand that frame of reference so as to encompass an area which contains the answers. They are prisoners of an inadequate reality assessment, and it is usually a waste of your time to engage them in discussion, simply because they will find your presentation to be quite literally incomprehensible. -- ??? (web somewhere -- how to defend atheism?) "Religion, like a frontal lobotomy, is a *last* resort, because it deadens too much of the mind." -- robert@oahu.cs.ucla.edu (Rob Karmolinski) Perhaps monkeys are the morally superior race and we devolved from them. Carl Sagan (with co-author Ann Druyan) wrote a book called "Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors". In it, he describes an experiment where monkeys were forced to choose between electro-shocking other monkeys and starving. Almost all the monkeys went without food for up to two weeks rather than hurt others. Writes Sagan, "These macaques- who have never gone to Sunday school, never heard of the Ten Commandments, never squirmed through a single junior high school civics lesson - seem courageous in their moral grounding and their resistance to evil . . . . If the situation had been reversed, and captive humans were offered the same deal by macaque scientists, would we do as well?" ------------------------------------------------------------------**** Religion: Heaven: Hell: Afterlife: "To judge from the notions expounded by theologians, one must conclude that God created most men simply with a view to crowding hell." -- Marquis de Sade "I would love to believe that when I die I will live again, that some thinking, feeling, remembering part of me will continue. But as much as I want to believe that, and despite the ancient and worldwide cultural traditions that assert an afterlife, I know of nothing to suggest that it is more than wishful thinking." -- Carl Sagan. Christians believe that the most wonderful thing that can happen to them is to go to Heaven, but few of them are in a hurry to make the trip. "Heaven, as conventionally conceived, is a place so inane, so dull, so useless, so miserable, that nobody has ever ventured to describe a whole day in heaven, though plenty of people have described a day at the seaside." -- George Bernard Shaw "For 15 hours a day, I sit in this same chair, totally dependent on someone else coming in here to make me a cup of tea. It's neither living nor dying. It's stuck in the middle. My only regret is that for 40 years I spoke of a good God who helps people, who knows what you need and how all you have to do is ask for it. Well, that's baloney. I want to tell the world that it's a bunch of bull. Don't believe a word of it." -- Elizabeth Kuebler-Ross, author of "A Deathbed Confession" on death and dying, after a debilitating stroke; to Ken Ross of the _San Francisco Chronicle_ on May 31; article in_Skeptic_ magazine, Vol.5 No.2 1997, page 28 "Belief in heaven is impossible in the absence of a greedy desire for it." "My young son asked me what happens after we die. I told him we get buried under a bunch of dirt and worms eat our bodies. I guess I should have told him the truth--that most of us go to Hell and burn eternally--but I didn't want to upset him." -- Jack Handey, "Deep Thoughts" "There is one very serious defect to my mind in Christ's moral character, and that is that He believed in hell. I do not myself feel that any person who is really profoundly humane can believe in everlasting punishment." -- Bertrand Russell "The only terror in death is the apprehension of what lies beyond it, and that emotion is impossible to a sincere disbeliever." -- G.W. Foote, "Infidel Death Beds" Death makes me realize how deeply I have internalized the agnosticism I preach in all my books. I consider dogmatic belief and dogmatic denial very childish forms of conceit in a world of infinitely whirling complexity. None of us can see enough from one corner of space-time to know "all" about the rest of space-time. Every day is full of wonderment’s to me: Death will probably come to me as the greatest wonderment of all. -- Robert Anton Wilson http://www.rawilson.com/prethought.html I was not, I was, I am not, I care not -- Inscription found at Pauda (CIL 5.2893 (ILS 8194)) "Let us condemn to hellfire all those who disagree with us." -- militant religionists everywhere Hell Comes In Stages Of Passion And Heaven Is When Passion Fades But there in this life is fear of punishments for our misdeeds, a fear enormous in proportion to their enormity, and by the penalties imposed for crime - imprisonment and horrific precipitation from cliffs, the lash, the block, the rack, the boiling pitch, the firebrand and the branding iron. Even though these horrors are not physically present, yet the mind, conscious of its own deeds, in terrified anticipation torments itself with its own goads and whips... It is afraid that death may serve merely to intensify pain. So on earth the life of fools becomes a Hell on earth. -- Lucretius, the Roman poet-philosopher [De rerum natura, iii: 1013-1022.] "A man cannot be happy who believes in hell, any more than he can sweeten his coffee with a pickle." -- Lemuel K. Washburn, 'Is The Bible Worth Reading And Other Essays' "Those people who tell me that I'm going to hell while they are going to heaven somehow make me very glad that we're going to separate destinations." -- Martin Terman "If thinking freely for yourself is a sure ticket to hell, then the conversations in heaven must be awfully boring." -- San Francisco's infamous Dr. Weirde "I would rather live and love where death is king than have eternal life where love is not." -- Robert G. Ingersoll "No deity will save us, we must save ourselves. Promises of immortal salvation or fear of eternal damnation are both illusory and harmful." -- Humanist Manifesto II, Prometheus Books, 1973 "Who will say with confidence that sexual abuse is more permanently damaging to children than threatening them with the eternal and unquenchable fires of hell?" -- Richard Dawkins "Belief in heaven is impossible in the absence of a greedy desire for it." "There are no physicists in the hottest parts of hell, because the existence of a "hottest part" implies a temperature difference, and any marginally competent physicist would immediately use this to run a heat engine and make some other part of hell comfortably cool. This is obviously impossible." -- Richard Davisson "The devil and God are components of a Siamese twin. Neither has any existence apart from the other. In denying the existence of the one, Christians have helped to kill the other. If there need to be no fear of hell, people may well ask what is the attraction of heaven? Gods and devils were born together. Gods and devils will die together." -- Chapman Cohen, "The Devil", Pamphlets for the People, no. 6 "If the Bible is mistaken in telling us where we came from, how can we trust it to tell us where we're going?" "Although the time of death is approaching me, I am not afraid of dying and going to Hell or (what would be considerably worse) going to the popularized version of Heaven. I expect death to be nothingness and, for removing me from all possible fears of death, I am thankful to atheism." -- Isaac Asimov, "On Religiosity", Free Inquiry "To believe that consciousness can survive the wreck of the brain is like believing that 70 mph can survive the wreck of the car." -- Frank Zindler A lifetime of happiness! No man could bear it: it would be hell on earth. -- George Bernard Shaw, _Man and Superman_ (1093), Act I As for the origin of hell, well, its fabrication is transparent. Whenever religious zealots fail to find the facts or to muster the logic necessary to persuade unbelievers to believe what the zealots believe and intend that others shall believe, the eternal, fiery pit -- the ultimate threat -- is summoned. The farcical nature of this ploy can be seen when, for example, Christians threaten Muslims with the biblical hell and Muslims return the favor, threatening Christians with the Koranic hell. -- Delos McKown, Ph.D., http://www.infidels.org/org/ffrf/fttoday/august96/mckown.html In heaven all the interesting people are missing. -- Friedrich Nietzsche "Even many of those who claim to believe in immortality still tell themselves and others that neither side of the question is susceptible of proof. Just what can these hopeful ones believe that the word "proof" involves? The evidence against the persistence of personal consciousness is as strong as the evidence for gravitation, and much more obvious. It is as convincing and unassailable as the proof of the destruction of wood or coal by fire. If it is not certain that death ends personal identity and memory, then almost nothing that man accepts as true is susceptible as proof." -- Clarence Darrow, _The Myth of Immortality_ "Now, if anything at all can be known to be wrong, it seems to me to be unshakably certain that it would be wrong to make any sentient being suffer eternally for any offense whatever." Antony Flew, "The Presumption of Atheism" God, Freedom, and Immortality, (Buffalo, NY: Prometheus Books, 1984), p. 64. "I believe in the immortality of influence." -- Luther Burbank "The idea that a good God would send people to a burning Hell is utterly damnable to me. The ravings of insanity! Superstition gone to seed! I don't want to have anything to do with such a God. No avenging Jewish God, no satanic devil, no fiery hell is of any interest to me." -- Luther Burbank, address to Science League of San Francisco, Dec. 1924 argument from adverse consequences * NOTE: A more cynical formulation by the Roman historian Polybius: Since the masses of the people are inconstant, full of unruly desires, passionate, and reckless of consequences, they must be filled with fears to keep them in order. The ancients did well, therefore, to invent gods, and the belief in punishment after death. The only thing wrong with immortality is that it tends to go on forever. -- Herb Caen "I have little confidence in any enterprise or business or investment that promises dividends only after the death of the stockholders." -- Robert G. Ingersoll "Do not attempt to live forever. You will not succeed." -- George Bernard Shaw The secret source of humour itself is not joy, but sorrow. There is no humour in heaven. -- Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) ------------------------------------------------------------------**** Religion: God: One of the major questions it raises is how would mankind be affected if there was no possibility of doubt about the existence of god. If you did have that cup of god to put under a microscope and in your study you did find out that the stuff you had was proof positive... How would this knowledge change us as a species? -- Marie Foster "Our ignorance is God; what we know is science." -- Robert G. Ingersoll "Vishnu with a necklace of skulls is a figure of love and mercy compared with the God of the Old Testament." -- Theodore Parker "It is easier to suppose that the universe has existed for all eternity than to conceive a being beyond its limits capable of creating it." -- Percy Bysshe Shelley 'Empedocles said that God is a circle whose centre is everywhere and whose circumference is nowhere. If that is true, then I don't need to go to church. And I don't need to believe the same things as you to see that you have a purpose. Now let's smoke and drink our coffee in peace. If we can't stop arguing in here, then I am going to start having breakfast at home.' God: The Immutable Chameleon; whenever the need is felt by one of his followers, He obligingly recreates himself to suit the occasion. It seems odd that those who scoff at sun worshippers are apt to worship a vacuum. If you ask the wrong questions you get answers like '42' or 'God'. "Awe is a large flower, but a short-lived one. Besides, when God cracks a joke or two and clearly hopes you'll ask him over for a drink, you lose respect. If God wants worship, he'd better stay lonely. If he wants love, he'll have to eat shit with the rest of us." -- Jack Butler, "Nightshade", p. 107 "God is, as it were, the sewer into which all contradictions flow" -- G.W.F. Hegel,Lectures on the History of Philosophy An entity which is neither observable nor fulfills any explanatory function can have no interest for us. -- A. J. Ayer If we found an unambiguous message encoded into the digits of pi that would certainly get my attention. -- David McFadzean, looking for evidence of God me: personally i agree with sarah (hehe)..... "i know god, he's a pedofile's tool, they push him in and rape the minds of their children." -- the great tinkerer FallAwake@aol.com, CoV mailing list According to Ludwig Feuerbach (The Essence of Christianity), the term "God" refers to the traits envisioned as good in/by humans (wisdom, strength, uniqueness, longevity, beauty, etc.) crystallized, absolutized, and amalgamated together into a single composite persona possessing them all absolutely. -- "Joe E. Dees" on the CoV mailing list But while preachers and professors prattle to the millions about proofs of the personality of God, the truth is that long ago there ceased to be men capable of bearing the pressure and weight of having a personal God. If you've been following my posts, you must know by now that I too have these experiences -- indeed, all humankind does -- the problem is that everyone interprets the experience differently. Certainly my experiences don't make me conclude that any god exists -- quite the opposite. Your god is one among many, and any theist will tell you that their experience gives them evidence of *their* god. Me, I'm not so egoistic. My experiences are mine, certainly -- they can never be used to justify the existence of something outside of myself. -- Eric Boyd <6ceb3@qlink.queensu.ca>, on the CoV mailing list God is in the details -- Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, 1959 On the sixth day God created man On the seventh day, man returned the favor. God is... a sadistic, jealous, vengeful, foreskin-loving creation of borderline psychotic racist primitive man. -- Craig Blanchard "A false friend, an unjust judge, a braggart, a hypocrite, and tyrant, sincere in hatred, jealous, vain and revengeful, false in promise, honest in curse, suspicious, ignorant, infamous and hideous--such is the God of the Pentateuch." -- _Some Mistakes of Moses_, Ingersoll Works "Help preserve your child's belief in Santa Claus. Tell him or her that Santa will send them to hell if they don't believe in him." "The kindly God who lovingly fashioned each and every one of us and sprinkled the sky with shining stars for our delight -- that God is, like Santa Claus, a myth of childhood, not anything a sane, undeluded adult could literally believe in. That God must either be turned into a symbol for something less concrete or abandoned altogether" -- Daniel Dennett, "Darwin's Dangerous Idea", p. 18 "We killed all our Klingon gods centuries ago. They were more trouble than they were worth." -- Lt. Cmndr. Worf, Star Trek God is the answer that's not an answer. -- David de Void , on the Zero mailing list "If triangles knew God, he would have three sides." -- Montesquieu God is the will to nothingness pronounced holy! -- Nietzsche "God: The Immutable One, though somewhat different for each person, denomination, religion, society, and historical period. The omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, all-wise, infinite mind who -- for strictly personal reasons -- makes a point of seeming to be an impotent, know-nothing, nowhere, bumbling oaf." -- Rev. Donald Morgan "Everything that is doddering, squint-eyed, infamous, sullying, and grotesque is contained for me in this single word: God." -- Andre Breton (1896-1966) "A theologian is a person who uses the word "God" to hide his ignorance." -- Lemuel K. Washburn, 'Is The Bible Worth Reading And Other Essays' "We are told that "all things are possible with God," and yet God cannot boil an egg in cold water." -- Lemuel K. Washburn, 'Is The Bible Worth Reading And Other Essays', 1911] "That's the problem with believing in a supernatural being. Trying to determine what he wants." -- Councellor Troi, ST:TNG "Imagine the Creator as a low comedian, and at once the world becomes explicable." -- H.L. Mencken "Over the years I realized the god I prayed to was the god I invented. When I was talking to him, I was talking to myself. He had no understanding or qualities that I did not have. When I realized god was an extension of my imagination, I stopped praying to him." -- Howard Kreisner, host of "The American Atheist Hour" "Man has created so many gods in his own image, how do you know which one to worship?" -- Leper Messiah "All in all, I can't say I believe in god. If, in fact, I ever find out that he does indeed exist, I think I'll stay away from him, because if he's responsible for half the things he gets credit for, he's got to be one mean son of a bitch." -- Peter Gether, 'A Cat Abroad', pp. 89-90 "Few nations have been so poor as to have but one god. Gods were made so easily, and the raw material cost so little, that generally the god market was fairly glutted, and heaven crammed with these phantoms." -- Robert G. Ingersoll, "The Gods", 1872 "An honest god is the noblest work of man. ... God has always resembled his creators. He hated and loved what they hated and loved and he was invariably found on the side of those in power. ... Most of the gods were pleased with sacrifice, and the smell of innocent blood has ever been considered a divine perfume." -- Robert G. Ingersoll, "Gods", 1879 "The sense of spiritual relief which comes from rejecting the idea of God as a supernatural being is enormous." -- Sir Julian Huxley. "Religion Without Revelation" "Belief in gods and belief in ghosts is identical. God is taken as a more respectable word than ghost, but it means no more." -- E. Haldeman-Julius, "The Meaning Of Atheism" "And don't tell me God works in mysterious ways", Yossarian continued "There's nothing mysterious about it, He's not working at all. He's playing. Or else He's forgotten all about us. That's the kind of God you people talk about, a country bumpkin, a clumsy, bungling, brainless, conceited, uncouth hayseed. Good God, how much reverence can you have for a Supreme Being who finds it necessary to include such phenomena as phlegm and tooth decay in His divine system of Creation? What in the world was running through that warped, evil, scatological mind of His when He robbed old people of the power to control their bowel movements? Why in the world did He ever create pain?" -- Joseph Heller, Catch22 "Trying to find god is a good deal like looking for money one has lost in a dream." -- Lemuel K. Washburn 'Is The Bible Worth Reading And Other Essays' "If there is a God, he is a malign thug." -- Mark Twain "If such a God did exist, he could not be a beneficent God, such as the Christians posit. What effrontery is it that talks about the mercy and goodness of a nature in which all animals devour animals, in which every mouth is a slaughter-house and every stomach a tomb!" E.M. McDonald, "Design Argument Fallacies" _An Anthology of Atheism and Rationalism_ ed. Gordon Stein, Buffalo, NY: Prometheus, 1980), p. 90. "I turned to speak to God About the world's despair; But to make bad matters worse I found God wasn't there." -- Robert Frost (1874-1963) "What kind of a god would crucify his own son?" -- Firesign Theatre "The impotence of God is infinite." -- Anatole France Man created God in his own image. God is... a thought who makes crooked all that is straight." -- Friedrich Nietzsche, _Thus Spake Zarathustra_ 'Man is insane. He could not create a maggot, but he creates Gods by the dozen.' -- Montaigne "I have too much respect for the idea of God to make it responsible for such an absurd world." -- Georges Duhamel I sometimes think that God, in creating man, overestimated His ability. -- Oscar Wilde God is a comedian playing to an audience too afraid to laugh. -- Voltaire It is convenient that there be gods, and, as it is convenient, let us believe there are. -- Ovid God will forgive me; it is his trade. -- Heinrich Heine Men talk of "finding God," but no wonder it is difficult; He is hidden in that darkest hiding-place, your heart. You yourself are a part of Him. -- Christopher Morley Man is, and always has been, a maker of gods. It has been the most serious and significant occupation of his sojourn in the world. -- John Burroughs "You know you have created God in your own image, when you find that your God hates the same people that you do." -- Lois Wilson Voltaire quipped: "If god did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him." "What you don't see can be very hard to find." -- Ms. Frizzle (The Magic School Bus) "The idea of God is the sole wrong for which I cannot forgive mankind." -- Marquis de Sade Question with boldness even the existence of a god; because if there be one he must approve of the homage of reason more than that of blindfolded fear. -- Thomas Jefferson, Letter to Peter Carr, August 10, 1787 "Gods are fragile things, they may be killed by a whiff of science or a dose of common sense." -- Chapman Cohen "You ask me whether I believe in God. If I say yes, you think I believe in your God." -- Eva-Lise Carlstrom When asked: "do you believe in God?" my response is: I don't understand the question. -- Reed Konsler; "I don't believe in God for the same reason I don't believe in Mother Goose." -- Clarence Darrow emptiness is loneliness loneliness is cleanliness cleanliness is godliness and God is empty just like me. -- "Zero" How right you are. So what god do we invent to make people do what we want?? :-) (or rather, what god do we allow to invent us?) Stephen Atkins "The invisible and the non-existent look very much alike." -- Delo McKown God! What a concept, what a guy! "If it turns out that there is a God, I don't think that he's evil. But the worst that you can say about him is that basically he's an underachiever." -- Woody Allen "The chief contribution of Protestantism to human thought is its massive proof that God is a bore." -- H. L. Mencken (1880-1956) U.S. journalist, editor, critic "To surrender to ignorance and call it God has always been premature, and it remains premature today." -- Isaac Asimov ------------------------------------------------------------------**** Religion: Buddhism: Zen: Taoism: The whole secret of existence is to have no fear. Never fear what will become of you, depend on no one. Only the moment you reject all help are you freed. -- Buddha (B.C. 568-488) Underlying all Western modes of analysis is a very strong rationalistic tendency - an assumption that everything can be accounted for... -- The Dalai Lama On life's journey faith is nourishment, virtuous deeds are a shelter, wisdom is the light by day and right mindfulness is the protection by night. If a man lives a pure life nothing can destroy him; if he has conquered greed nothing can limit his freedom. -- Buddha in motion like water at rest like a mirror -- Chuang-Tzu [368-286bce] The way can be spoken of, But it will not be the constant way; The name can be named, But it will not be the constant name. The nameless was the beginning of the myriad creatures; The named was the mother of the myriad creatures. Hence constantly rid yourself of desires in order to observe its subtlety; But constantly allow yourself to have desires in order to observe what it is after. -- Lao Tzu: Tao Te Ching (I) The man in whom Tao Acts without impediment Does not bother with his own interests And does not despise Others who do. He does not struggle to make money And does not make a virtue of poverty. He goes his way Without relying on others And does not pride himself On walking alone. While he does not follow the crowd He won't complain of those who do. Rank and reward Make no appeal ot him; Disgrace and shame Do not deter him. He is not always looking for right and wrong Always deciding "Yes" or "No." -- Thomas Merton Words do not set forth facts, Speech does not accord with situations; Those who take up words perish, Those who linger over sayings get lost. -- Wumen Huikai (1183-1260) "Christian piety makes a strange image of the object of its devotion, "Jesus Christ, and Him crucified." -Him-. The bearded moralist with the stern, kind, and vaguely hurt look in his eyes. The man with the lantern, knocking at the heart's door. "Come along, now, boys! Enough of this horsing around! It's time you and I had a very serious talk." Christ Jesus our Lord. Jeez-us. Jeez-you. The Zen Buddhists say, "Wash out your mouth every time you say 'Buddha!'" The new life for Christianity begins just as soon as someone can get up in church and say, "Wash out your mouth every time you say 'Jesus!'" -- Alan Watts "We must conduct research and then accept the results. If they don't stand up to experimentation, Buddha's own words must be rejected." -- Tenzin Gyatso, 14th Dalai Lama, _Time_ April 11, 1988 "I believe that at every level of society--familial, tribal, national and international--the key to a happier and more succesful world is the growth of compassion. We do not need to become religious, nor do we need to believe in an ideology. All that is necessary is for each of us to develop our good human qualities. I try to treat whoever I meet as an old friend. This gives me a genuine feeling of happiness. It is the practice of compassion." -- Tenzin Gyatso, The XIVth Dalai Lama Student: Up to now, you have only refuted everything which has been said. You have done nothing to point out the true Dharma to us. We are confused. Master: In the true Dharma there is no confusion, but you produce confusion by such questions. What sort of "True Dharma" can you go seeking for? . . . Just observe things as they are and don't pay attention to other people. There are some people just like mad dogs barking at everything that moves, even barking when the wind stirs among the grass and leaves. There's a Zen poem which says: A sudden crash of thunder. The mind doors burst open, and there sits the ordinary old man. -- Alan Watts The universe is fundamentally a system which creeps up on itself and then says BOO! and then it laughs at itself for jumping and you see everytime it does it it forgets that it did it before so it never becomes a bore. -- Alan Watts We are what we think. All that we are arises with our thoughts. With our thoughts we make the world. -- Sid Gautama Only in quiet waters do things mirror themselves undistorted. Only in a quiet mind is adequate perception of the world. -- Hans Margolius In Buddhism you should not mind those who make you angry. You should love those who irritate you because they are your gurus. -- The Dalai Lama, 1969 One who has attained the Tao is master of himself, and the universe is dissolved for him. Throw him in the company of the noisy and the dirty, and he will be like a lotus flower growing from muddy water, touched by it, yet unstained. -- T'u Lung Believe nothing, no matter where you read it, or who said it, no matter if I have said it, unless it agrees with your own reason and your own common sense. -- Buddha The dragon we must slay is no more than the monster of everyday expectations. -- Sheldon Kopp "The desire for success lubricates secret prostitutions in the soul." -- Norman Mailer Health is the greatest possession. Contentment is the greatest treasure. Confidence is the greatest friend. Non-being is the greatest joy. -- The Dhammapada (c. B.C. 300) "We must conduct research and then accept the results. If they don't stand up to experimentation, Buddha's own words must be rejected." -- Tenzin Gyatso, 14th Dalai Lama, 'Time' April 11, 1988 On life's journey faith is nourishment, virtuous deeds are a shelter, wisdom is the light by day and right mindfulness is the protection by night. If a man lives a pure life nothing can destroy him; if he has conquered greed nothing can limit his freedom. -- Buddha "I believe that at every level of society--familial, tribal, national and international--the key to a happier and more successful world is the growth of compassion. We do not need to become religious, nor do we need to believe in an ideology. All that is necessary is for each of us to develop our good human qualities. I try to treat whoever I meet as an old friend. This gives me a genuine feeling of happiness. It is the practice of compassion." -- Tenzin Gyatso, The XIVth Dalai Lama Do not believe in anything simply because you have heard it. Do not believe in anything simply because it is spoken and rumored by many. Do not believe in anything simply because it is found written in your religious books. Do not believe in anything merely on the authority of your teachers and elders. Do not believe in traditions because they have been handed down for many generations. But after observation and analysis, when you find that anything agrees with reason and is conducive to the good and benefit of one and all, then accept it and live up to it. -- Buddha As the Master said, scratching his butt: "I have hemorrhoids. They itch and are very uncomfortable. Before I was enlightened, I had hemorrhoids, and now that I'm enlightened, I still have them." Today a young man on acid realized that all matter is merely energy condensed to a slow vibration. That we are all one consciousness experiencing itself subjectively. There is no such thing as death, life is only a dream and we are the imagination of ourselves..... ...here's Tom with the weather -- BILL HICKS. Words do not set forth facts, Speech does not accord with situations; Those who take up words perish, Those who linger over sayings get lost. -- Wumen Huikai (1183-1260) Earth, air, water, sun We are all, and all is one In the words of the Cree People: Only after the last tree has been cut down, Only after the last river has been poisoned, Only after the last fish has been caught, Only then will you realize that money cannot be eaten. Let us pray. Spirits of the four directions, East, South, West, and North, Powers of the Elements, Air, Fire, Water, and Earth, Wheel of the seasons, Spring, Summer, Fall, and Winter, Be here now, as we invoke this sacred space, And for a moment in time, free ourselves from all limitations, From all delusions of separateness. Be here now, and help us, to draw our spirits down From the lonely flights of the ego, into our bodies, And let us be filled with the joy of your limitless light, Beyond the bounds of time, Where night and day, Birth and death, Joy and sorrow, Meet as one. One of my favorite Zen koans: A Zen master is in his hut meditating one afternoon when he hears several students outside arguing about Objectivity vs. Subjectivity. One student makes wonderful points about the how experience is subjective and that, in truth, both he and a stick lying on the ground are the same thing. Such distinctions, he musters, are only in the mind. On hearing this the Master comes storming out of the hut, picks up the stick and, with a mighty blow, cracks the student over the head with it. Befuddled, the student plaintively asks the master why he has struck him so. "I did not," he replies, "it was only in your mind." "So many words are spent in pursuit of silence." -- Tim Rhodes [Prof. Tim] Blythe said "Zen is not a religion -- Zen IS religion." ------------------------------------------------------------------**** Religion: Existentialism: "Just to be is a blessing. Just to live is holy." -- Abraham Heschel existentialism- 1. an introspective humanism or theory of man that holds that human existence is not exhaustively describable or understandable in either scientific or idealistic terms and relies upon a phenomenological approach that emphasizes in man's life and especially of such intensely subjective phenomena as anxiety, suffering, and feelings of guilt in order to show the need for making decisive choices through a utilization of man's freedom in an uncertain, contingent and apparently purposeless world -- Webster's Dictionary There is nothing with which every man is so afraid as getting to know how enormously much he is capable of doing and becoming. -- Soren Kierkegaard existence preceeds essence ------------------------------------------------------------------**** Religion: Eschatology: Eschatology: [...] Of, relating to, dealing with, or with regards to the ultimate destiny of mankind and the world. -- http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/~grassie/StudentProjects/Glossary.html "Man has lived a long time the way he has lived [violently and unconsciously]. By the end of this century, a critical quantum leap is possible. Either man will die in a third world war or man will take a jump and will become a new man. Before that happens, a great Buddhafield is needed - a field where we can create the future." -- Osho The apocalypse is not something which is coming. The apocalypse has arrived in major portions of the planet and it's only because we live within a bubble of incredible privilege and social insulation that we still have the luxury of anticipating the apocalypse. If you go to Bosnia or Somalia or Peru or much of the third-world then it appears that the apocalypse has already arrived. -- Terrence McKenna ------------------------------------------------------------------**** Religion: Conviction: Level 3: We cannot eliminate from social ethics the element of risk. We wager on a certain set of values and then try to be consistent with them; verification is therefore a question of our whole life. No one can escape this. Anyone who claims to proceed in a value-free way will find nothing... This process of suspicion which started several centuries ago has already changed us. We are more cautious about our beliefs, sometimes even to the point of lacking courage; we profess to be only critical and not committed. I would say that people are now more paralyzed than blind. -- Paul Ricoeur, Lectures on Ideology and Utopia, 1986. Participation builds Commitment That might be a useful question to ask yourself. Another question that might be useful is, "How might I direct my time and energy in a way that creates lasting value for myself and for the people I respect and whose goals I share?" -- KMO, on the CoV mailing list I understand where you are coming from. I'm a big supporter of personal freedom, myself...particularly my own. As I see it, we are each organisms living in symbiosis with our environment, of which the greater society is a part. Each of us has the responsibility to pursue their own destiny. In my experience, I haven't found the rules of society to be that confining. Where I have, I've been as discrete as possible in transgressing them. Issues of "justice" and "principle" don't come into the equation. I ask myself what I want and then I figure out how to go about achieving it, and what consequences I expect to result from the process. In other words, I spend very little time worrying about how the world should work, and a lot of time thinking about how the world does work. -- Reed Konsler , on the level-3 mailing list Level 3 involves the recognition that I can create maximum universal value and maximum personal satisfaction simultaneously. It just takes a little finesse. -- Reed Konsler, on the level-3 mailing list "You'll find that many of the truths we cling to depend greatly on our point of view." -- Obi-Wan Kenobi The tone of these prayers may as first startle you. These are declarative prayers. They do not beseech divine help, they assume it. These are not the prayers of a sinful, fallen nature begging for release. These are prayers spoken with confidence as children of the Universe. These prayers claim our birthright. They acknowledge and expand our co-creative bond with a power greater than ourselves. They are not the prayers of exile. They are the prayers of reunion, renewal, and return. God is not "dead." God is not absent from our world. Our consciousness of God is what is missing. "Conscious contact" is what these prayers are all about. -- Julia Cameron, Heart Steps: Prayers and Declarations for a Creative Life <> From a Level-3 standpoint, it's being so certain of what's most important to you that all other decisions, including choice of memetic programming, stems from that knowledge. -- Richard Brodie, on the CoV mailing list If my private perceptions are the measure of truth, if my truth cannot be challenged or enlarged by the perceptions of another, I have merely found one more way to objectify and hold the other at arm's length, to avoid the challenge of personal transformation. -- Parker J. Palmer What I try to do is make a habit of asking myself useful questions. Questions like, "Is this a workable position for me to take?" and "Am I arguing for my own limitations?" -- KMO, on the level-3 list My favorite way of looking at that thing that some have called Level Three (it's Stage 4 of the Greater Recursive Pattern in my lexicon, BTW) is this: In the case of "X versus Y" the Level Two focuses on the "X" or the "Y". The Level Three, however, focuses their attention on the "versus" -- "Tim Rhodes" , on the CoV mailing list Have you ever stood on your toes to look over a crowd. You are not looking down on them. You are looking over them to gain a better view. A view that is unobstructed. you stand on the basic ground with every one but have chosen to see more. -- Jim, about level 3, on the virus mailing list How different our lives are when we really know what is deeply important to us, and keeping that picture in mind, we manage ourselves each day to be and to do what really matters most. -- Stephen Covey A man or group of people who are molded and permeated by principles must, by the laws of nature, overpower and override all cities, nations, kings, rich men, and poets who are not. -- Richard Brodie's translation of R.W. Emerson http://www.brodietech.com/rbrodie/emsr14.htm I have my own strict requirements and distinct boundaries. It doesn't agree with what most would say are my duties and obligations, but if I can live up to its standards it enables me to dispense with society's code. If you think this law is too lax, try keeping it some time. It really demands something godlike in someone who has sworn off the usual motives of humanity and has dared to trust himself as a ruler. You need a high heart, faithful will, and clear sight in order to be your own doctrine, society, and law, so that a simple purpose can be as strong to you as steel physically is to others. -- Richard Brodie's translation of R.W. Emerson http://www.brodietech.com/rbrodie/emsr16.htm ------------------------------------------------------------------**** Religion: Satanism: Let us instead look at contemporary Satanism for what it really is: a brutal religion of elitism and social Darwinism that seeks to re-establish the reign of the able over the idiotic, of swift justice over injustice, and for a wholesale rejection of egalitarianism as a myth that has crippled the advancement of the human species for the last two thousand years. -- http://www.ripper.inetsoft.com.pl/feared.htm The Nine Satanic Statements 1. Satan represents indulgence, instead of abstinence! 2. Satan represents vital existence, instead of spiritual pipe dreams! 3. Satan represents undefiled wisdom, instead of hypocritical self-deceit! 4. Satan represents kindness to those who deserve it, instead of love wasted on ingrates! 5. Satan represents vengeance, instead of turning the other cheek! 6. Satan represents responsibility to the responsible, instead of concern for psychic vampires! 7. Satan represents man as just another animal, sometimes better, more often worse than those who walk on all-fours, who, because of his "divine spiritual and intellectual development," has become the most vicious animal of all! 8. Satan represents all of the so-called sins, as they all lead to physical, mental, or emotional gratification! 9. Satan has been the best friend the church has ever had, as he has kept it in business all these years! -- http://www.The600Club.com/Satanism101/satsta.htm The Eleven Satanic Rules of the Earth 1. Do not give opinions or advice unless you are asked. 2. Do not tell your troubles to others unless you are sure that they want to hear them. 3. When in another's lair, show him respect or else do not go there. 4. If a guest in your lair annoys you, treat him cruelly and without mercy. 5. Do not make sexual advances unless you are given the mating signal. 6. Do not take that which does not belong to you unless it is a burden to the person and he cries out to be relieved. 7. Acknowledge the power of magic if you have used it successfully to obtain your desires. If you deny the power of magic after having called upon it with success, you will lose all you have obtained. 8. Do not complain about anything to which you need not subject yourself. 9. Do not harm little children. 10. Do not kill non-human animals unless attacked or for your food. 11. When walking in open territory, bother no one. If someone bothers you, ask him to stop. If he does not stop, destroy him. -- Anton Szandor LaVey, 1967 C.E., http://www.The600Club.com/Satanism101/satrul.htm The Nine Satanic Sins #6. Lack of Perspective -- Again, this one can lead to a lot of pain for a Satanist. You must never lose sight of who and what you are, and what a threat you can be, by your very existence. We are making history right now, every day. Always keep the wider historical and social picture in mind. That is an important key to both Lesser and Greater Magic. See the patterns and fit things together as you want the pieces to fall into place. Do not be swayed by herd constraints -- know that you are working on another level entirely from the rest of the world. -- Anton Szandor LaVey, 1987 C.E., http://www.The600Club.com/Satanism101/satsin.htm Pentagonal Revisionism 1) Stratification--The point on which all the others ultimately rest. There can be no more myth of "equality" for all--it only translates to "mediocrity" and supports the weak at the expense to the strong. Water must be allowed to seek its own level without interference from apologists for incompetence. No one should be protected from the effects of his own stupidity. -- http://www.The600Club.com/Satanism101/penrev.htm ------------------------------------------------------------------**** Religion: Pagan: Pantheism: Discordian: SubGenius: "Fur and feathers and scales and skin, different without but the same within" -- Pagan chant ...to evolve a network of information, mythology and experience that provides a context and stimulus for re-awakening Gaea, and re-uniting her children through tribal community dedicated to responsible stewardship and evolving consciousness. -- From the Bylaws of the Church of All Worlds, Inc., as amended July 30, 1995 http://www.caw.org/ "I don't practice what I preach because I'm not the kind of person I'm preaching to." -- J.R. "Bob" Dobbs of the Church of the SubGenius The words of the Foolish and those of the Wise Are not far apart in Discordian Eyes. (HBT; The Book of Advise, 2:1) Q: How many toads does it take to change a lightbulb? A: One, if you can remember which one used to be the electrician. Q: How many Witches does it take to change a lightbulb? A: Depends on what you want to change it into. Frazer (_Golden Bough_) set up the canonical distinction, which I've now seen quoted elsewhere several times: in Religion, the individual is petitioning a deity for something; in Magic, e is attempting to make it happen emself by effectively using materials and forces available. -- Eva-Lise Carlstrom , on the CoV mailing list Magick, however, does not in any way affirm that superhuman entities exist or are involved in its workings; only that it is useful to think in these terms in order to realize benefits from the system. -- papajohn@vnet.net (John E.Mayer) IGNORE THIS: "FNORD": To practice and preach the same things is utter mad-ness. Sometimes communication must be made More Difficult and Irritating Than Necessary, in order to convey certain dangerous complexities. The knowledge must not fall into the wrong hands. -- from a SubGenius pamphlet the Wiccan formulation "An you harm none, do what you will," Do good to thy friend to keep him, to thy enemy to gain him. -- Benjamin Franklin The Hell Law says that Hell is reserved exclusively for them that believe in it. Further, the lowest Rung in Hell is reserved for them that believe in it on the supposition that they'll go there if they don't. -- HBT; The Gospel According to Fred, 3:1 Bullshit makes the flowers grow & that's beautiful. -- Eris 5. Hung Mung slapped his buttocks, hopped about, and shook his