"You know who my gods are, who I believe in fervently? Herman Melville, Emily Dickinson - she’s probably the top - Mozart, Shakespeare, Keats. These are wonderful gods who have gotten me through the narrow straits of life."Maurice Sendak, Interview on Fresh Air (2003) (via fortuneandglory)
“I.U.D.? I.U.Don’t!”
"I was forced, through seeing the error of their foundation, to abandon all belief in every religion which had been taught to man. But my religious feelings were immediately replaced by the spirit of universal charity - not for a sect, or a party, or for a country or a color - but for the human race, and with a real and ardent desire to do good."Robert Owen in The Life of Robert Owen (via fortuneandglory)
(Source: books.google.com)
"About belief or lack of belief in an afterlife: Some of you may know that I am neither Christian nor Jewish nor Buddhist, nor a conventionally religious person of any sort. I am a humanist, which means, in part, that I have tried to behave decently without any expectation of rewards or punishments after I’m dead."Kurt Vonnegut, God Bless You, Dr. Kevorkian (via fortuneandglory)
I have read some ridiculous Facebook chain stories in my day, but this one might take the cake.
Holy. Shit.
Galileo was wrong.
Or so says Dr. Robert Sungenis – and he’s a doctor who also has a Wikipedia page, which means it’s true. Forget the fact that his degrees have no relation to science. This man is well-studied and well-rounded with his B.A. in religion from George Washington University, an M.A. in theology from a “theological seminary” that “trains pastors, teachers, and Bible specialists,” and his doctorate from the unaccredited “distance learning” institution that is Calamus International University. In other words, this man is a pioneer of science.
Oh, hell - even I’m cringing from my own sarcasm. This “doctor” has degrees that provide him as much intellectual credence as a certificate from the Academy of Performing Art in Clowning. Calamus International University is a well known diploma mill, which by definition is “an organization that awards academic degrees and diplomas with substandard or no academic study and without recognition by official educational accrediting bodies” (Sources: 1, 2, 3). Pay the fee, get the degree. Texas even has it on a list of “Institutions Whose Degrees are Illegal to Use” for being a “fraudulent or substandard degree.”
Which means that his “First Annual Catholic Conference on Geocentrism” – geocentrism being the belief that the Earth is the center of the universe – will be a waste of one’s hard-earned $50… unless, of course, one is looking for some masochistic amusement on a lazy Saturday afternoon. As it’s described on the website for the conference, it will give “a detailed and comprehensive treatment of the scientific evidence supporting Geocentrism, the academic belief that the Earth is immobile in the center of the universe.” Oh, I’d love to hear this.
The site is amusing, really… until one realizes how absolutely serious these folks are about this stuff. This is anti-intellectualism at its most bizarre. As one might presume, the purpose of all of this is so that Sungenis can sell his preposterous book, where he plasters his false PhD on the cover in an attempt to lend some sort of faux credibility to his nonsensical blathering. As one may also have guessed by this point, a main source these clowns cite in their scientific and academic arguments? The Bible.
Yikes.
"I am an Agnostic because I am not afraid to think. I am not afraid of any god in the universe who would send me or any other man or woman to hell. If there were such a being, he would not be a god; he would be a devil."Clarence Darrow (1938)
(Source: sickeninglyliberal)
"Do you, good people, believe that Adam and Eve were created in the Garden of Eden and that they were forbidden to eat from the tree of knowledge? I do. The church has always been afraid of that tree. It still is afraid of knowledge. Some of you say religion makes people happy. So does laughing gas. So does whiskey. I believe in the brain of man. I’m not worried about my soul."Clarence Darrow (via sickeninglyliberal)
"If today you can take a thing like evolution and make it a crime to teach it in the public school, tomorrow you can make it a crime to teach it in the private schools, and the next year you can make it a crime to teach it to the hustings or in the church. At the next session you may ban books and the newspapers. Soon you may set Catholic against Protestant and Protestant against Protestant, and try to foist your own religion upon the minds of men. If you can do one you can do the other. Ignorance and fanaticism is ever busy and needs feeding. Always it is feeding and gloating for more. Today it is the public school teachers, tomorrow the private. The next day the preachers and the lectures, the magazines, the books, the newspapers. After a while, your honor, it is the setting of man against man and creed against creed until with flying banners and beating drums we are marching backward to the glorious ages of the sixteenth century when bigots lighted fagots to burn the men who dared to bring any intelligence and enlightenment and culture to the human mind."Clarence Darrow in the Scopes Trial (1925)
(Source: sickeninglyliberal)
"People go to church for the same reasons they go to a tavern: to stupefy themselves, to forget their misery, to imagine themselves, for a few minutes anyway, free and happy."Mikhail Aleksandrovich Bakunin (1814-1876)
(Source: sickeninglyliberal)
"I do not believe that religious people have a monopoly on morality."Barack Obama (via jojoholmes)
Dawkins’ Ten Commandments
Dawkins’ Ten Commandments
August 27th, 2009
In his latest book, The God Delusion, Richard Dawkins presents his own Alternative Ten Commandments. I enjoyed the list so much I wanted to share it here. [Edit: it has been pointed out that this list was not written by Dawkins, but only offered in his book. Whoever wrote it, I think it is a great list of principles. EDIT #2: It appears that the original list can be found here, written by one “Ebonmuse” who authors the site Daylight Atheism.]
1. Do not do to others what you would not want them to do to you
2. In all things, strive to cause no harm
3. Treat your fellow human beings, your fellow living things, and the world in general with love, honesty, faithfulness and respect.
4. Do not overlook evil or shrink from administering justice, but always be ready to forgive wrongdoing freely admitted and honestly regretted.
5. Live life with a sense of joy and wonder
6. Always seek to be learning something new
7. Test all things; always check your ideas against the facts, and be ready to discard even a cherished belief if it does not conform to them.
8. Never seek to censor or cut yourself off from dissent; always respect the right of others to disagree with you.
9. Form independent opinions on the basis of your own reason and experience; do not allow yourself to be led blindly by others.
10. Question everything
