After that [father's death] I never cried with any real conviction, nor expected much of anyone's God except indifference, nor loved deeply without fear that it would cost me dearly in pain. At the age of five I had become a skeptic and began to sense that any happiness that came my way might be the prelude to some grim cosmic joke.
Russell BakerTag: death atheism tragedy skeptic atheist skepticism
[n regard to Jesus believing himself inspired]
This belief carried no more personal imputation than the belief of Socrates that he was under the care and admonition of a guardian demon. And how many of our wisest men still believe in the reality of these inspirations while perfectly sane on all other subjects (Works, Vol. iv, p. 327).
Tag: insanity skeptic freethinker skepticism socrates freethought inspired
Religion is like a blind man looking in a black room for a black cat that isn't there, and finding it.
AnonymousTag: humor lies funny skeptic myth skepticism deceit wishful-thinking
[We need reforms] to make the Negro church a place where colored men and women of education and energy can work for the best things regardless of their belief or disbelief in unimportant dogmas and ancient and outworn creeds.
W.E.B. Du BoisTag: education religion dogma skeptic creed superstition ancient disbelief creeds humanist
The mystical trend of our time, which shows itself particularly in the rampant growth of the so-called Theosophy and Spiritualism, is for me no more than a symptom of weakness and confusion. Since our inner experiences consist of reproductions, and combinations of sensory impressions, the concept of a soul without a body seem to me to be empty and devoid of meaning.
- Albert Einstein, letter of February 5, 1921
Tag: reductionism mind self skeptic weakness meaning mysticism clarity confusion theosophy dualism
[On David Hume]
Although he never admitted to being an atheist as such, he was clearly and unquestionably the most vividly elegant skeptic of them all.
Tag: atheism skeptic atheist elegant david-hume
When in 1863 Thomas Huxley coined the phrase 'Man's Place in Nature,' it was to name a short collection of his essays applying to man Darwin's theory of evolution. The Origin of Species had been published only four years before, and the thesis that man was literally a part of nature, rather than an earthy vessel charged with some sublimer stuff, was so novel and so offensive to current metaphysics that it needed the most vigorous defense. Half the civilized world was rudely shocked, the other half skeptically amused.
Nearly a century has passed since the Origin shattered the complacency of the Victorian world and initiated what may be called the Darwinian revolution, an upheaval of man's ideas comparable to and probably exceeding in significance the revolution that issued from Copernicus's demonstration that the earth moves around the sun. The theory of evolution was but one of many factors contributing to the destruction of the ancient beliefs; it only toppled over what had already been weakened by centuries of decay, rendered suspect by the assaults of many intellectual disciplines; but it marked the beginning of the end of the era of faith.
Tag: science biology nature skeptic evolution naturalism metaphysics huxley intellect beliefs charles-darwin darwin origin-of-species victorian defense rude the-origin-of-species copernicus nicolaus-copernicus on-the-origin-of-species thomas-henry-huxley thomas-huxley amuse end-of-faith ancient-beliefs man-s-place-in-nature
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