head, saying "I do not know! I do not know!" HBT; The Book of Gooks, Chap. 1 ~~ OLD POEE SLOGAN ~~ When in Doubt, Fuck it. When not in Doubt... get in Doubt! "The LAW OF NEGATIVE REVERSAL states that if something does not happen then the exact opposite will happen, only in exactly the opposite manner from that in which it did not happen." - Discordian Maxim =ON OCCULTISM= Magicians, especially since the Gnostic and the Quabala influences, have sought higher consciousness through assimilation and control of universal opposites-- good/evil, positive/negative, male/female, etc. But due to the steadfast pomposity of ritualism inherited from the ancient methods of the shaman, occultists have been blinded to what is perhaps the two most important pairs of apparent or earth-plane opposites: ORDER/DISORDER and SERIOUS/HUMOROUS. Magicians, and progeny the scientists, have always taken themselves and their subject in an orderly and sober manner, thereby disregarding an essential metaphysical balance. When magicians learn to approach philosophy as a malleable art instead of an immutable Truth, and learn to appreciate the absurdity of man's endeavors, then they will be able to pursue their art with a lighter heart, and perhaps gain a clearer understanding of it, and therefore gain more effective magic. CHAOS IS ENERGY. This is an essential challenge to the basic concepts of all western occult thought, and POEE is humbly pleased to offer the first breakthrough in occultism since Solomon. -- http://www.babcom.com/principia/body.html "I've begun worshipping the sun for a number of reasons. First of all, unlike some other gods I could mention, I can see the sun. It's there for me every day. And the things it brings me are quite apparent all the time: heat, light, food, a lovely day. There's no mystery, no one asks for money, I don't have to dress up, and there's no boring pageantry. And interestingly enough, I have found that the prayers I offer to the sun and the prayers I formerly offered to "God" are all answered at about the same 50-percent rate." -- George Carlin magick is "change in conformity with Will" The most sophisticated definition of "magic" that now circulates through the American counterculture is "the ability or power to alter one's consciousness at will." No mention is made of any _reason_ for altering one's consciousness. Yet in tribal cultures that which we call "magic" takes its meaning from the fact that humans, in an indigenous and oral context, experience their own consciousness as simply one form of awareness among many others. The traditional magician cultivates an ability to shift out of his or her common state of consciousness precisely in order to make contact with the other organic forms of sensitivity and awareness with which human existence is entwined. Only by temporarily shedding the accepted perceptual logic of his culture can the sorcerer hope to enter into relation with other species on their own terms: only by altering the common organization of his senses will he be able to enter into a rapport with the multiple nonhuman sensibilities that animate the local landscape. It is this, we might say, that defines a shaman: the ability to readily slip out of the perceptual boundaries that demarcate his or her particular culture -- boundaries reinforced by social customs, taboos, and most importantly, the common speech or language -- in order to make contact with, and learn from, the other powers in the land. His magic is precisely this heightened receptivity to the meaningful solicitations -- songs, cries, gestures -- of the larger, more-that-human field. -- "The Spell of the Sensuous" by David Abram ------------------------------------------------------------------**** Religion: Politics: Government: "Churches are becoming political organizations... It probably will not be long until the churches will divide as sharply upon political, as upon theological questions; and when that day comes, if there are not liberals enough to hold the balance of power, this government will be destroyed. The liberty of man is not safe in the hands of any church. Wherever the Bible and sword are in partnership, man is a slave" -- Robert Ingersoll, _Ingersoll's Works_, Vol. 2 "If churches want to play the game of politics, let them pay admission like everyone else" -- George Carlin The mood and temper of the public in regard to the treatment of crime and criminals is one of the most unfailing tests of the civilization of any country. -- Winston Churchill If the children are untaught, their ignorance and vices will in future life cost us much dearer in their consequences than it would have done in their correction by a good education. -- Thomas Jefferson to Joseph C. Cabell, 1818. (note: the US is now learning this the *hard* way...) The value of science to a republican people, the security it gives to liberty by enlightening the minds of its citizens, the protection it affords against foreign power, the virtue it inculcates, the just emulation of the distinction it confers on nations foremost in it; in short, its identification with power, morals, order and happiness (which merits to it premiums of encouragement rather than repressive taxes), are considerations [that should] always [be] present and [bear] with their just weight. -- Thomas Jefferson: On the Book Duty, 1821. Educate Every Citizen "When the war was over and the victory over our enemies won, and the blessings and happiness of liberty and peace were secured, the Constitution was framed and God was neglected. He was not merely forgotten. He was absolutely voted out of the Constitution. The proceedings, as published by Thompson, the secretary, and the history of the day, show that the question was gravely debated whether God should be in the Constitution or not, and, after a solemn debate he was deliberately voted out of it. ... There is not only in the theory of our government no recognition of God's laws and sovereignty, but its practical operation, its administration, has been conformable to its theory. Those who have been called to administer the government have not been men making any public profession of Christianity. ... Washington was a man of valor and wisdom. He was esteemed by the whole world as a great and good man; but he was not a professing Christian" -- Rev. Dr. Wilson "During almost fifteen centuries has the legal establishment of Christianity been on trial. What have been its fruits? More or less in all places, pride and indolence in the Clergy, ignorance and servility in the laity; in both, superstition, bigotry and persecution." -- James Madison "It is much to be lamented that a man of Franklin's general good character and great influence should have been an unbeliever in Christianity, and also have done as much as he did to make others unbelievers" (Priestley's Autobiography) "My parents had early given me religious impressions, and brought me through my childhood piously in the dissenting [puritan] way. But I was scarce fifteen, when, after doubting by turns of several points, as I found them disputed in the different books I read, I began to doubt of Revelation itself. Some books against Deism fell into my hands; they were said to be the substance of sermons preached at Boyle's lectures. It happened that they wrought an effect on me quite contrary to what was intended by them; for the arguments of the deists, which were quoted to be refuted, appeared to me much stronger than the refutations; in short, I soon became a thorough deist" -- Ben Franklin I concur with you strictly in your opinion of the comparative merits of atheism and demonism, and really see nothing but the latter in the being worshipped by many who think themselves Christians. -- Thomas Jefferson, letter to Richard Price, Jan. 8, 1789 (Richard Price had written to TJ on Oct. 26. about the harm done by religion and wrote "Would not Society be better without Such religions? Is Atheism less pernicious than Demonism?") "Religious bondage shackles and debilitates the mind and unfits it for every noble enterprise." -- James Madison "I have found Christian dogma unintelligible. Early in life I absented myself from Christian assemblies." Ben Franklin History, I believe, furnishes no example of a priest-ridden people maintaining a free civil government. This marks the lowest grade of ignorance of which their civil as well as religious leaders will always avail themselves for their own purposes. -- Thomas Jefferson to Alexander von Humboldt, Dec. 6, 1813. All society, it sometimes seems to me, is a continuing experiment to control adolescence. -- Wade T. Smith, on the CoV mailing list ******* "It is error alone that needs the support of government. Truth can stand by itself." -- Thomas Jefferson, Notes on Virginia, 1782 ******* "The United States of America have exhibited, perhaps, the first example of governments erected on the simple principles of nature; and if men are now sufficiently enlightened to disabuse themselves of artifice, imposture, hypocrisy, and superstition, they will consider this event as an era in their history. Although the detail of the formation of the American governments is at present little known or regarded either in Europe or in America, it may hereafter become an object of curiosity. It will never be pretended that any persons employed in that service had interviews with the gods, or were in any degree under the influence of Heaven, more than those at work upon ships or houses, or laboring in merchandise or agriculture; it will forever be acknowledged that these governments were contrived merely by the use of reason and the senses...." -- John Adams, "A Defense of the Constitutions of Government of the United States of America" [1787-1788]; from Adrienne Koch, ed., The American Enlightenment: The Shaping of the American Experiment and a Free Society, New York: George Braziller, 1965, p. 258 "Self-consciously designed to be an instrument with which to structure the secular politics of individual interest and happiness, the Constitution was bitterly attacked for its failure to mention God or Christianity... In fact, this under-documented and under- remembered controversy of 1787-88 over the godless Constitution was one of the most important public debates ever held in America over the place of religion in politics. The advocates of a secular state won, and it is their Constitution we revere today." -- Isaac Kramnick and R. Laurence Moore, "The Godless Constitution: The Case Against Religious Correctness" The first amendment: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of Religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof: or abridging The freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people Peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a Redress of grievances. When I gave food to the poor, they called me a saint. When I asked why the poor were hungry, they called me a communist. -- Dom H. Camara "I wanted to be legal without being particularly helpful," -- President Clinton, 98 Each time a [person] stands for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he [or she] sends forth a tiny ripple of hope. And crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring, those ripples build a current that can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance. Few are willing to brave the disapproval of their fellows, the censure of their colleagues, the wrath of their society. Moral courage is a rarer commodity than bravery in battle or great intelligence. Yet it is the one essential vital quality for those who seek to change a world that yields most painfully to change. -- Robert F. Kennedy One of the embarrassing problems for the early nineteenth-century champions of the Christian faith was that not one of the first six Presidents of the United States was an orthodox Christian. -- Mortimer Adler, "Chapter 22: Religion and Religious Groups in America," The Annals of America: Great Issues in American Life, Vol. II, Chicago: Encyclopedia Brittanica, 1968, p. 420. The United States is in no way founded upon the Christian religion -- George Washington & John Adams, in a diplomatic message to Malta. "At the time of its Founding, the United States seemed to be an infertile ground for religion. Many of the nation's leaders - include George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Benjamin Franklin - were not Christians, did not accept the authority of the Bible, and were hostile to organized religion. The attitude of the general public was one of apathy: in 1776, only 5 percent of the population were participating members of churches." -- Ian Robertson, 'Sociology', 3rd editions, Worth Publishing Inc.: New York, 1987, page 410 "There is no such source and cause of strife, quarrel, fights, malignant opposition, persecution, and war, and all evil in the state, as religion. Let it once enter into our civil affairs, our government would soon be destroyed... Those who made our constitution saw this, and used the most apt and comprehensive language in it to prevent such a catastrophe." -- Wisconsin Supreme Court said in Weiss "There will never be peace until God's house and God's people are given their rightful place of leadership at the top of the world. How can there be peace when drunkards, drug dealers, communists, atheists, New Age worshippers of Satan, secular humanists, oppressive dictators, greedy money changers, revolutionary assassins, adulterers, and homosexuals are on top... there is absolutely no way that government can operate successfully unless led by godly men and women operating under the laws of the God of Jacob" -- Pat Robertson "The New World Order" (1991) "But I am mistaken in speaking of a Christian republic; the terms are mutually exclusive. Christianity preaches only servitude and dependence. Its spirit is so favorable to tyranny that it always profits such a regime. True Christians are made to be slaves, and they know it and do not mind; this short life counts for too little in their eyes." -- Jean Jacques Rousseau, Contrat Social (The Social Contract) "Would you sing 'Krishna bless America' or pledge allegiance to 'One nation under Allah'? If not, would that make you unpatriotic?" -- Chris Lee "The churches can well afford to pay fair taxation. But supposing they couldn't. Would not that be a very significant evidence that the churches were not really wanted?" -- E. Haldeman-Julius, "The Church Is a Burden, Not a Benefit, In Social Life" "The Catholic Church must be the biggest corporation in the U.S. We have a branch in almost every neighborhood. Our assets and real estate holdings must exceed those of Standard Oil, A.T.&T, and U.S. Steel combined. And our roster of dues-paying members must be second only to the tax rolls of the U.S. Government." -- Father Richard Ginder, prominent Catholic priest, in 'Our Sunday Visitor', May 22, 1960 issue estimates of the loot in the Catholic coffers is in the billions, and churches own 20% of all privately-owned land in the US. (Freethought Today, June/95) "I hope I live to see the day, when, as in the early days of our country, we won't have any public schools. The churches will have taken them over again and Christians will be running them. What a happy day that will be!" -- Rev. Jerry Falwell, America Can Be Saved, (1979) Randall Terry, Founder of Operation Rescue "I want you to just let a wave of intolerance wash over you. I want you to let a wave of hatred wash over you. Yes, hate is good... Our goal is a Christian nation. We have a Biblical duty, we are called by God, to conquer this country. We don't want equal time. We don't want pluralism." -- The News-Sentinel, Fort Wayne, IN, 1993-AUG-16 I also watched Pat Robertson interview the President of the African nation of Zambia. [...] A couple of years ago the president of the country stood on the steps of a federal building in Zambia and officially declared the country a Christian nation. The first thing he did was close all the abortion clinics by force, drive the doctors out and beat them in the streets. Then they had a mass book-burning. Isn't that nice? That's a Christian nation. And Pat Robertson applauded this on his show. He said: "Wouldn't it be great to have a man like that as President of the United States?" -- Rob Boston, http://www.infidels.org/org/ffrf/fttoday/june_july96/boston.html "The fact is that more people have been slaughtered in the name of religion than for any other single reason. That, THAT my friends, is true perversion." -- Harvey Milk [1978 Gay Freedom Day Rally]. (Harvey Milk was killed later that year by a fanatic.) "The name of Christ has caused more persecutions, wars, and miseries than any other name has caused." [John E. Remsburg, The Christ(1910)] "...the absurdities of christianity are incompatible with democracy." --John Koonz "It's better to move quietly, with stealth, under cover of night... I want to be invisible. I do guerrilla warfare. I paint my face and travel at night. You don't know it's over until you're in a body bag. You don't know until election night." -- Ralph Reed, Director of the Christian Coalition "God established patriarchy when he established the world. God established a patriarchal world. If we're going to have true reformation in America, it is because men once again, if I may use a worn out expression, have righteous testosterone flowing through their veins. They are not afraid of the contempt of their contemporaries. They are not here to get along. They are not even here to take issue. They are here to take over!" -- Randall Terry, founder of Operation Rescue If the peasants are in open rebellion, then they are outside the law of God. Therefore let all who are able slash, strike down, and kill (those who rebel) openly and secretly, remembering that there can be nothing more venomous, harmful, or devilish than a rebel. It is exactly like killing a mad dog. -- Martin Luther "The Bible is not my Book and Christianity is not my religion. I could never give assent to the long complicated statements of Christian dogma." -- Abraham Lincoln "The truth is that Christian theology, like every other theology, is not only opposed to the scientific spirit; it is also opposed to all other attempts at rational thinking. Not by accident does Genesis 3 make the father of knowledge a serpent -- slimy, sneaking and abominable. Since the earliest days the church as an organization has thrown itself violently against every effort to liberate the body and mind of man. It has been, at all times and everywhere, the habitual and incorrigible defender of bad governments, bad laws, bad social theories, bad institutions. It was, for centuries, an apologist for slavery, as it was the apologist for the divine right of kings." --H. L. Mencken "The fruits of Christianity were religious wars, butcheries, crusades, inquisitions, extermination of the natives of America, and the introduction of African slaves in their place." -- Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860) German philosopher ------------------------------------------------------------------**** Religion: Evolution: Creationism: "Although the ICR often emphasizes that it is the scientific nature of creationist theory which brings scientists to a belief in a supreme being, it is curious that they include a requirement for membership (the inerrancy of the Christian Bible) which effectively excludes Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, and the majority of Christian sects (who do not accept a literal reading of all parts of the Bible) from membership. It is clear that the ICR, which is the most respected of creationist groups in its attempts to appear scientifically legitimate, is essentially an organization composed solely of Christian Fundamentalists." Kenneth R. Miller, "Scientific Creationism versus Evolution" Science and Creationism, (New York: Oxford University Press, 1984), p. 22. If we are going to teach 'creation science' as an alternative to evolution, then we should also teach the stork theory as an alternative to biological reproduction. -- Judith Hayes "The gene pool will become an /evolutationary stable set/ of genes, defined as a gene pool which cannot be invaded by any new gene. Most new genes which arise, either by mutation or reassortment or immigration, are quickly penalized by natural selection: the evolutationary stable set is restored. Occasionally a new gene does succeed in invading the set: it succeed in spreading through the gene pool. There is a transitional period of instability, terminating in a new evolutationary stable set -- a little bit of evolution has occured. [...] Progressive evolution may be not so much a steady upward climb as a series of discrete steps from stable plateau to stable plateau." -- The Selfish Gene (Richard Dawkins, 1976). "It is sad that while science moves ahead in exciting new areas of research, fine-tuning our knowledge of how life originated and evolved, creationists remain mired in medieval debates about angels on the head of a pin and animals in the belly of an Ark." -- Michael Shermer, "Why People Believe Strange Things," p. 141 "The proper place for the study of religious beliefs is in a church or temple, at home, or in a course on comparative religions, but not in a biology class. There is no place in our world for an ideology that seeks to close minds, force obedience, and return the world to a paradise that never was. Students should learn that the universe can be confronted and understood, that ideas and authority should be questioned, that an open mind is a good thing. Education does not exist to confirm people's superstitions, and children do not learn to think when they are fed only dogma." -- Tim Berra, "Evolution and the Myth of Creationism" "Scientific education and religious education are incompatible. The clergy have ceased to interfere with education at the advanced state, with which I am directly concerned, but they have still got control of that of children. This means that the children have to learn about Adam and Noah instead of about Evolution; about David who killed Goliath, instead of Koch who killed cholera; about Christ's ascent into heaven instead of Montgolfier's and Wright's. Worse than that, they are taught that it is a virtue to accept statements without adequate evidence, which leaves them