On the way from the Renaissance to our days we have enriched our experience, but we have lost the concept of a Supreme Complete Entity which used to restrain our passions and our irresponsibility. We have placed too much hope in political and social reforms, only to find out that we were being deprived of our most precious possession: our spiritual life. In the East, it is destroyed by the dealings and machinations of the ruling party. In the West, commercial interests tend to suffocate it. This is the real crisis.
Aleksandr SolzhenitsynTags: atheism consumerism materialism communism
The author's projected intellectual climate nearly 500 years in the future proclaims itself too pragmatic to consider living well as important as material satisfaction. This reminds us, ironically, that choosing NOT to consider life's deeper questions is in itself a choice with profound and lasting consequences.
Bryan M. LitfinTags: philosophy materialism pragmatism
[When a religious couple wrote to Sagan about fulfilled prophecies, he wrote back in May 1996:]
If ‘fulfilled prophecy’ is your criterion, why do you not believe in materialistic science, which has an unparalleled record of fulfilled prophecy? Consider, for example, eclipses.
Tags: science belief materialism prophecies record criteria eclipses fulfilled-prophecies materialistic-science
Materialism, attachment to things of the world, includes pride. Many religious people suffer from pride: taking pleasure or even delight in being good, or religious.
Idries ShahTags: religion pleasure materialism pride sufi attachment sufism
Our life consists not in the pursuit of material success but in the quest for worthy spiritual growth. Our entire earthly existence is but a transitional stage in the movement toward something higher, and we must not stumble and fall, nor must we linger fruitlessly on one rung of the ladder. Material laws alone do not explain our life or give it direction. The laws of physics and physiology will never reveal the indisputable manner in which the Creator constantly, day in and day out, participates in the life of each of us, unfailingly granting us the energy of existence; when this assistance leaves us, we die. And in the life of our entire planet, the Divine Spirit surely moves with no less force: this we must grasp in our dark and terrible hour.
Aleksandr SolzhenitsynTags: christianity spirituality materialism
I believe the defenders of intelligent design deserve our gratitude for challenging a scientific world view that owes some of the passion displayed by its adherents precisely to the fact that it is thought to liberate us from religion. That world view is ripe for displacement....
Thomas NagelTags: science evolution naturalism materialism darwinism intelligent-design macroevolution id
In thinking about these questions I have been stimulated by criticisms of the prevailing scientific world picture... by the defenders of intelligent design. Even though writers like Michael Behe and Stephen C. Meyer are motivated at least in part by their religious beliefs, the empirical arguments they offer against the likelihood that the origin of life and its evolutionary history can be fully explained by physics and chemistry are of great interest in themselves. Another skeptic, David Berlinski, has brought out these problems vividly without reference to the design inference. Even if one is not drawn to the alternative of an explanation by the actions of a designer, the problems that these iconoclasts pose for the orthodox scientific consensus should be taken seriously. They do not deserve the scorn with which they are commonly met. It is manifestly unfair.
Thomas NagelTags: science evolution naturalism materialism darwinism intelligent-design macroevolution id
Needs multiply as they are met. Woe to the man who would live a disentangled life. Be on guard, my soul, of complicating your environment so that you have neither time nor room for growth!
Elisabeth ElliotTags: materialism busyness
Whoever prefers the material comforts of life over intellectual wealth is like the owner of a palace who moves into the servants’ quarters and leaves the sumptuous rooms empty.
Marie von Ebner-EschenbachTags: intelligence materialism intellectual
To be content with little is difficult; to be content with much, impossible.
Marie von Ebner-EschenbachTags: materialism content
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