Quotes 10

"Science is what we have learned about how to keep from fooling ourselves."--Richard Feynman

"Science has the power to illuminate, but not to solve, the deeper problems of mankind. For always after knowledge come choice and action, both of them intensely personal."--Professor Paul B. Sears, University of Oklahoma, Deserts on the March--1935

"The right defence against false sentiments is to inculcate just sentiments. By starving the sensibility of our pupils we only make them easier prey to the propagandist when he comes. For famished nature will be avenged and a hard heart is no infallible protection against a soft head."--C.S. Lewis, "Men Without Chests," "The Abolition of Man"

"The aim of education is to make the pupil like and dislike what he ought."--Aristotle

"We must, however, acknowledge. . . that man with all of his noble qualities, with sympathy which feels for the most debased, with benevolence which extends not only to other men but to the humblest living creature, with his god-like intellect which has penetrated into the movements and constitution of the solar system. . . man still bears in his bodily frame the indelible stamp of his lowly origin."--From Charles Darwin, "The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex," 1871

"What you just said is one of the most insanely idiotic things I've ever heard. At no point were you even close to anything that could be considered a rational thought. Everyone in this room is now dumber for having listened to it. I award you no points, and may God have mercy on your soul" - Billy Madison (stole this from Palumbo's wall. BWAHAHAHAHAHA)

I would call him sophomoric, but that would be offensive to the sophomores - Alvin Plantiga on Richard Dawkins (Another one stolen from Palumbo's wall. HEHEHEHEHEHEHEHEHEHE *cough cough*)

"God is a most free agent, and created the world not out of necessity but volunatrily, having framed it as he pleased and thougth fit at the beginning of things, when there was no substance but himself and consequently no creature to which he could be obliged, or which he could be limited."--Robert Boyle, "A Free Enquiry," 160

"Rational inquiry must inevitably, in Linnaeus's opinion, lead, not to skepticism or disbelief, but to the acknowledgement of and respect for an omniscient and omnipotent Creator."--James L. Larson, "Reason and Experience," 151

"For the characters and impressions of wisdom that are conspicuous in the curious fabric and orderly train of things can with no probability be referred to blind chance, but must be ascribed to a most intelligent and designing agent."--Robert Boyle, "A Free Enquiry," 101

"Darwin's work is most important and suits my puropose in that it provides a basis in natural science for teh historical and class struggle. One does, of course, have to put up with the clumsy English style of argument. Despite all shortcomings, it is here that, for teh first time, 'teleology' in natural science is not only dealt a moratl blow but its rational meaning is empirically explained."--Karl Marx, in a letter to Ferdinand Lassalle: http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1861/letters/61_01_16.html

"Politically, yes I was. But at that moment what exercised the major influence on my ideas about the origin of life was the postulates of Darwin's theory of evolution."--Aleksandr Oparin, when asked if he had been a Marxist in 1924

"What would Dennett know about what life is? He barely knows anything but his own preconceptions about the mental states he loves to write about. He is a polished and entertaining writer, and an ok philosopher, but all his books are merely vehicles to express his amazing hatred of theistic, or even simply subjective, interpretations of the mind."--John Scalo, Trevor's astronomy professor

"To say that peer-review has not become a very conservative process when an ideologically sensitive issue is at stake in science is to be naive in the extreme."--Stephen C. Meyer, "Talk of the Times" with Peter D. Ward

"A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it."--Quantum physicist, Max Planck, 1949

"There are two distinct issues: What makes a belief well founded (or heuristically fertile)? And what makes a belief scientific? . . . Our focus should be squarely on teh empirical and conceptual credentials for claims about the world. The 'scientific' status of those claims is altogether irrelevant." Philosopher of Science Larry Laudan, 1983

"From Friends: Ross on Evolution

Ross: Okay, Pheebs. See how I'm making these little toys move? Opposable thumbs. Without evolution, how do you explain opposable thumbs?

Phoebe: Maybe the overlords needed them to steer their spacecrafts.

Ross: Please tell me you're joking.

Phoebe: What is this obsessive need you have to make everyone agree with you? NO, what that all about? you know what I think? I think maybe it's time you put Ross under the microscope.

Ross: Is the blood coming out of my ears?"

"I believe in evolution and I think when it comes to business and the roots of business and the fundamentals of business, I don't think that ever changes. I think teh idea of change is an illusion, but in nature it's necessary to change and perhaps buisness is a part of nature. I'm not totally sure."--Elliot Gould

"Darwinian political theorists themselves cling tenaciously to moral aspirations--for nobility and universal justice--that cannot be adequately defended on the basis of their evolutionary naturalism." Indeed, Larry Arnhart's "Darwinian political theory . . . provides the basis for no useful moral teaching at all."--Political scientist Carson Holloway, 2006

"We are not some causal and meaningless product of evolution. EAch of us is the result of the thought of God."--Pope Benedict XVI, inaugural homily, 2005

"From Friends: Ross on evolution

Ross: You don't believe in evolution?

Phoebe: I don't know, it's just, you know . . . monkeys, Darwin, you know, it's a, it's a nice story, I just think it's a little too easy.

Ross: Too easy? Too . . . the process of every living thing on this planet evolving over millions of years from single-celled organisms is . . . is too easy?

Phoebe: Yeah, I just don't buy it.

Ross: Uh, excuse me. Evolution is not for you to buy, Phoebe. Evolution is scientific fact, like, like, like the air we breathe, like gravity.

Phoebe: Oh, okay, don't get me started on gravity.

Ross: You don't believe in gravity?

Phoebe: Well, its' not so much that, you know, like, I don't believe in it, you know, it's just . . . I don't know, lately I get the feeling that I"m not so much being pulled down as I am being pushed."

"We will enter an order permanently enjoining Defendants [the Dover school board] from . . . requring teachers to denigrate or disparage the scientific theory of evolution."--Judge John E. Jones III, 2005

"I lost my job at George Mason University fro teaching the problems with evolution. Lots of scientists question evolution, but they would lose their jobs if they spoke out."--Caroline Crocker, quoted in the Washington Post, February 5, 2006.

"A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it."--Quantum physicist Max Planck, 1949.

"Ewww . . . intelligent design people! They're just buck-toothed, Bible-pushing nincompoops with community-college degrees who're trying to sell a gussied-up creationism to a cretinous public! No need to address their concerns or respond to their arguments. They are Not Science. They are poopy-heads. There. I just saved you the trouble of reading 90 percent of the responses to the ID position . . . . This is how losers act just before they lose: arrogant, self-satisfied, too important to be bothered with substantive refutation, and disdainful of their own faults . . . . The only remaining question is whether Darwinism will exit gracefully, or wehtehr it will go down biting, screaming, censoring, and denouncing to the bitter end."--Tech Central Station contrbutor Douglas Kern, 2005

"Although they are able to to tell us what may be said, they can't tell us what we may think . . . . Science has never been decided by judicial fiat."--Cornell IDEA Club founder Hannah Maxson, 2005

"Real science never has to resort to credentialism. If soemone with no credentials raises a legitimate question, it is not an answer to point out how uneducated or unqualified the questioner is. In fact, it is pretty much an admission that you don't have an answer, so you want the questioner to go away."--Author Orson Scott Card, 2005

"One thinks of scientists as calm, intelligent people, perhaps wearing white smocks, who take on questions to which we don't know the answers, think about them carefully, and test various explanations experimentally until they come up with one that solves the problem . . . . But that hasn't been the reaction of evolutionists to intelligent design at all. They have all but bitten themselves in two trying to drive it straight out of the realm of serious discussion."--Columnist William Rusher, 2005