a prey to quacks of every kind in later life, and makes it very difficult for them to accept the methods of thought which are successful in science." -- J.B.S. Haldane If we are going to teach 'creation science' as an alternative to evolution, then we should also teach the stork theory as an alternative to biological reproduction. -- Judith Hayes, In God We Trust: But Which One? "An attempt to give credibility to Hebrew mythology by making people believe that the the world's foremost biologists, paleontologists, and geologists are a bunch of incompetent nincompoops." -- Ron Peterson, on "creation science" "It can therefore be said that, from the viewpoint of the doctrine of the faith, there are no difficulites in explaining the origin of man, in regard to the body, by means of the theory of evolution." -- Pope John Paul II, April 16, 1986 "The proper place for the study of religious beliefs is in a church or temple, at home, or in a course on comparative religions, but not in a biology class. There is no place in our world for an ideology that seeks to close minds, force obedience, and return the world to a paradise that never was. Students should learn that the universe can be confronted and understood, that ideas and authority should be questioned, that an open mind is a good thing. Education does not exist to confirm people's superstitions, and children do not learn to think when they are fed only dogma." -- Tim Berra, "Evolution and the Myth of Creationism" "The only Bible-honoring conclusion is, of course, that Genesis 1-11 is actual historical truth, regardless of any scientific or chronological problems thereby entailed." -- Dr Henry Morris, President ICR, 1972 ******* "Complexity must be grown from simple systems that already work." -- Kevin Kelly, _Out of Control_ ******* ******* evolution is ... the non-random selection of randomly varying replicators. -- Richard Dawkins ******* If under changing conditions of life organic beings present individual differences in almost every part of their structure, and this cannot be disputed; if there be, owing to their geometrical rate of increase, a severe struggle for life at some age, season, or year, and this certainly cannot be disputed; then, considering the infinite complexity of the relations of all organic beings to each other and to their conditions of life, causing an infinite diversity in structure, constitution and habits, to be advantageous to them, it would be a most extraordinary fact if no variations had ever occurred useful to each being’s own welfare, in the same manner as so many variations have occurred useful to man. But if variations useful to any organic being ever do occur, assuredly individuals thus characterized will have the best chance of being preserved in the struggle for life; and from the strong principle of inheritance, these will tend to produce offspring similarly characterized. This principle of preservation, or the survival of the fittest, I have called Natural Selection. . . Thus the small differences distinguishing varieties of the same species, steadily tend to increase, till they equal the greater differences between species of the same genus, or even of distinct genera. (Origin of Species 1872 159-161. "Creation 'scientists' must be aware that the informed workers in literary interpretation and in physical and biological sciences regard their stance as irresponsible, and that in the scholarly world as well as in the schools they are doing irreparable damage to the Christian cause." -- Prof. Ken Campbell, Australian National University, in St. Mark's Review 137 (Autumn, 1989) (Anglican)] For my own part I would as soon be descended from that heroic little monkey, who braved his dreaded enemy in order to save the life of his keeper; or from that old baboon, who, descending from the mountains, carried away in triumph his young comrade from a crowd of astonished dogs -- as from a savage who delights to torture his enemies, offers up bloody sacrifices, practices infanticide without remorse, treats his wives like slaves, knows no decency, and is haunted by the grossest superstitions. -- Charles Darwin (1809-1882) The Descent of Man, 1871, chapter 21. "The fundamentalists, by 'knowing' the answers before they start (examining evolution), and then forcing nature into the straitjacket of their discredited preconceptions, lie outside the domain of science---or of any honest intellectual inquiry." -- Stephen Jay Gould, quoted in "2000 Years of Disbelief, Famous People with the Courage to Doubt", by James A. Haught, Prometheus Books, 1996 "I suspect the reason is that most people [...] have a residue of feeling that Darwinian evolution isn't quite big enough to explain everything about life. All I can say as a biologist is that the feeling disappears progressively the more you read about and study what is known about life and evolution. I want to add one thing more. The more you understand the significance of evolution, the more you are pushed away from the agnostic position and towards atheism. Complex, statistically improbable things are by their nature more difficult to explain than simple, statistically probable things." -- Richard Dawkins, from the _New Humanist_, the Journal of the Rationalist Press Association, Vol 107 No 2 "The magisterium of the Church is directly interested in the question of evolution because this touches upon the concept of man, ... created in the image and likeness of God. ... Pius XII underlined this essential point: 'if the origin of the human body is sought in living matter which existed before it, the spiritual soul is directly created by God.' Consequently, the theories of evolution which, as a result of the philosophies which inspire them, consider the spirit as emerging from forces of living matter or as a simple epiphenomenon of this matter, are incompatible with the truth about man. They are moreover incapable of laying the foundation for the dignity of the person." -- The Pope (John Paul II), MESS/ORIGIN LIFE:EVOLUTION/ACAD VIS 961023 (660) "Today, the theory of evolution is an accepted fact for everyone but a fundamentalist minority, whose objections are based not on reasoning but on doctrinaire adherence to religious principles." [James Watson, winner of the Nobel prize for his co-discovery of the structure of DNA] "Similarly, any biological adaptation also produces a host of structural by-products, initially irrelevant to the organism's functioning but available for later co-optation in fashioning novel directions. Much of evolution's power lies in the flexibility provided by this storehouse of latent functional potential." -- S.J. Gould, Discover Magazine, October, 1996 The gene is the smallest unit of hereditary information. Evolution is a change from a no-howish untalkaboutable all-alikeness by continuous sticktogetherations and somethingelseifications. -- William James, 1880 Clearly, natural selection does not afford the same guarantees of progress as artificial selection. The value of this analogy can be brought out by the following observation: through artificial selection of plants, a gardener can produce varieties of a rare excellence, which propagate themselves only in much cruder forms and so cannot maintain themselves in nature. -- Romana Machado romana@fqa.com "...when two opposite points of view are expressed with equal intensity, the truth does not necessarily lie exactly halfway between them. It is possible for one side to be simply wrong." -- Richard Dawkins "There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved." -- Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species Kerry Black's POSTMODERNISM AS AN ART HISTORICAL PERIOD STYLE: "It is in raising evolution above gross physical mechanics that humans have risen to dominate the other animals. "What is meant here by "other animals" are simply the hard-working creatures of a predominately physical genius, with some limited (if often startling) informational capabilities. Their great strength in physicality tends to relative grossness, supplemented by more subtle informational capacities; while, by contrast, the human animal has become an essentially informational operator, aided and abetted in its radical/subtle mentality by a wide range of often impressive (if secondary) gross physical adaptations and gifts. The human animal is essentially a mind with a physical support system, while the "other animals" are essentially physical systems with limited mental support." The outlines of the theory of evolution by natural selection are now clear: evolution occurs whenever the following conditions exist: 1.variation: a continuing abundance of different elements 2.heredity or replication: the elements have the capacity to create copies or replicas of themselves 3.differential "fitness": the number of copies of an element that are created in a given time varies, depending on interactions between the features of that element (whatever it is that makes it different from other elements) and features of the environment in which it persists. -- http://www.tufts.edu/as/cogstud/papers/memeimag.htm Life is a construction built upon the past without "knowing". That is the core of Darwin's idea: Progress without wisdom, complexity without control, meaning without consciousness. -- "Reed Konsler" , on the CoV mailing list "Natural Selection is extremely effective but not very efficient. The waste at every level is so tremendous that it would stagger even the Pentagon. The God who devised this system is hardly the Protestant God of waste not/want not." -- David Hull Some of the more sophisticated new creationists recognize that evolutionary theory is not "Godless" in any dogmatic, ontological sense, but they remain critical of science's naturalistic methodological stance and try to portray the methodology as being essentially equivalent to atheism. For example, they disparagingly characterize science's naturalistic methodology as "methodological atheism." This sort of rhetoric has the effect of making it seem that science has a particular antipathy to theism. Of course it is true that methodological naturalism does reject appeals to theistic interventions, but not because of some special distaste for God. The creationist's rhetoric is misleading in the same way that the following case would be. Suppose someone criticizes a lawyer, saying that she refuses to represent any Jewish person in civil rights cases. This makes the lawyer sound like a bigot. In fact, it turns out that the lawyer specializes in corporate tax law. So, although it is true that she refuses to defend the civil rights of Jewish individuals, that is just because she does not represent any individuals in any civil rights cases. It is simply not the sort of law that she handles, so it is unfair to make her appear a bigot by narrowly characterizing her rule of practice. Similarly, science does not have a special rule just to keep out divine interventions, but rather a general rule that it does not handle any supernatural agents or powers. That is what it means to hold methodological naturalism, so it is quite unfair to equate this with methodological atheism. -- http://uts.cc.utexas.edu/~pennock/Pennock-SupNatExpl.html According to Richard Dawkins, "Darwin's `survival of the fittest' is really a special case of a more general law of survival of the stable. The universe is populated by stable things." (The Selfish Gene, p13.) Given these severe limitations, gaps in the fossil record - particularly those parts of it that are most needed for interpreting the course of evolution - are not surprising. What is surprising and encouraging, however, is the presence of some series of fossils forming almost complete transitions between major categories. The transition from reptiles to mammals lasted for more than 100 million years and included scores of known species and their near relatives. Some of these transitional forms, particularly the mammallike reptiles of Africa, are represented by hundreds of individuals, and thousands more lie buried in the strata waiting to be discovered." -- Stebbins, G.L. (1982) Darwin to DNA, Molecules to Humanity. Freeman & Co., San Francisco. 491 pp., p. 107-108. I'll now say a few unresearched things about eyes. A common creationist claim about eyes follows the Feather Attack Mode (tm): "All those parts are useless without the others! See? They were created simultaneously!" Again, nothing could be further from the truth. Ask a Chlamydomonas algal cell, or a Euglena. They won't answer, but you can observe a very primitive eyespot on these cells. All it does is sense light. These algae have flagellae, so they can swim toward light if they get swept under a rock or water lily, e.g. This eye is intracellular, and basically spherical. A planarian (flatworm) has a cup-shaped depression lined with pigmented cells. This is equivalent to our retina. A nautilus is much the same, with its eye being likened to a pinhole camera (no lens or cornea, but almost spherical). Squids have an eye that adds a cornea and a spherical, rigid lens, much like fishes, and extrinsic eye muscles. Mammals have a soft, pliable lens for focusing. Birds have this and also double foveae, giving birds TWO "centers of concentration", i.e., they can "look right at" two things at once! -- Paul Keck, http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/feathers.html "Now, a million years is certainly a long time by some standards, but it is an eyeblink in geological history. Events occurring within less than a million years time can create patterns of abrupt change in the fossil record: in many places around the world, fossils can be traced up to the highest layers of Cretaceous rock. When, all of a sudden, they just disappear and the rocks immediately above preserve representatives of the initial repopulation, life's rebound after the collapse. The record jumps, and all the evidence shows that the record is real: the gaps we see reflect real events in life's history - not the artifact of a poor fossil record. Speciation can occur very quickly. In perhaps a few hundred years, new reproductively isolated species can form. This opportunism, this penchant for seizing new opportunities by spinning off new species rapidly (rather than by the gradual transformation of an entire ancestral species into one or more descendants) is perhaps the most basic, fundamental pattern of life." -- Eldredge N, & Tattersall, I. (1982) The Myth of Human Evolution. Columbian university Press, New York. 197 pp., p 59-60 "Without undertaking the detailed morphological comparisons that are necessary to evaluate ancestor-descendant hypotheses, creationists dogmatically asserts that these transitional forms do not exist, that there are gaps in the fossil record. From this they make the disingenuous conclusion that the fossil record supports creation and not evolution. If evolution were true, they imply, there could not be gaps in the fossil record. Now either the creationists are deliberately distorting science in an attempt to persuade a public not familiar with scientific argument, or they have simply ignored the findings of modern paleontology. For over one hundred years paleontologists have recognized the large number of gaps in the fossil record. Creationists make it seem like gaps are a deep, dark secret of paleontology, when just the opposite is the case. I have already noted one of the reasons for gaps - the low probability of species being fossilized and then discovered. Correlated with this is the growing realization that most species probably arise very rapidly geologically speaking; morphology sometimes does not take as much time to transform as paleontologists once thought. Therefore, if morphological transformations take place over short periods of time (in a geological sense), then the probability of preserving that time interval in the sedimentary record is greatly diminished. In summary, creationists have characterized the evolutionary process as being slow, gradual, and uniform, whereas virtually all modern evolutionary biologists recognize the fact that rates of evolution can be highly variable. Some evolutionary events are apparently extremely rapid so that frequent gaps in the fossil record are to be expected. Nevertheless, numerous examples of morphologically intermediate taxa -- transitional forms -- have been described from the fossil record, and the record indisputably falsifies the creationist view of the history of life." -- Cracraft, J. (1984) The significance of the data of systematics and paleontology for the evolution-creation controversy. (pg.204) "But one must acknowledge that there are many, many gaps in the fossil record. Moreover, given the high improbability of fossilization, there is no reason to think that all or most of these gaps will be bridged. In short, we will probably reach a limit of fossil evidence for phylogenies, with many things still unknown. Pertinent information will simply have been lost, irretrievably. -- Ruse, M. (1984) Is there a limit to our knowledge of evolution? Biosciences, 34(2): 100-104., pg. 101 [Nilsson and Pelger's 1994 computer analysis] starts with a mathematical model of a flat region of cells, and permits various types of "mutation." Some cells may become more sensitive to light, for example, and the shape of cells may bend. The mathematical model is set up as a computer program that makes tiny random changes of this kind, calculates how good the resulting structure is at detecting light and resolving the patterns it "sees," and selects any change that improves these abilities. During a simulation that corresponds to a period of about four hundred years - the blink of an eye, in evolutionary terms - the region of cells folds itself up into a deep, spherical cavity with a tiny irislike opening, and, most dramatically, a lens. Moreover, like the lenses of our own eyes, it is a lens whose refractive index - the amount by which it bends light - varies from place to place. In fact, the pattern of variation of refractive index that is produced in the computer simulation is very like our own. So here mathematics shows that eyes definitely can evolve gradually and naturally, offering increased survival value at every stage. More than that: Nilsson and Pelger's work demonstrates that given certain key biological faculties (such as cellular receptivity to light, and cellular mobility), structures remarkable similar to eyes will form - all in line with Darwin's principle of natural selection -- Stewart, I. 1995. Nature's Numbers. New York: BasicBooks., pg 22 "Again, certain specific items of evolution seem now to have been established, as firmly as any reasonably minded person could demand or wish. The evolution of birds and mammals springs to mind. The fossil record showing the transitions is rock solid. <...> Coming closer to home, the fossil evidence of our own simian ancestry is overwhelming." -- Ruse, M. (1984) Is there a limit to our knowledge of evolution? Biosciences, 34(2): 100-104., pg 101 Microorganisms have acquired new enzymes that allow them to metabolize toxic industrial wastes never occurring in nature (e.g. chlorinated and fluorinated hydrocarbons), and are an increasingly important method of pollution control (Ghosal et al., Science 228: 135-142, 1985). Susumi Ohno (Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. 81:2421-2425, 1984) found that one such new enzyme, nylon linear oligomer hydrolase, resulted from a frame-shift mutation. Frame-shift mutations scramble the entire structure of a protein, and so the enzyme is a random construct! As would be expected, this new enzyme is imperfect and has only 1% the efficiency of typical enzymes, but the important thing is that it works -- Bakken, G.S. n.d. "Creation or Evolution?" Berkeley: National Center for Science Education. Since Darwin's time, massive additional evidence has accumulated supporting the fact of evolution - that all living organisms present on earth today have arisen from earlier forms in the course of earth's long history. Indeed, all of modern biology is an affirmation of this relatedness of the many species of living things and of their gradual divergence from one another over the course of time. Since the publication of The Origin of Species, the important question, scientifically speaking, about evolution has not been whether it has taken place. That is no longer an issue among the vast majority of modern biologists. Today, the central and still fascinating questions for biologists concern the mechanisms by which evolution occurs. -- Helena Curtis and N. Sue Barnes, Biology 5th ed. 1989, Worth Publishers, p.972 A few words need to be said about the "theory of evolution," which most people take to mean the proposition that organisms have evolved from common ancestors. In everyday speech, "theory" often means a hypothesis or even a mere speculation. But in science, "theory" means "a statement of what are held to be the general laws, principles, or causes of something known or observed", as the Oxford English Dictionary defines it. The theory of evolution is a body of interconnected statements about natural selection and the other processes that are thought to cause evolution, just as the atomic theory of chemistry and the Newtonian theory of mechanics are bodies of statements that describe causes of chemical and physical phenomena. In contrast, the statement that organisms have descended with modifications from common ancestors - the historical reality of evolution - is not a theory. It is a fact, as fully as the fact of the earth's revolution about the sun. Like the heliocentric solar system, evolution began as a hypothesis, and achieved "facthood" as the evidence in its favor became so strong that no knowledgeable and unbiased person could deny its reality. No biologist today would think of submitting a paper entitled "New evidence for evolution"; it simply has not been an issue for a century. -- Douglas J. Futuyma, op. cit., p.15 "The only way we can determine the true age of the earth is for God to tell us what it is. And since He has told us, very plainly, in the Holy Scriptures that it is several thousand years in age, and no more, that ought to settle all basic questions of terrestrial chronology." -- Henry Morris, ICR President, 1974 "The affinities of all the beings of the same class have sometimes been represented by a great tree. I believe this simile largely speaks the truth. The green and budding twigs may represent existing species; and those produced during each former year may represent the long succession of extinct species... The limbs divided into great branches, and these into lesser and lesser branches, were themselves once, when the tree was small, budding twigs; and this connection of the former and present buds by ramifying branches may well represent the classification of all extinct and living species in groups subordinate to groups... From the first growth of the tree, many a limb and branch has decayed and dropped off, and these lost branches of various sizes may represent those whole orders, families, and genera which have now no living representatives, and which are known to us only from having been found in a fossil state... As buds give rise by growth to fresh buds, and these, if vigorous, branch out and overtop on all a feebler branch, so by generation I believe it has been with the great Tree of Life, which fills with its dead and broken branches the crust of the earth, and covers the surface with its ever branching and beautiful ramifications" -- Darwin, 1859 "If you're looking for a little background reading on scientific creationism, it's best not to take the word scientific too seriously. A three-year database search of 4,000 scientific publications -- focusing on the names of people associated with the Institute for Creation Research and on phrases and keywords such as 'creationism' -- didn't turn up a single paper. A follow-up study of 68 journals found that only 18 of 135,000 total manuscript submissions concerned scientific creationism, and all 18 were rejected. Reasons cited included 'flawed arguments,' 'ramblings,' and 'a high-school theme quality'." -- Science 85 6(7):11, September 1985 "[as for evolution]....cutting out the sections [on the subject] is preferable if the portions are not thick enough to cause damage to the spine of the book as it is opened and closed in normal use. When the sections needing correction are too thick, paste the pages together being careful not to smear portions of the book not intended for correction." -- R.E. Martin, American creationist, in 'Reviewing and Correcting Encyclopaedias' (1983: 205-7), instructing followers to censor books that don't follow creation dogma "The 'proof' in support of creation science consisted almost entirely of efforts to discredit the theory of evolution through a rehash of data and theories which have been before the scientific community for decades. The arguments asserted by creationists are not based upon new scientific evidence or laboratory data which has been ignored by the scientific community. ...The creationists' methods do not take data, weigh it against the opposing scientific data and thereafter reach the conclusions stated in Section 4(a). instead, they take the literal wording of Genesis and attempt to find scientific support for it. ...Act 590 lacks legitimate educational value because 'creation science' as defined in that section is simply not science. ...Creation science has no scientific merit or educational value as science." -- Maclean v. Arkansas "The argument that the literal story of Genesis can qualify as science collapses on three major grounds: the creationists' need to invoke miracles in order to compress the events of the earth's history into the biblical span of a few thousand years; their unwillingness to abandon claims clearly disproved, including the assertion that all fossils are products of Noah's flood; and their reliance upon distortion, misquote, half-quote, and citation out of context to characterize the ideas of their opponents." -- Stephen Jay Gould, "The Verdict on Creationism", The Skeptical Inquirer, Winter 87/88, pg. 186 "Our creationist detractors charge that evolution is an unproved and unprovable charade -- a secular religion masquerading as science. They claim, above all, that evolution generates no predictions, never exposes itself to test, and therefore stands as dogma rather than disprovable science. This claim is nonsense. We make and test risky predictions all the time; our success is not dogma, but a highly probable indication of evolution's basic truth." -- Stephen Jay Gould, "Dinosaur in a Haystack" "In the beginning, there were no reasons; there were only causes. Nothing had a purpose, nothing has so much as a function; there was no teleology in the world at all." -- Daniel C. Dennett, _Consciousness Explained_ (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1991), p. 173] "Geology shows that fossils are of different ages. Paleontology shows a fossil sequence, the list of species represented changes through time. Taxonomy shows biological relationships among species. Evolution is the explanation that threads it all together. Creationism is the practice of squeezing one's eyes shut and wailing "does not!". -- Dr.Pepper@f241.n103.z1.fidonet.org "Those who would legislate against the teaching of evolution should also legislate against gravity, electricity and the unreasonable velocity of light, and also should introduce a clause to prevent the use of the telescope, the microscope and the spectroscope or any other instrument [...] used for the discovery of truth." -- Luther Burbank "Let me try to make crystal clear what is established beyond reasonable doubt, and what needs further study, about evolution. Evolution as a process that has always gone on in the history of the earth can be doubted only by those who are ignorant of the evidence or are resistant to evidence, owing to emotional blocks or to plain bigotry. By contrast, the mechanisms that bring evolution about certainly need study and clarification. There are no alternatives to evolution as history that can withstand critical examination. Yet we are constantly learning new and important facts about evolutionary mechanisms." -- Theodosius Dobzhansky "Nothing in Biology Makes Sense Except in the Light of Evolution", American Biology Teacher vol.35 (March 1973) reprinted in EVOLUTION VERSUS CREATIONISM, J. Peter Zetterberg ed., ORYX Press, Phoenix AZ 1983] "Thus the creationist's favorite question "What is the use of half an eye?" Actually, this is a lightweight question, a doddle to answer. Half an eye is just 1 per cent better than 49 per cent of an eye..." -- Richard Dawkins "The theory of evolution by cumulative natural selection is the only theory we know of that is in principle capable of explaining the existence of organized complexity." -- Richard Dawkins, 'The Blind Watchmaker' (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1987), p. 317 (think about it!!!) "The order of creation in the Bible is woefully incorrect and violates even the most simple and obvious rules of natural science." -- Charles Cazeau, U.S. professor of geology "Creation 'scientists' must be aware that the informed workers in literary interpretation and in physical and biological sciences regard their stance as irresponsible, and that in the scholarly world as well as in the schools they are doing irreparable damage to the Christian cause." -- Prof. Ken Campbell, Australian National University, in St. Mark's Review 137 (Autumn, 1989) (Anglican) "Science has proof without any certainty. Creationists have certainty without any proof" [Ashley Montague] "Creation science" has not entered the curriculum for a reason so simple and so basic that we often forget to mention it: because it is false, and because good teachers understand exactly why it is false. What could be more destructive of that most fragile yet most precious commodity in our entire intellectual heritage -- good teaching -- than a bill forcing honorable teachers to sully their sacred trust by granting equal treatment to a doctrine not only known to be false, but calculated to undermine any general understanding of science as an enterprise?" [Stephen Jay Gould, "The Skeptical Inquirer"] Nothing in biology make sense except in the light of evolution -- Theodosius Dobzhansky, 1973 The business of proving evolution has reached a stage when it is futile for biologists to work merely to discover more and more evidence of evolution. Those who choose to believe that God created every biological species separately in the state we observe them, but made them in a way calculated to lead us to the conclusion that they are the products of an evolutionary development are obviously not open to argument. All that can be said is that their belief is an implicit blasphemy, for it imputes to God an appalling deviousness. -- Theodosius Dobzhansky (1900-1975) "Nothing in Biology Makes Sense Except in the Light of Evolution", American Biology Teacher vol. 35 (March 1973), reprinted in Evolution versus Creationism , J. Peter Zetterberg ed., ORYX Press, Phoenix, 1983. Several thousand years ago, a small tribe of ignorant near-savages wrote various collections of myths, wild tales, lies, and gibberish. Over the centuries, these stories were embroidered, garbled, mutilated, and torn into small pieces that were then repeatedly shuffled. Finally, this material was badly translated into several languages successively. The resultant text, creationists feel, is the best guide to this complex and technical subject. -- Tom Weller, From Science Made Stupid ([Biology]) ------------------------------------------------------------------**** Religion: Abortion: If the baby goes to heaven And the doctor goes to hell If the woman gets forgiveness What's the problem pray tell!? "Let me use their own terminology against them. They aborted a child in the 200th trimester." -- Dennis Miller "We should do unto others as we would want them to do unto us. If I were an unborn fetus I would want others to use force to protect me, therefore using force against abortionists is *justifiable homocide*." -- "Pro-Life" doctor killer Paul Hill Quality is the big problem, not novelty as such. Nature's usual approach to quality is to try lots of things and see what works, letting the others fall by the wayside. For example, lots of sperm are defective, missing essential chromosomes; should they fertilize an ovum, development will fail at some point, usually so early that pregnancy isn't noticed. For this and other reasons, over 80 percent of human conceptions fail, most in the first six weeks (this spontaneous abortion rate is far more significant than even the highest rates of induced abortions). -- William H. Calvin http://weber.u.washington.edu/~wcalvin/1990s/1995HowThingsAre.htm Many a scientist finds the moment of conception a satisfying place to make a beginning. They say that conception represents the "complete genetic complement," and a new existence. But upon analysis we find that conception is not an event, but a process - a process in which nothing whatsoever can ever come into existence. And what is more, nothing becomes "complete" as nothing was lacking in the first place. Conception results in a genetic code inside a cell, a set of instructions, nothing more - which is no more "life" than a blueprint for a house is the actual house. -- Kevin Solway, http://www.ozemail.com.au/~bsolway/poison.html A scientist said recently that the soul comes into existence when the mother accepts the child. -- Kevin Solway, http://www.ozemail.com.au/~bsolway/poison.html "The violence of some anti-abortionists was an ongoing problem. On October 10, 1985, security was tightened at the Supreme Court after Justice Blackmun received a death threat; the day before, an anti-abortion protester had disrupted court proceedings. Anyone who has ever attended a Supreme Court hearing knows one doesn't even whisper, much less interrupt the Court. On December 4, the FBI released figures on terrorism, but these did not include data on abortion clinic bombings, as they were supposedly not attributable to organized groups. Abortion clinics were increasingly the targets of acts of vandalism, death threats to employees, telephoned bomb threats, and other forms of harassment. On Christmas Day, three clinics were bombed in Pensacola, Florida, and on New Year's Day, 1986, a Washington, D.C., clinic was bombed. The Christmas bomber, who was later arrested, said his actions had been "a Christmas present for Jesus." -- Sarah Weddington, attorney in Roe v. Wade, 'A Question of Choice', 1992, pp.206, 208 ------------------------------------------------------------------**** Religion: Humour: Moses dragged us for 40 years through the desert to bring us to the one place in the Middle East where there was no oil. -- Golda Meir "Religions are like farts. Yours is good, but everyone else's stinks." -- Picket Fences "God split himself into a myriad parts that he might have friends." This may not be true, but it sounds good - and is no sillier than any other theology. -- Robert A Heinlein I headed off the issue of "playing god". I said, (paraphrasing myself as it's been a while) "Some people would accuse me of 'playing god' but I disagree. To play god, I would have to call energy into existence from nothing and form that into matter. I'd have to wait a few billion years for that to become life. I'd have to wait a few more billion years for that life to become human beings. Frankly, I don't have time to 'Play God', I'd rather just use what's already here." -- James Swayze , on the extropians mailing list "Given the total indifference to human suffering displayed by the almighty, `playing God' involves twiddling one's thumbs while millions die in extreme agony from horrible diseases. All this `putting an end to human suffering' is surely the work of the devil." -- Damien Broderick , quoting a pal of his on the extropian mailing list "Concerning the nature of the soul," saith the renowned author of Diversiones Sanctorum, "there hath been hardly more argument than that of its place in the body. Mine own belief is that the soul hath her seat in the abdomen -- in which faith we may discern and interpret a truth hitherto unintelligible, namely that the glutton is of all men most devout. He is said in the Scripture to 'make a god of his belly' -- why, then, should he not be pious, having ever his Deity with him to freshen his faith? Who so well as he can know the might and majesty that he shrines? Truly and soberly, the soul and the stomach are one Divine Entity; and such was the belief of Promasius, who nevertheless erred in denying it immortality. He had observed that its visible and material substance failed and decayed with the rest of the body after death, but of its immaterial essence he knew nothing. This is what we call the Appetite, and it survives the wreck and reek of mortality, to be rewarded or punished in another world, according to what it hath demanded in the flesh. The Appetite whose coarse clamoring was for the unwholesome viands of the general market and the public refectory shall be cast into eternal famine, whilst that which firmly through civilly insisted on ortolans, caviare, terrapin, anchovies, pates de foie gras and all such Christian comestibles shall flesh its spiritual tooth in the souls of them forever and ever, and wreak its divine thirst upon the immortal parts of the rarest and richest wines ever quaffed here below. Such is my religious faith, though I grieve to confess that neither His Holiness the Pope nor His Grace the Archbishop of Canterbury (whom I equally and profoundly revere) will assent to its dissemination." -- From "Soul" in _The Devil's Dictionary_ by Ambrose Bierce, published in 1911. Jesus suffered from the world's slowest sex life; it took him three days to rise again, forty days to ascend, and we're still waiting for the second coming! "God, we know you are in charge, but why don't you make it slightly more obvious?" -- Archbishop Desmond Tutu, 1990, address to students at at West Point "I have only made but one prayer in my life: "O Lord, make my enemies ridiculous." And God granted it." -- Voltaire "Well, why did the Puritans come to this country?" a teacher asked his history class. "To worship in their own way and to make other people do the same" was the reply." -- Frank Zindler "...They tried to make me go to Catholic school, too. I lasted a very short time. When the penguin came after me with a ruler, I was out of there." -- Frank Zappa "I'm one of those cliff-hanging Catholics. I don't believe in God, but I do believe Mary was his mother." -- Martin Sheen "There is not enough religion in the world to destroy the world's religions." -- Friedrich Nietzsche "'In God We Trust.' I don't believe it would sound any better if it were true." -- Mark Twain Rincewind: ...they're going to sacrifice her, if you must know. Twoflower: What, kill her? Rincewind: Yes. Twoflower: Why? Rincewind: Don't ask me. To make the crops grow or the moon rise or something. Or maybe they're just keen on killing people. That's religion for you. -- Terry Pratchett, "The Light Fantastic" "The wages of sin are death, but by the time taxes are taken out, its just sort of a tired feeling." -- Paula Poundstone "Hokey religions and ancient weapons are no substitute for a good blaster at your side." -- Han Solo "There exists a species of transcendental ventriloquism by means of which men can be made to believe that something said on earth comes from Heaven." -- G. C. Lichtenberg (1742-99), German physicist, philosopher. Aphorisms, "Notebook F," aph. 84 (written 1765-99; translated by R. J. Hollingdale, 1990) "I have my own God, and I think my God finds me incredibly fucking funny. That's why I chose him as my God ... " -- Dennis Miller "A reading from the Book of Armaments, Chapter 4, Verses 16 to 20: Then did he raise on high the Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch, saying, "Bless this, O Lord, that with it thou mayst blow thine enemies to tiny bits, in thy mercy." And the people did rejoice and did feast upon the lambs and toads and tree-sloths and fruit-bats and orangutans and breakfast cereals... Now did the Lord say, "First thou pullest the Holy Pin. Then thou must count to three. Three shall be the number of the counting and the number of the counting shall be three. Four shalt thou not count, neither shalt thou count two, excepting that thou then proceedeth to three. Five is right out. Once the number three, being the number of the counting, be reached, then lobbest thou the Holy Hand Grenade in the direction of thine foe, who, being naughty in my sight, shall snuff it." -- Monty Python, "Monty Python and the Holy Grail" "Making fun of born-again christians is like hunting dairy cows with a high powered rifle and scope." -- P.J. O'Rourke "Moral: A peerless maxim enumerated by God in his Holy Bible, such as that of Deut. 23:1, if your testicles are crushed or your male member missing, you must never enter a sanctuary of the Lord." -- Rev. Donald Morgan, Atheologian "I talk to God every day, and He's never mentioned you." -- movie, _Ladyhawke_ "Hey, doncha think the REAL reason JC hasn't returned is those crosses you wear? Think. How would JFK feel if you wore little rifles on your lapels?" -- Bill Hicks, comedian "We are the Christian Coalition. You will be assimilated. Your culture will adapt to service us. We will add your biological and financial distinctiveness to our own. Resistance is futile." -- Robertsonus of Borg "Hey Butt-Head check this book out! There's a talking snake, a naked chick, then some guy puts a leaf on his SCHLONG!!" -- Beavis and Butt-Head Do America ... I was an atheist until I realised I was God. My Karma ran over my dogma. Hindu speaking to a "Born again" christian: "Of course I am born again. And again and again and again." Trinity -- a three for one sale on deities You Go Yahweh - and I'll go Mine! "Who is more godless than I, that I may rejoice in his teachings?" -- Nietzsche "We thank God for having created this world, and praise Him for having made another, quite different one, where the wrongs of this one are corrected." -- Anatole France "People who believe that god exists and heeds their prayers have probabl waived the right to mock people who talk to trees or claim to channel the spirits of Native Americans." -- Wendy Kaminer "A Democratic victory would not change the world, but it would at least slow the berserk white-trash momentum of the bombs-and-Jesus crowd. Those people have had their way long enough. Not even the Book of Revelations threatens a plague of vengeful yahoos." -- Hunter S. Thompson, "Showdown in the Pig Palace", in _Generation of Swine_, p. 18 "If Jesus Christ were to come today, people would not even crucify him. They would ask him to dinner, and hear what he had to say, and make fun of it." -- Thomas Carlyle "No efficiency. No accountability. I tell you, Hobbes, it's a lousy way to run a universe." -- Calvin & Hobbes comic "Christ rode on an ass, but now asses ride on Christ." -- Heine "The National Security State uses fascism to protect capitalism while they say they're protecting democracy from communism." -- Michael Parenti |gods like atheists. something to aim at| "In their censures of luxury the fathers are extremely minute and circumstantial; and among the various articles which excite their pious indignation, we may enumerate false hair, garments of any colour except white, instruments of music, vases of gold or silver, downy pillows (as Jacob reposed his head on a stone), white bread, foreign wines, public salutations, the use of warm baths, and the practice of shaving the beard, which, according to Tertullian, is a lie against our own faces, and am impious attempt to improve the works of the Creator." -- Edward Gibbon Chapter 15, The Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire Personally, I'm fascinated by the communion. I've always wanted to know what the wafer tastes like. Who makes the wafer? Is there a big wafer factory somewhere? If they run out of the regular wafers, is it okay to use Necco Wafers? -- Scott Glazer I decided to take a look at the etymology of the word ``babble'' on Merriam-Webster Online. While it only traced the word back to the Middle-English ``babelen,'' it suggested that this was of imitative origin. So, while I was there, I looked up said probable imitated origin, ``Babel.'' And behold, an epiphany -- an English word which means (basically) ``confusion'' has its roots in a Hebrew word which means ``the gate of God.'' -- http://jubal.westnet.com/hyperdiscordia/whats_really_new.html We hold this truth to be self-evident: that Somebody out there has the power to make things "fair" and He's holding out on me. -- Paul Williams It very often happens there is some question as to the earth or sky, or other elements of this world ... respecting which, one who is not a Christian has knowledge ... and it is very disgraceful and mischievous and of all things to be carefully avoided, that a Christian speaking of such matters as being according to the Christian Scriptures, should be heard by an unbeliever talking such nonsense that the unbeliever perceiving him to be as wide from the mark as east from west, can hardly restrain himself from laughing. -- St. Augustine (354-430) Another example is from e-mail I got this morning from Ryan Davis, an evangelical minister who is trying to convince me I'm going to Hell because I have a lucifer.com address. I politely asked him where in the Bible it says that Lucifer is Satan. Of course he can't find it because it doesn't exist, it wasn't until the 16th century that John Milton linked the two names in "Paradise Lost". This makes his vituperation that much worse. He has one answer for everything: "You're the one that needs to open his eyes...you know what? God is still the same...... Praise Jesus." -- David McFadzean "I'd rather there wasn't an afterlife, really. I'd much rather not be me for thousands of years." -- William Golding The only way to verify truth is through faith and prayer. -- "Johnny Rea" , on the CoV mailing list We have just enough religion to make us hate, but not enough to make us love one another. -- Swift Who would you rather be cornered by in a dark alley; a mugger or a fundamentalist? The mugger; he just wants your money OR your life! > "And the wages of sin is death." [New American Standard] But the hours are good and the perks are fantastic. ;) So I'm not really a sinner? I don't know how I feel about that. There's something liberating about the knowledge that one is irredemable scum. -- KMO , on the CoV mailing list "Fair Religion"? What's that? Sounds like "Meatless Hamburger". -- David Leeper , on the CoV mailing list [Religion] protects us against the progress which we all dread. -- George Bernard Shaw "Divine intervention is unlikely" -- The Doctor, ST Voyager ...shall fall down into the pit called Because, and there shall perish with the dogs of Reason. "When you tell me that your Deity made you in his own image, I reply that he must have been very ugly." -- Victor Hugo Religion is not some panty-waist formula to sit upon fatly complacent! It is clean-shaven WAR! "The Gig is up." We are all equal in God's eyes if not Jehovah's and this gives us each a divine license to SMITE! Jehovah's Winepress spilleth over with the blood of the innocent and there must be JUSTICE! The SubGenius knows that a godlike alien space monster calling Himself Jehovah 1 is watching us and making us dance like cheap puppets for His own insidious purposes. He demands that we "whorship" Him, and so we surely must. And if you say that the SubGenius is decieved, that there is no alien God of Wrath named Jehovah, then the SubGenius will attack YOU! You are wrong; we are right; Jehovah 1 told us so and we believed it. Alright? Now roll over and go back to "sleep"...(By "God's Third Leg," you'd think these human beings didn't know what insane bogus religions are for!!) "If you believe in me, then I'll believe in you," said the Unicorn "That sounds fair," said Alice. -- Through the Looking Glass I will tell you a pleasant tale which has in it a touch of pathos. A man got religion, and asked the priest what he must do to be worthy of his new estate. The priest said, "Imitate our Father in Heaven, learn to be like him." The man studied his Bible diligently and thoroughly and understandingly, and then with prayers for heavenly guidance instituted his imitations. He tricked his wife into falling downstairs, and she broke her back and became a paralytic for life; he betrayed his brother into the hands of a sharper, who robbed him of his all and landed him in the almshouse; he inoculated one son with hookworms, another with the sleeping sickness, another with gonorrhea; he furnished one daughter with scarlet fever and ushered her into her teens deaf, dumb, and blind for life; and after helping a rascal seduce the remaining one, he closed his doors against her and she died in a brothel cursing him. Then he reported to the priest, who said that that was no way to imitate his Father in Heaven. The convert asked wherein he had failed, but the priest changed the subject and inquired what kind of weather he was having, up his way. I think if the Buddha had had a twentieth century mind he might have said, "Life is really intense suffering." -- http://www.starsedge.com/IApath.html magick (a term IMHO uselessly attached to other forces, but magickal thinkers have been blunting Occam for centuries) -- Wade T. Smith, on the CoV mailing list, Wed, 25 Feb 98 "Among mammals, a virgin birth (parthenogenesis) can only produce female offspring, for chromosomal reasons. Messiahs are mammals. Therefore, Jesus was... On the other hand, among turkeys, the chromosomal situation is such that all products of virgin birth are males. So if Jesus was a male, he might also have been..." (Zindler's own punctuation’s) -- Frank Zindler, in a note to the debate Does god exist? with John Koster "Invisible Pink Unicorns are beings of great spiritual power. We know this because they are capable of being invisible and pink at the same time. Like all religions, the Faith of the Invisible Pink Unicorns is based upon both logic and faith. We have faith that they are pink; we logically know that they are invisible because we can't see them." -- Steve Eley -- http://www.dnaco.net/~rwdaniel/ipu/ipu.7.html Not a bad notion. I'll contribute the fact that there appear to be several IPU hells, including the Pastures of Short Grass and High Manure and the place where Her Sacred Dwarves spend eternity biting the knees of evil doers. There is also the various names I've heard her called, including (my favorite) Our Galloping Goddess, Her Pinkness and She Whose Hooves are Never Shod. Her book is, of course, The Big Golden Book of Atheism. The ultimate proof of Her existence is that even atheists are willing to worship her, (albeit mainly for the tax breaks). -- Andrew Lias, http://www.dnaco.net/~rwdaniel/ipu/ipu.2.html "And furthermore shall you know that it is fitting that I be celebrated by prophets who do not exist, in verses that do not exist, for books that do not exist. For my own existence is of a dubious and contradictory nature, and I like it that way." -- The Book of the Prophet April, #11 http://www.dnaco.net/~rwdaniel/ipu/ipu.6.html "Marge, have you ever actually sat down and read this thing? Technically, we're not even allowed to go to the bathroom." -- Priest on "The Simpson's" (remember the town which God killed because Onan pissed on a wall????) Marge: "Homer, God only demands one hour of our time a week." Homer: "Then God should have made weeks one hour longer. Lousy God." -- The Simpsons "I put out these milk and cookies as a sacrifice. If Thou wishest me to eat them, please give me a sign by doing absolutely nothing. MMMMmmmm..." -- Homer Simpson Bart: What religion are you? Homer: Uh... the one with all the well meaning rules that don't apply to real life... (thinks) ... Christianity! -- The Simpsons "Prayer - the last refuge of a scoundrel." -- Lisa Simpson, "The Simpsons" "Science is like a blabbermouth who ruins a movie by telling you how it ends! Well I say there are some things we don't want to know! Important things!" -- Ned Flanders, "Lisa the Skeptic" episode, The Simpsons "This so-called new religion is nothing but a pack of weird rituals and chants designed to take away the money of fools. Now let us say the lord's prayer 40 times, but first let's pass the collection plate." -- Rev. Lovejoy, on "The Simpsons" "Christians say that--without exception--their God answers all of their prayers; it's just that He sometimes says "yes" and other times "no," "maybe," or "wait." Of course the same could be said of the rain-god, “Bob." -- Rev. Donald Morgan IF THE TELEPHONE RINGS TODAY..... WATER IT! -Rev. Thomas, Gnostic N.Y.C. Cabal "Born again?! No, I'm not. Excuse me for getting it right the FIRST time." -- Dennis Miller "So you're a god, eh? Very nice, very nice. But, you still don't have a reservation..." -- Monty Python "A reading from the Book of Armaments, Chapter 4, Verses 16 to 20: Then did he raise on high the Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch, saying, "Bless this, O Lord, that with it thou mayst blow thine enemies to tiny bits, in thy mercy." And the people did rejoice and did feast upon the lambs and toads and tree-sloths and fruit-bats and orangutans and breakfast cereals... Now did the Lord say, "First thou pullest the Holy Pin. Then thou must count to three. Three shall be the number of the counting and the number of the counting shall be three. Four shalt thou not count, neither shalt thou count two, excepting that thou then proceedeth to three. Five is right out. Once the number three, being the number of the counting, be reached, then lobbest thou the Holy Hand Grenade in the direction of thine foe, who, being naughty in my sight, shall snuff it." -- Monty Python, "Monty Python and the Holy Grail" If you talk to God, you are praying. If God talks to you, you have schizophrenia. -- Thomas Szasz "Obedience. A religion of slaves. A religion of intellectual death. I like it. Don't ask questions, don't think, obey the Word of the Lord -- as it has been conveniently brought to you by a man in a Rolls with a heavy Rolex on his wrist. I like that job! Where can I sign up?" -- Oleg Kiselev "If you pray hard enough, you can make water run uphill. How hard? Why, hard enough to make water run uphill, of course!" -- Robert A. Heinlein "Invisible Pink Unicorns are beings of awesome mystical power. We know this because they manage to be invisible and pink at the same time. Like all religions, the Faith of the Invisible Pink Unicorns is based upon both logic and faith. We have faith that they are pink; we logically know that they are invisible because we can't see them." -- Steve Eley "Our literature is a substitute for religion, and so is our religion." -- T.S. Eliot, Milton, 1947 "I don't want to start Any blasphemous rumours But I think that God's Got a sick sense of humour And when I die I expect to find him laughing" -- Depeche Mode, "Blasphemous Rumours" (from "Some Great Reward", Mute CDSTUMM19) "If Jesus Christ were to come today, people would not even crucify him. They would ask him to dinner, and hear what he had to say, and make fun of it." -- Thomas Carlyle I love Jesus, Yes I do. Baked or broiled or in a stew... Christian, n.: One who believes that the New Testament is a divinely inspired book admirably suited to the spiritual needs of his neighbor. One who follows the teachings of Christ in so far as they are not inconsistent with a life of sin. -- Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary, 1911 Infidel: In New York, one who does not believe in the Christian religion; in Constantinople, one who does. -- Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914), American author "Ocean: A body of water occupying 2/3 of a world made for man -- who has no gills." -- Ambrose Bierce, _The Devil's Dictionary_, 1911 "Never before have I encountered such corrupt and foul-minded perversity! Have you ever considered a career in the Church?" -- Black Adder II "Oh great, but not necessarily superior, being who dwells beyond this plane of existence and who is accessible only through prayer, meditation, or crystals, we salute you without thereby acknowledging that you are entitled to greater respect than that accorded any other endangered species. We hope to pass through your plane of existence at some point on our psychic journey to the same exalted status as marine mammals or even snail darters. Moreover, to the extent your design for the universe coincides with the U.S. Constitution and includes low-cost access to cable, we ask you to provide us our minimum daily requirement of essential vitamins and nutrients consistent with FDA guidelines, and when judging us be duly mindful or our status as victim, which provides full justification for what might appear on superficial examination to be felonious. In the same vein, we will endeavor to excuse and forgive those who have transgressed against us, with the possible exception of our parents, teachers, policemen and clergy about whom we have just resurrected disturbing memories. We ask all this in the name of your prophet ----------. [Here on alternating weeks substitute names drawn from the consensus of the class. Some suggestions for early in the year: L. Ron Hubbard, Ayatollah Khomeini, Jimmy Carter, Patricia Ireland, Mike Wallace.] -- John F. Bramfeld, a lawyer in Urbana, Ill., as printed in "Wall Street Journal" Pg A-18 Thurs, Jan 12, 1995, contemplating what would happen to school prayer after it was filtered through the apparatus of politically correct educrats. "Atheists!? I bet you're feeling a right bunch of charlies..... And Christians!? Over here please. Yes, you see, I'm afraid that the Jews were right after all." -- Rowan Atkinson as The Devil (or 'Toby') welcoming new arrivals to Hell "I refuse to prove that I exist" says God, "for proof denies faith, and without faith, I am nothing." "Oh," says man, "but the Babel Fish is a dead give-away, isn't it? It proves You exist, and so therefore You don't. Q.E.D." "Oh, I hadn't thought of that." says God, who promptly vanishes in a puff of logic. -- Douglas Adams, "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" God wanted to have a holiday, so He asked St. Peter for suggestions on where to go. "Why not go to Jupiter?" asked St. Peter. "No, too much gravity, too much stomping around," said God. "Well, how about Mercury?" "No, it's too hot there." "Okay," said St. Peter, "What about Earth?" "No," said God, "They're such horrible gossips. When I was there 2000 years ago, I had an affair with a Jewish woman, and they're still talking about it." "Religious Cult: The church down the street from yours." -- 'B.C.' cartoon, 30 April 1994 "O Lord our God, help us tear their soldiers to bloody shreds with our shells; help us to cover their smiling fields with the pale forms of their patriot dead; help us to drown the thunder of the guns with the shrieks of their wounded, writhing in pain; help us to lay waste their humble homes with a hurricane of fire; help us to wring the hearts of their unoffending widows with unavailing grief; help us to turn them out roofless with their little children to wander unfriended the wastes of their desolated land in rags and hunger and thirst, sports of the sun flames of summer and the icy winds of winter, broken in spirit, worn with travail, imploring Thee for the refuge of the grave and denied it..." -- Mark Twain, "The War Prayer" "One man's religion is another man's belly laugh." -- Robert Heinlein, "Notebooks of Lazarus Long" "I was told that the Chinese said that they would bury me by the Western lake and build a shrine to my memory. I have some slight regret that this did not happen, as I might have become a god, which would have been very _chic_ for an atheist." -- Bertrand Russell, Autobiography And Jesus said unto them, "And whom do you say that I am?" They replied, “You are the eschatological manifestation of the ground of our being, the ontological foundation of the context of our very selfhood revealed." And Jesus replied, "What? "Dear God. We paid for all this stuff ourselves, so thanks for nothing." -- Bart Simpson saying grace (a TV character) It's your god. They're your rules. *You* go to hell. Power corrupts; Absolute power corrupts absolutely; God is all-powerful. Draw your own conclusions "I think I'll believe in Gosh instead of God. If you don't believe in Gosh too, you'll be darned to heck." Epitaph on Newton: Nature and Nature's law lay hid in night: God said, "Let Newton be!," and all was light. -Alexander Pope It did not last: the Devil shouting "Ho. Let Einstein be," restored the status quo. -Sir John Collings Squire "Atheism is a non-prophet organization." - author unknown Atheist, n. God's way of mocking the faithful. 1st religious rule: Never let facts influence faith. I don't have a problem with God. Just his fan club! Scriptures, n. The sacred books of our holy religion, as distinguished from the false and profane writings on which all other faiths are based. -- Ambrose Bierce "When they tell us to get down on our knees and repent, they are basically asking us to bend over and get screwed." -- Father Benedict Johannen, from his article Bend Over and Receive God I went to visit a parishioner who hadn't been to worship in years. I asked him, "How come you don't come to church?" He answered, "Because it's full of hypocrites!" I said, "Oh don't worry about that. There's always room for one more!" Mark Stahlhut, Co-Pastor, Kettle Moraine Parish E-Mail: stahlhut@execpc.com, telling jokes A Christian who does not try to push their views on me or on public policy is, to me, sort of like a person who is wearing a funny hat. You know the hat is stupid, and it sort of bugs you, but you try to ignore it even though it is huge and floppy and bright pink with big metallic-green feathers. If you can deal with the funny hat, many Christians are pretty OK; but sooner or later, they always have to say, "So Scott, how come YOU aren't wearing a funny hat?" and I have to say, "Please fuck off." -- from Why Christians Suck http://www.paranoia.com/~wcs/ S is for SATAN SATAN is also known as the Devil. He is an evil-looking fellow with horns, forked tail, and bad breath. Satan has been playing against God (See GOD) for a long time now, trying to take over control of the Universe. Of course God made up the game in the first place, so he's not too concerned about the outcome. The pieces God and Satan play with are called People. Many of these pieces enjoy telling each other that as soon as Satan loses, the New Age will begin. Oh yeah. Who are they trying to kid? As soon as anybody loses, the game is over. Then all the pieces go back in the box. (from a New Age dictionary on the web -- address?) Feeling a little odd? Why not try my God? Just a little belief Will offer you relief Well, I went back to Massachusetts to celebrate Christmas. Christmas, as I understand it, is the time when we get together and celebrate the birth of Jesus. This is apparently a big miracle because he was able to bring peace and goodwill to the land -- except, of course, for the Crusades, the Inquisition, burning people at the stake for heresy, and small cults who stockpile massive loads of automatic weapons because when Jesus comes back, he's apparently going to want to declare war on Canada. But the way I understand it, none of these things are directly his fault. He was pretty well-intentioned. Jesus loves you. Everyone else thinks you're a jerk. -- anonymous "Kill one man and you are a murderer. Kill millions and you are a conqueror. Kill everyone and you are a God." -- Jean Rostand The capybara is a shy and intelligent rodent that in size (40 Kg) and colour looks much like a pig. Yet in the 16th Century, in response to a petition by Venezuelans and Colombians, the Pope decreed that the capybara is a fish! This dispensation enables observant communicants to consume the creature during the Fast of Lent (when the consumption of meat is prohibited). To this day, that rodent remains a fish. Scientific American Oct./94 "The gods too are fond of a joke." -- Aristotle (384-322 B.C.) Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness' sake: for in them is the Divine Joke revealed. http://jubal.westnet.com/hyperdiscordia/in_the_beginning.html There was an Old Man with a Beard Who said: 'I demand to be feared. Address Me as God, And love me, you sod!' And Man did just that, which was weird. -- Roger Woddis "It's hard to be religious when certain people are never incinerated by bolts of lightning." -- Calvin & Hobbes (cartoon characters) "It always helps an army to have an omniscient, omnipotent war-god on its side. " -- William Sierichs, Jr. (http://www.infidels.org/mag/sr/1995/1/1num95.html) In a certain seminary the food was always the same at supper time. The seminarians had to lead grace for a week on a rotating basis. One seminarian was so tired of the monotony that he quoted Hebrews 13:8 for every grace he led. "Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, today and tomorrow." -- Chris, Heidelberg UCC, York, Pa I feel much better now that I've abandoned all hope. -- Countless damned souls ------------------------------------------------------------------**** Humour: "Astroturf" (phony grassroots) campaign crazy-dope shitloads of parallel distributed processing "The reason there are so few female politicians is that it is too much trouble to put makeup on two faces." -- Maureen Murphy Others often better express myself. When I think over what I have said, I envy mutes. -- Seneca I have gained and lost the same 10lbs so many times over and over again that my cellulite must have deja vu. -- Jane Wagner While many of us would like to play the role of philosopher kings, at the end of the day we all have to acknowledge that few if any of us actually live in a philosophy kingdom. -- Jake Sapiens "I imagine bugs and girls have a dim perception that Nature played a cruel trick on them, but they lack the intelligence to really comprehend its magnitude." -- Calvin A helpful Guest pointed out that "42" turned upside down is "2b", or "to be". Dollars to donuts that never even occurred to Douglas Adams. Weird Universe, ain't it? -- http://singularity.posthuman.com/tmol-faq/tmol-faq.html, Eliezer S. Yudkowsky This benign looking sentence doesn't just have "issues", it has an entire subscription. -- Jake Shannon Adding you to the category of people who don't want to be categorized does not remove you from any other categories. -- KMO , on the level-3 mailing list "The best courtroom arguments I have ever heard were not designed to unearth the truth; they were designed to conceal, maul and destroy the truth. More than once I have heard two such arguments opposed to each other, and both driving to the same depressing end. And at their conclusion I have heard the learned judge round up and heave out what remained of the truth in an exposition that surpassed both." -- H.L. Mencken, American Mercury magazine, January 1928 There's an old Russian joke about this: capitalism is the exploitation of man by man, whereas communism is precisely the opposite. Stop! Think! There must be a harder way to do this! You're just jealous because the voices only talk to ME! "Usenet is like a herd of performing elephants with diarrhea -- massive, difficult to redirect, awe-inspiring, entertaining, and a source of mind-boggling amounts of excrement when you least expect it." -- Gene Spafford, 1992 Aristotle could have avoided the mistake of thinking women have fewer teeth than men by simply asking Mrs Aristotle to open her mouth. -- Bertrand Russell Television is now so desperately hungry for material that they're scraping the top of the barrel. -- Gore Vidal What this country needs is more free speech worth listening to. -- Hansell B Duckett "The true man wants two things: danger and play. For that reason he wants a woman, as his most dangerous laything." -Friedrich Nietzsche Arghhhh!! All I wanted was a touchy-feely intuitive f***-with-your-head female gender type of game. And you've gone and turned it into a computational-definitional cyborgian-appendage turn-the-power-on-max male gender game :((( Alas. -- ct , on the extropians mailing list I wonder why I wonder why. I wonder why I wonder I wonder. I wonder *why* I wonder why I wonder why I wonder! -- Richard Feynman "You know, I don't understand why humans evolved as such thoughtless, shortsighted creatures." "Well, it can't stay that way forever." "You think we'll get smarter?" "That's one of the two possibilities." -- Calvin and Hobbes (actually *not* funny in a cosmic sense...) "The main reason Santa is so jolly is because he knows where all the bad girls live." -- George Carlin A Priest, a Minister, a Rabbi, a Feminist, an Irishman, a Jew, an Elephant, and a Gorilla walked into a bar. The Bartender said, "What is this, some kind of joke?" Klaatu Barada Nikto Five days a week, my body is a Temple. The other two, it's an Amusement Park The Game Master is Not God. God is one of my little NPC's. Always remember to pillage BEFORE you burn. I love deadlines. I especially like the whooshing sound they make as they go flying by. I can please only one person per day. Today is not your day. And tomorrow isn't looking good either. "I often quote myself; it adds spice to my conversation." -- G. B. Shaw Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!!! Everyone hates me because I'm paranoid. Love's as good as soma! We are sorry, you have reached an imaginary number. Please rotate your phone ninety degrees and try again. I keep noticing that all the words in my OED are defined by other words in the OED...like some surreal Alice in word-scape wonderland of self-justifying Red Queens -- Jonathan W. Logan on the Level 3 mailing list Disbelief in magic can force a poor soul into believing in government and business. -- Tom Robbins Boxing is a lot like ballet, except that they don't dance, there isn't any music, and they hit each other. Profanity: the single language in which all programmers are expert. It's bad luck to be superstitious. This is a test, it is only a test. Had this been a real emergency, we would have fled in panic, and you would not have been informed. Why is it called tourist season if we can't shoot at them? If our teenagers think the U.N. is unexplainably dropping bombs on the rolling spaghetti plantations of America's heartland, I think whether or not they learn evolution is really a mute point. -- Tim Rhodes , on the CoV mailing list "Oh, sure, you can use FACTS to prove ANYTHING that's even REMOTELY true!" -- Homer Simpson Every government is a parliament of whores. The trouble is, in a democracy the whores are us. -- P. J. O'Rourke PMS (putting up with Men's shit) "Stop that, son. You'll go blind." "I'm over here Dad." [_] ...so what? [_] i agree [X] please explain [_] :-) [_] who cares? [X] i disagree [_] stop posting [_] &^$@gR*! [_] this suckx [_] nonsense [_] waste of time [_] sigh... -- Anders Sandberg Gentlemen! You can't fight in here; this is the war room! -- President Mercan Muffly, from Dr. Strangelove Its a condescending thing, Dear. You wouldn't understand. There are two rules for success... 1) Never tell everything you know. -- Roger H. Lincoln What's the similarity between an elephant and a blue plum? They are both grey. Well, except the plum. DO NOT ADJUST YOUR MIND IT IS REALITY THAT IS MALFUNCTIONING -- http://www.rawilson.com/reality.html Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum viditur. (Whatever is said in Latin sounds profound.) "God does not play dice with the universe: He plays an ineffable game of His own devising, which might be compared, from the perspective of any of the other players [i.e. everybody], to being involved in an obscure and complex variant of poker in a pitch-dark room, with blank cards, for infinite stakes, with a Dealer who won't tell you the rules, and who *smiles all the time*." -- Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman, Good Omens "The danger from computers is not that they will eventually get as smart as men, but we will meanwhile agree to meet them halfway." -- Bernard Avishai The USA organization is like a tree full of monkeys, all on different limbs at different levels, some climbing up, some fooling around some simply just idling. The monkeys on top look down and see a tree full of smiling faces. The monkeys on the bottom look up and see nothing but assholes. -- Jess Williams, The First Law of Philosophy For every philosopher, there exists an equal and opposite philosopher. The Second Law of Philosophy They're both wrong. Jean-Paul Sartre is sitting at a French cafe, revising his draft of Being and Nothingness. He says to the waitress, "I'd like a cup of coffee, please, with no cream." The waitress replies, "I'm sorry, monsieur, but we're out of cream. How about with no milk?" Don't LOOK at anything in a physics lab. Don't TASTE anything in a chemistry lab. Don't SMELL anything in a biology lab. Don't TOUCH anything in a medical lab. and, most importantly, Don't LISTEN to anything in a philosophy department. ******* How many Marxists does it take to change a lightbulb? None. The lightbulb contains the seeds of its own revolution. ******* "Philosophers like to call their arguments and counter-argument "moves." It's a standard move to finesse a dispute by declaring it meaningless. This was favored by the logical positivists in days of yore. They decreed that the meaning of any statement is no more or less than its truth conditions. It followed, where logical positivists were in charge, that metaphysics, ethics, and much else was thrown out of philosophy. In time, by the same rule, logical positivism was thrown out too." -- Reuben Hersh, What Is Mathematics, Really?, p. 139 The Programmers' Cheer --Shift to the left, shift to the right! Pop up, push down, byte, byte, byte! Life's a whore and I'm broke. "Mom and dad say I should make my life an example of the principles I believe in. But every time I do, they tell me to stop it." -- Calvin & Hobbes Wade Smith writes: << Getting three people to agree on anything is a miracle....>> Jake responds: But do they really agree? Or do they just agree for the sake of sensing miraculousness? -- The Church of Virus mailing list Fighting for peace is like fucking for virginity! Why did God create men? She knew a vibrator couldn't carry out the trash. -- Colloquialism, 1996 Gary: I don't think I deserve a zero on this test. Teacher: I agree, but it's the lowest mark I can give you. Her kisses left something to be desired -- the rest of her. Few people think more than two or three times a year. I have made an international reputation for myself by thinking once or twice a week. -- George Bernard Shaw "I am amazed, o wall, that you have not collapsed and fallen, since you must bear the tedious stupidities of so many scrawlers" -- unsigned graffite, on the walls of Pompeii, CIL 4.1904 The average woman would rather have beauty than brains, because the average man can see better than he can think. That the automobile has practically reached the limit of its development is suggested by the fact that during the past year no improvements of a radical nature have been introduced. -- Scientific American, Jan. 2, 1909 Heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible. -- Lord Kelvin, ca. 1895, British mathematician and physicist human's -- two legged lemmings There is not the slightest indication that [nuclear energy] will ever be obtainable. It would mean that the atom would have to be shattered at will. -- Albert Einstein, 1932. We start to walk alike, talk alike, and gradually acquire the same sweet asinine expression. -- http://www.brodietech.com/rbrodie/emsr07.htm Please, please, let me see some experimental ideas, not academic grant-pimping pipe-dreams based on fairytales.... -- "Wade T.Smith" on the CoV mailing list "A diplomat...is a person who can tell you to go to hell in such a way that you actually look forward to the trip." -- Caskie Stinnett The abolishment of pain in surgery is a chimera. It is absurd to go on seeking it... Knife and pain are two words in surgery that must forever be associated in the consciousness of the patient. -- Dr. Alfred Velpeau (1839) French surgeon Well informed people know it is impossible to transmit the voice over wires and that were it possible to do so, the thing would be of no practical value. -- Editorial in the Boston Post (1865) You don't like these ideas? I got others. -- Marshal McLuhan "Status quo -you know- is Latin for 'the mess we're in.' " -- Ronald Reagan "Not only is life a bitch, but it is always having puppies." -- Adrienne Gusoff "Life is a sexually transmitted disease." -- Anonymous "Sometimes when I look around at civilized life, it reminds me of an S&M scene where everyone has forgotten the safeword." -- Marcus Surrealius How much angst did I have? Let me count the frays... Marriage is a wonderful institution. But who would want to live in an institution? -- H. L. Mencken Marriage, n. the state of condition of a community consisting of a master, a mistress and two slaves, making in all, two. -- Ambrose Bierce "Love, O what a whore you've become!" If someone purposefully tripped me, I wouldn't care deeply whether the person was genuinely an asshole or was merely engaging in an asshole-role-playing exercise for the day. -- Eva-Lise Carlstrom on the CoV mailing list Bah. -- Dogbert You ride in 250 tons of molecularly aligned crystalline titanium wedded to a ceramic ablative matrix. You carry a 200mm Gauss cannon, two massive 10-gigawatt lasers, two SMLM fire-and-forget missiles, a Vulcan IV point defense anti-missile system, and a deadly assortment of other equally lethal weapons. Your vehicle is the ultimate product of 4,000 years of armored warfare. Your life expectancy is less than two minutes. -- RENEGADE LEGION: CENTURION When you find A friend Who is good and true Fuck him Before He fucks You --J.P. Donleavy Well, now you've just created a straw man of me and burned it -- Stephen Atkins , on the CoV mailing list See the happy moron Doesn't give a damn I wish I was a moron My God! Maybe I am! "Don't take away my pain! I need my pain!" -- Captain Kirk It's hard to work in groups when you're omnipotent. -- Q., Star Trek, the Next Generation If a cluttered desk signs a cluttered mind, Of what, then, is an empty desk a sign? -- Albert Einstein If electricity is produced by electrons, Is morality produced by morons? > Do me a favour and fill in the Latin for "Indifferent", I can > barely write English as it is. If I remember my Latin correctly, this would be "Dontgiveashiticus". -- David Leeper , on the CoV mailing list Note: The point I was trying to make is that it is not necessarily even the majority who tyrannize. Here in the UK less than 50% of the electorate turned out last time (Tyranny of the Apathetic?). -- "Martin Traynor" , on the CoV mailing list "Not Hercules could have knock'd out his brains, for he had none." -- Shakespeare My spelling is wobbly - actually the spelling is quite good, it's just the letters wobble around a bit. -- Pooh Bear Can the Priests of commerce keep the spirit of capitalism alive for another day? -- "Gifford, Nate F" (the day after the '97 collapse of the stock market) There are four kinds of homicide: felonious, excusable, justifiable, and praiseworthy ... -- Ambrose Bierce, _The Devil's Dictionary_ What did people do before Freud? Heavens, they walked around with one brain instead of three. -- Stephen Atkins , on the CoV mailing list "Send a policeman and have it arrested." -- Bismarck, when asked what he would do if the British Army landed. "Damn your cold blooded logic, Spock!" "Indeed." Q: Why do programmers get confused between Hallowe'en and Xmas? A: Because OCT 31 = DEC 25 "Perhaps we should lower our mental trousers and compare the size of our consciousnesses?" -- Jan Sands to Marvin Minsky on comp.ai.genetic "And what about you? At least my flaw is grand, while yours is merely pathetic." "Don't worry. Be happy. (Get screwed)." If we want to save the Planet, I suggest we start learning how to communicate. -- Tadeusz Niwinski , on the CoV mailing list "A straight line is the shortest distance between two points... in Euclidian space, that is." Socrates: "Nothing can be known". Punk: "How do you know?" Evil is tied up in the concept of the Other. Otherness is evil because it is not me. -- Stephen Atkins (obviously out of context!), on the CoV mailing list Show me a cultural relativist at 30,000 feet and I'll show you a hypocrite." -- Richard Dawkins OK, let's have a race. When the starter's gun goes off, you analyze past events, trying to figure out who was right, and I'll start running. We'll see who wins. -- Richard Brodie , on the CoV mailing list PROPOSITION 65 MENTAL HEALTH WARNING: Many Of The Statements In This E-Mail, When Subjected To Rigorous Analysis By The State Of California, Have Been Determined To Be "Interesting If True." In the future, we'll live in a magical world in which all the culture of the planet will be at our fingertips. Access to this universe of data will deliver an intoxicating sense of empowerment. Omniscience and omnipotence will flow via dancing electron streams from little boxes on our desks. -- Digitizing Consciousness [Ironically, of course!] All behavior is masturbation. memes can be defined as "better ways of masturbating". As Bertrand Russell said, it is good to keep an open mind, but not so open that our minds fall out! Eat right. Stay fit. Die anyway. "The sun never sets on Ford tractors. Somewhere, right now, there is a Ford tractor working the land. Remember this when you break bread." This car protected by a small thermonuclear device. If people were meant to go around naked, they would have been born that way. -- Playboy. My girlfriend told me I should be more affectionate, so I got a second girlfriend. -- a comedian on MTV He speaks well. He speaks English! He's interested in the subject matter!! What's he doing in physics !!? -- Dave Manthey referring to Professor Winhold. You've obviously mistaken me for someone who gives a shit. Nice guys never get laid. I'm amazed at the truth in that. -- Rush Limbaugh Where's your costume dear? I'm a homicidal maniac. They look just like everyone else. -- "The Adam’s Family" Maybe I'm finally so jaded that I don't care about anything. What a relief! -- Lance Authur, http://www.glassdog.com/lance/life_serial/1998/033098.html Arranging that the criminals be executed before they committed their crime; a most economical judicial process. -- 'Shibumi' by Trevanian Roses are red, violets are blue, this is my kind way of dumping you. -- Craig Hemenway 7/30/91 Smile. It makes people wonder what you've been up to. Bernard LaPlant from the movie "Hero" - "When you grow up you'll discover that there is no truth, just piles of bullshit, pardon my vulgarity, piled on top of each other. You have to accept the layer of bullshit you're comfortable with." A crust of bread is better than nothing. Nothing is better than heaven. [...] -- Eva-Lise Carlstrom "Data, data everywhere, and not a thought to think." -- Jesse Shera Just because I'm paranoid doesn't mean they're not following me. You're ugly and your mother dresses you funny. "When he that speaks, and he to whom he speaks, neither of them understand what is meant, that is metaphysics." -- Voltaire Don't cook tonight -- starve a rat today! Once one's ego flaws have been overcome, it may be realized that an artificial fantasy is infinitely superior to a lousy lay. -- The Devil's Notebook p.38 by Anton Szandor LaVey All those who believe in psychokinesis raise my hand. Oh great and noble Jargon-Spouting Professional! Although I am not worthy even to lick the blood of freshmen off the underside of your mighty boots, I beg of you, show me where to find this oft touted but as yet unseen information you speak of!!! -- Tim Rhodes "Everybody I know who is right always agrees with ME" -Rev Lady Mal "common sense is what tells you that the world is flat." "This statement is false" Two ropes walk into a bar. The bartender says to the rope "Hey! we don't serve ropes in here" so one of the ropes left. The other rope frayed up his hair and tied himself in a knot. The bartender said to the rope "Are you a rope?" and the rope said "I'm a frayed knot" -- The Oregonian "Everyone is entitled to be stupid, but some abuse the privilege." "My one regret in life is that I am not someone else." -- Woody Allen ... to the general mundane populace, to whom I refer as "Sheeple," "I bought some batteries, but they weren't included." -- Steven Wright "Imitation is the sincerest form of television." -- Fred Allen (1894-1956) "The object of war is not to die for your country but to make the other bastard die for his." -- General George Patton (1885-1945) "From the moment I picked your book up until I laid it down I was convulsed with laughter. Some day I intend reading it." -- Groucho Marx (1895-1977) "And, if I talk in even more abstract nutter-language, you will be pissed off that:" ... :) 'If it ain't broke, no-one's used it yet.' The prefixes "pro" and "con" are opposites. Consider, for example, the word "progress." -- anonymous When they broke open molecules, they found they were only stuffed with atoms. But when they broke open atoms, they found them stuffed with explosions. - anonymous grade 5 student To most people solutions mean finding the answers. But to chemists solutions are things that are still all mixed up. anonymous grade 5 student All humans are fools You are human Ergo, You are a fool (and so am I) "I don't make jokes, I just watch the Government and report the facts..." -- Will Rogers If ignorance is bliss, you must be orgasmic. #define QUESTION ((bb) || !(bb)) - Shakespeare. Learn from your parents' mistakes - use birth control! ... Beware of quantum ducks. Quark! Quark! ... Click..Click..Click..darn, out of taglines! ... If you can't dazzle 'em with brilliance, baffle em with bullsh*t. ... No man is an island. But some of us have long peninsulas. ... Our Standard: Exellence; Our Goal: Perfection; Reality: Murphy. ... We spend billions on games of chance, not including weddings. "Before a marriage, a man will lie awake all night thinking about something you've said; after marriage, he'll fall asleep before you finish saying it." -- Helen Rowland "Blessed is the man who, having nothing to stay, abstains from giving us worthy evidence of the fact." -- George Eliot "I went on a diet, swore off drinking and heavy eating, and in fourteen days I lost two weeks." -- Joe E. Lewis Optimist: "The glass is half full." Pessimist: "The glass is half empty." Engineer: "The glass is twice as big as it needs to be." Sometimes I think the surest sign that intelligent life exists elsewhere in the universe is that none of it has tried to contact us. -- Bill Watterson, cartoonist "Well, art is art, isn't it? Still, on the other hand, water is water! And East is East and West is West and if you take cranberries and stew them like applesauce they taste more like prunes than a rhubarb does. Now, uh... Now you tell me what you know." -- Marx By all means marry. If you get a good wife, you'll be happy. If you get a bad one, you'll become a philosopher. -- Socrates A child of 5 could understand this! Fetch me a child of 5. "Drawing on my fine command of the English language, I said nothing." -- Benchley, Robert If you think education is expensive, try ignorance. -- Benjamin Franklin "Brain. An apparatus with which we think we think." -- Ambrose Bierce "His lack of education is more than compensated for by his keenly developed moral bankruptcy." -- Woody Allen You live and learn. At any rate, you live. -- Douglas Adams Nature never makes any blunders; when she makes a fool, she means it. -- Josh Billings We will all die together, in a glorious blaze of over-stimulation!! -- Church of SubGenius "...any inanity spouted by a SubGenius at any given time automatically becomes part of orthodox SubGenius Liturgy." One of the striking differences between a cat and a lie is that a cat has only nine lives. -- Mark Twain Ignorant people think it is the noise which fighting cats make that is so aggravating, but it ain't so; it is the sickening grammar that they use. -- Mark Twain EARTH smog | bricks AIR mud FIRE soda water | tequila WATER "Video Game - A costly habit providing hours of addictive pleasure to children, causing them to grow oblivious to their surroundings. Keeps kids off drugs, though." -- from The Luddite's Dictionary by Steven DeRoso We of the Digital Age are privileged to suffer an inconvenience unknown to Mr. Bierce: the World Wide Web -- a three-syllable term with a nine-syllable "abbreviation". "If God had wanted humans to drive around in solar powered vehicles, He would have provided a huge source of solar energy that everyone on earth had access to... Oh, He did, didn't He?!" -- Sunrayce Faculty Advisor "If everything you know is wrong, then so are the scary parts, so relax." -- Spider Robinson Comment on The Uselessness of Pi Conceive a sphere constructed with the earth at it center, and imagine its surface to pass through Sirius, which is 8.8 light years distant from the earth... Then imagine this enormous sphere to be so packed with microbes that in every cubic millimeter millions and millions of these diminutive animalcula are present. Now conceive these microbes to be unpacked and so distributed singly along a straight line that every two microbes are as far distant from each other as Sirius is from us... Conceive the long line thus fixed by all the microbes at the diameter of a circle, and imagine its circumference to be calculated by multiplying it diameter by Pi to 100 decimal places. Then, in the case of a circle of this enormous magnitude even, the circumference so calculated would not vary from the real circumference by a millionth part of a millimeter. This example will suffice to show that the calculation of Pi to 100 or 500 decimal places is wholly useless. - Hermann Schubart, A mathematics professor from Hamburg, Germany in 1889 Q: What did the blonde customer say to the buxom waitress (reading her nametag) ? A: "'Debbie'...that's cute. What did you name the other one ?" "I've heard snappier comebacks from a bowl of Rice Krispies." -- Charles Emerson Winchester III (a TV character) "A Freudian slip is when you say one thing but mean your mother." -- anonymous What to do if you find yourself stuck in a crack in the ground underneath a giant boulder you can't move, with no hope of rescue. Consider how lucky you are that life has been good to you so far. Alternatively, if life hasn't been good to you so far, which given your current circumstances seems more likely, consider how lucky you are that it won't be troubling you much longer. -- Douglas Adams Quaker to his wife: "All the world art queer but me and thee. And thou art a little queer." Criminal Oversimplification, 20 years to Life a 'stuporstition.' - "The stupider it looks, the more important it probably is." "Just blame it all on those pesky memes." - W. L. Benzon I, for one, tend to discount everything I think. Reed Konsler In my experience a committee should always consist of an odd number of people, and never be more than two. christopher brown > The world is a _________ that needs to be _____________. liberal: The world is a problem that needs to be fixed. conservative: The world is a problem that needs to be left alone. "Losers always whine about 'Their Best'. Winners go home and fuck the Prom Queen" -- Sean Connery - The Rock "I want to die like my granddad: asleep and at peace ... not screaming and terrified, like the people in his car..." -- Neil Middleton BTW A 24 week old embryo is not a human being. You're not a human being until you're in my phone book...Bill Hicks. "So I says to him, I says: "Look. Either we all come from monkeys or we're supposed to be like this, and I don't like it either way." -- Rev. Dr. Chris Gross, SubGenii WORDS OF WISDOM Before you criticize a man, walk a mile in his shoes. That way, when you do criticize him, you'll be a mile away and have his shoes. She had lost the art of conversation, but not, unfortunately, the power of speech. -- George Bernard Shaw Steinbach's Guideline for Systems Programming Never test for an error condition you don't know how to handle. "America: The Land of Opportunism" "Always be sincere, no matter how much you don't mean it." -- Oscar Wilde For people who like peace and quiet: a phoneless cord. Madness takes its toll. Please have exact change. Windows: Just another pane in the glass. "That's the beauty of college these days--you can major in Gameboy if you know how to bullshit." -- PCU Beware of the man who works hard to learn something, learns it, and finds himself no wiser than before. He is full of murderous resentment of people who are ignorant without having come by their ignorance the hard way. -- Bokonon Eat a live toad the first thing in the morning and nothing worse will happen to you the rest of the day! If you pull the wings off a fly, does it become a walk? Growing old is mandatory. Growing up is optional. Words fail me, much to the relief of the audience. Free advice is seldom cheap. Here we are in Canada... when do we collect unemployment? Canada, where we reserve the right to arm bears. Hard work may not kill you, but why take chances? My opinion may have changed but I am STILL right! I embrace poverty! To annoy me, send money. Monday is a terrible way to spend one-seventh of your life! Democrats cut red tape... LENGTH-WISE! "Text processing has made it possible to right-justify any idea, even one which cannot be justified on any other grounds." -- J. Finnegan, USC. "Football incorporates the two worst elements of American society: violence punctuated by committee meetings." George F. Will, journalist, political commentator, 1994 Everything above is a true statement, for sufficiently false values of true. Bradley's Bromide: If computers get too powerful, we can organize them into a committee -- that will do them in. It's not an optical illusion, it just looks like one. -- Phil White The shortest distance between two points is under construction. -- Noelie Altito "Monastery: A home for childless fathers." A university creative writing class was asked to write a concise essay containing these four elements: religion royalty sex mystery The prize-winning essay read: "My God," said the Queen. "I'm pregnant. I wonder who did it?" Q: Do you know what the death rate around here is? A: One per person. -- Anonymous Yesterday I was a dog. Today I'm a dog. Tomorrow I'll probably still be a dog. Sigh! There's so little hope for advancement. -- Snoopy Faith is the quality that enables you to eat blackberry jam on a picnic without looking to see whether the seeds move. To quote Frank Zappa, "Now, ladies and gentlemen, we have moved beyond `mumbo-jumbo' into the world of `mumbo-pokus'!" What is originality? Undetected plagiarism. What is mine is mine; what is yours is negotiable. Chicken Soup, n.: An ancient miracle drug containing equal parts of aureomycin, cocaine, interferon, and TLC. The only ailment chicken soup can't cure is neurotic dependence on one's mother. -- Arthur Naiman, "Every Goy's Guide to Yiddish" "Assuming either the Left Wing or the Right Wing gained control of the country, it would probably fly around in circles." -- Pat Paulsen CONFIDENTIAL OPINIONS ABOUT LOVE "I'm in favor of love as long as it doesn't happen when 'The Simpsons' is on television." (Anita, 6) Fleas can be taught nearly anything that a Congressman can. -- Old Man, _What is Man_, by Mark Twain, "Their father is some kind of civil serpent." -- anonymous "Those of you who think you know it all really annoy those of us who do." -- anonymous Humour: The Devils Dictionary: Goslings Glossary: Definitions: ALLIANCE n. In international politics, the union of two thieves who have their hands so deeply inserted in each other's pockets that they cannot separately plunder a third. -- Bierce, Ambrose: The Devil's Dictionary APHORISM n. Predigested wisdom. -- Bierce, Ambrose: The Devil's Dictionary APOLOGIZE v.i. To lay the foundation for a future offence. -- Bierce, Ambrose: The Devil's Dictionary BAIT n. A preparation that renders the hook more palatable. The best kind is beauty. -- Bierce, Ambrose: The Devil's Dictionary Belladonna: In Italian, a beautiful lady. In English, a deadly poison. A striking example of the essential identity of the two tongues. Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914), "The Devil's Dictionary", 1911 COMPULSION n. The eloquence of power. -- Bierce, Ambrose: The Devil's Dictionary Conservative (n.) - A statesman who is enamored of existing evils, as distinguished from the Liberal, who wishes to replace them with others. -- Ambrose Bierce (1842 - 1914?), The Devil's Dictionary CORPORATION n. An ingenious device for obtaining individual profit without individual responsibility. -- Bierce, Ambrose: The Devil's Dictionary DEJEUNER n. The breakfast of an American who has been in Paris. Variously pronounced. -- Bierce, Ambrose: The Devil's Dictionary DENTIST n. A prestidigitator who, putting metal into your mouth, pulls coins out of your pocket. -- Bierce, Ambrose: The Devil's Dictionary EXCEPTION n. A thing which takes the liberty to differ from other things of its class, as an honest man, a truthful woman, etc. "The exception proves the rule" is an expression constantly upon the lips of the ignorant, who parrot it from one another with never a thought of its absurdity. In the Latin, "Exceptio probat regulam" means that the exception tests the rule, puts it to the proof, not confirms it. The malefactor who drew the meaning from this excellent dictum and substituted a contrary one of his own exerted an evil power which appears to be immortal. -- Bierce, Ambrose: The Devil's Dictionary IMPIETY n. Your irreverence toward my deity. -- Bierce, Ambrose: The Devil's Dictionary JEALOUS adj. Unduly concerned about the preservation of that which can be lost only if not worth keeping. -- Bierce, Ambrose: The Devil's Dictionary KINDNESS n. A brief preface to ten volumes of exaction. -- Bierce, Ambrose: The Devil's Dictionary LABOR n. One of the processes by which A acquires property for B. -- Bierce, Ambrose: The Devil's Dictionary LANGUAGE n. The music with which we charm the serpents guarding another's treasure. -- Bierce, Ambrose: The Devil's Dictionary Literally, adv. Figuratively, as: "The pond was literally full of fish"; "The ground was literally alive with snakes," etc. -- _The Enlarged Devil's Dictionary_, Ambrose Bierce. LITIGATION n. A machine which you go into as a pig and come out of as a sausage. -- Bierce, Ambrose: The Devil's Dictionary LOVE n. A temporary insanity curable by marriage or by removal of the patient from the influences under which he incurred the disorder. This disease, like caries and many other ailments, is prevalent only among civilized races living under artificial conditions; barbarous nations breathing pure air and eating simple food enjoy immunity from its ravages. It is sometimes fatal, but more frequently to the physician than to the patient. -- Bierce, Ambrose: The Devil's Dictionary MAGIC n. An art of converting superstition into coin. There are other arts serving the same high purpose, but the discreet lexicographer does not name them. -- Bierce, Ambrose: The Devil's Dictionary MAGPIE n. A bird whose thievish disposition suggested to someone that it might be taught to talk. -- Bierce, Ambrose: The Devil's Dictionary MARTYR n. One who moves along the line of least reluctance to a desired death. -- Bierce, Ambrose: The Devil's Dictionary MISFORTUNE n. The kind of fortune that never misses. -- Bierce, Ambrose: The Devil's Dictionary MOUTH n. In man, the gateway to the soul; in woman, the outlet of the heart. -- Bierce, Ambrose: The Devil's Dictionary MYTHOLOGY n. The body of a primitive people's beliefs concerning its origin, early history, heroes, deities and so forth, as distinguished from the true accounts which it invents later. -- Bierce, Ambrose: The Devil's Dictionary NOVEMBER n. The eleventh twelfth of a weariness. -- Bierce, Ambrose: The Devil's Dictionary OBLIVION n. The state or condition in which the wicked cease from struggling and the dreary are at rest. Fame's eternal dumping ground. Cold storage for high hopes. A place where ambitious authors meet their works without pride and their betters without envy. A dormitory without an alarm clock. -- Bierce, Ambrose: The Devil's Dictionary OCEAN n. A body of water occupying about two-thirds of a world made for man -- who has no gills. -- Bierce, Ambrose: The Devil's Dictionary ONCE adv. Enough. -- Bierce, Ambrose: The Devil's Dictionary OPIATE n. An unlocked door in the prison of Identity. It leads into the jail yard. -- Bierce, Ambrose: The Devil's Dictionary OPPORTUNITY n. A favorable occasion for grasping a disappointment. -- Bierce, Ambrose: The Devil's Dictionary PAIN n. An uncomfortable frame of mind that may have a physical basis in something that is being done to the body, or may be purely mental, caused by the good fortune of another. -- Bierce, Ambrose: The Devil's Dictionary PALMISTRY n. The 947th method (according to Mimbleshaw's classification) of obtaining money by false pretences. It consists in "reading character" in the wrinkles made by closing the hand. The pretence is not altogether false; character can really be read very accurately in this way, for the wrinkles in every hand submitted plainly spell the word "dupe." The imposture consists in not reading it aloud. -- Bierce, Ambrose: The Devil's Dictionary PAST n. That part of Eternity with some small fraction of which we have a slight and regrettable acquaintance. A moving line called the Present parts it from an imaginary period known as the Future. These two grand divisions of Eternity, of which the one is continually effacing the other, are entirely unlike. The one is dark with sorrow and disappointment, the other bright with prosperity and joy. The Past is the region of sobs, the Future is the realm of song. In the one crouches Memory, clad in sackcloth and ashes, mumbling penitential prayer; in the sunshine of the other Hope flies with a free wing, beckoning to temples of success and bowers of ease. Yet the Past is the Future of yesterday, the Future is the Past of to-morrow. They are one -- the knowledge and the dream. -- Bierce, Ambrose: The Devil's Dictionary PIE n. An advance agent of the reaper whose name is Indigestion. -- Bierce, Ambrose: The Devil's Dictionary PIGMY n. One of a tribe of very small men found by ancient travelers in many parts of the world, but by modern in Central Africa only. The Pigmies are so called to distinguish them from the bulkier Caucasians -- who are Hogmies. -- Bierce, Ambrose: The Devil's Dictionary PLAGIARIZE v. To take the thought or style of another writer whom one has never, never read. -- Bierce, Ambrose: The Devil's Dictionary PLATITUDE n. The fundamental element and special glory of popular literature. A thought that snores in words that smoke. The wisdom of a million fools in the diction of a dullard. A fossil sentiment in artificial rock. A moral without the fable. All that is mortal of a departed truth. A demi-tasse of milk-and-mortality. The Pope's-nose of a featherless peacock. A jelly-fish withering on the shore of the sea of thought. The cackle surviving the egg. A desiccated epigram. -- Bierce, Ambrose: The Devil's Dictionary PLEASE v. To lay the foundation for a superstructure of imposition. -- Bierce, Ambrose: The Devil's Dictionary POLITENESS n. The most acceptable hypocrisy. -- Bierce, Ambrose: The Devil's Dictionary "Quotation, n: The act of repeating erroneously the words of another." -- Ambrose Bierce: The Devil's Dictionary RATIONAL adj. Devoid of all delusions save those of observation, experience and reflection. -- Bierce, Ambrose: The Devil's Dictionary REALLY adv. Apparently. -- Bierce, Ambrose: The Devil's Dictionary RED-SKIN n. A North American Indian, whose skin is not red -- at least not on the outside. -- Bierce, Ambrose: The Devil's Dictionary REFERENDUM n. A law for submission of proposed legislation to a popular vote to learn the nonsensus of public opinion. -- Bierce, Ambrose: The Devil's Dictionary RESOLUTE adj. Obstinate in a course that we approve. -- Bierce, Ambrose: The Devil's Dictionary RESPONSIBILITY n. A detachable burden easily shifted to the shoulders of God, Fate, Fortune, Luck or one's neighbor. In the days of astrology it was customary to unload it upon a star. -- Bierce, Ambrose: The Devil's Dictionary RITE n. A religious or semi-religious ceremony fixed by law, precept or custom, with the essential oil of sincerity carefully squeezed out of it. -- Bierce, Ambrose: The Devil's Dictionary RITUALISM n. A Dutch Garden of God where He may walk in rectilinear freedom, keeping off the grass. -- Bierce, Ambrose: The Devil's Dictionary SATAN n. One of the Creator's lamentable mistakes, repented in sashcloth and axes. Being instated as an archangel, Satan made himself multifariously objectionable and was finally expelled from Heaven. Halfway in his descent he paused, bent his head in thought a moment and at last went back. "There is one favor that I should like to ask," said he. "Name it." "Man, I understand, is about to be created. He will need laws." "What, wretch! you his appointed adversary, charged from the dawn of eternity with hatred of his soul -- you ask for the right to make his laws?" "Pardon; what I have to ask is that he be permitted to make them himself." It was so ordered. -- Bierce, Ambrose: The Devil's Dictionary SATIETY n. The feeling that one has for the plate after he has eaten its contents, madam. -- Bierce, Ambrose: The Devil's Dictionary SELFISH adj. Devoid of consideration for the selfishness of others. -- Bierce, Ambrose: The Devil's Dictionary SIREN n. One of several musical prodigies famous for a vain attempt to dissuade Odysseus from a life on the ocean wave. Figuratively, any lady of splendid promise, dissembled purpose and disappointing performance. -- Bierce, Ambrose: The Devil's Dictionary TAKE v.t. To acquire, frequently by force but preferably by stealth. -- Bierce, Ambrose: The Devil's Dictionary TELESCOPE n. A device having a relation to the eye similar to that of the telephone to the ear, enabling distant objects to plague us with a multitude of needless details. Luckily it is unprovided with a bell summoning us to the sacrifice. -- Bierce, Ambrose: The Devil's Dictionary TOMB n. The House of Indifference. Tombs are now by common consent invested with a certain sanctity, but when they have been long tenanted it is considered no sin to break them open and rifle them, the famous Egyptologist, Dr. Huggyns, explaining that a tomb may be innocently "glened" as soon as its occupant is done "smellynge," the soul being then all exhaled. This reasonable view is now generally accepted by archaeologists, whereby the noble science of Curiosity has been greatly dignified. -- Bierce, Ambrose: The Devil's Dictionary ULTIMATUM n. In diplomacy, a last demand before resorting to concessions. -- Bierce, Ambrose: The Devil's Dictionary WEAKNESSES n.pl. Certain primal powers of Tyrant Woman wherewith she holds dominion over the male of her species, binding him to the service of her will and paralyzing his rebellious energies. -- Bierce, Ambrose: The Devil's Dictionary YEAR n. A period of three hundred and sixty-five disappointments. -- Bierce, Ambrose: The Devil's Dictionary Abort, v. To correct a misconception. -- Godling's Glossary, http://www.fqa.com/dave/A.html Gay, adj. Childless, and therefore, happy. -- Godling's Glossary, http://www.fqa.com/dave/G.html Lynch mob: The People's Court. -- Godling's Glossary, http://www.fqa.com/dave/L.html Nanocomputing, n. Making little things count. -- Godling's Glossary, http://www.fqa.com/dave/N.html Pi. The Greek letter P or p, corresponding to the roman p. A number, represented by said letter, expressing the ratio of the circumference of a perfect circle to its diameter. The value of pi has been calculated to many millions of decimal places, to no readily apparent purpose: no perfect circles or spheres exist in nature, since matter is composed of atoms and therefore lumpy, not smooth. Nature herself sometimes takes to rounding off the more extreme decimals of numbers when they get sufficiently small, as Prof. Heisenberg has pointed out. However, the continued extension of pi provides a harmless exercise of computer power which would otherwise be misused playing Quake or surfing pointless web sites. -- Godling's Glossary, http://www.fqa.com/dave/N.html Swimming pool, n. A walled-in pond (for Thoreau-going modernists). -- Godling's Glossary, http://www.fqa.com/dave/S.html Upload, v.i., v.t. To become a figment of your computer's imagination. -- Godling's Glossary, http://www.fqa.com/dave/U.html Spouse, n.: Someone who'll stand by you through all the trouble you wouldn't have had if you'd stayed single. Command, n.: Statement presented by a human and accepted by a computer in such a manner as to make the human feel as if he is in control. Recycling, n. A racist enterprise; it entails segregating white trash from the other kinds. Ozone, n. 1.The O3 molecule, a deadly pollutant (at ground level), produced by evil industrial processes. 2.The O3 molecule, a precious natural resource (in the upper atmosphere), threatened by evil industrial processes. 3.Zone inhabited by enviro-mental cases. Justice. A department of the U.S. government. There was once another word with the same spelling, which meant "fairness, decency, equitable resolution of disputes," but this latter term is now obsolete and the two bear no apparent etymological relation. Folly, n. Purposeful action planned poorly, i.e., by human beings. Folly is distinguished from stupidity thusly: the stupid person lacks mental horsepower, while the fool, possessing brains, is imperfectly perseverant in their application. This distinction is too subtle for many, and the fool is often confused with the idiot (when they are not being confused separately). Cyberspace, n. The space between William Gibson's ears. Unreal estate. The Promised Land of technology's Chosen People, which today's Moseses can see but not (yet) enter. Virtual realty. The place where you stop dreaming about computers and start being dreamed by them. Dave Krieger's Godlings Glossary: http://www.fqa.com/dave/C.html Correct, adj. In agreement with the opinions of the infallible. Politically correct. Inoffensive, except to those with respect for the language. Bum, n. An extinct land mammal of English-speaking countries. The common bum Hobo indolens seems to have been displaced from its ecological niche by the more recent species Hobo lunans, the homeless loon. The loon, with its piercing cry of "Gotta quatta? Gotta quatta?", is distinguishable from the bum only by a somewhat less steady gaze and significantly more aggressive foraging behavior. "Skiing: the art of catching cold and going broke while rapidly heading nowhere at great personal risk." -- anonymous "Diplomacy" is letting them have it your way. -- Harry Truman