Post by Emperor AAdmin on Jul 30, 2005 19:20:06 GMT -5
Quotes on Religion
by: iapetus72
(10/2/04 8:03 pm)
I don't think we're for anything we're just products of evolution. You can say Gee, your life must be pretty bleak if you don't think there's a purpose, but I'm anticipating a good lunch.
Dr. James Watson (1928-)
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 exist as an independent cause of natural events.
To be sure, the doctrine of a personal God interfering with the 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 persuaded that such behaviour on the part of the representatives of religion would not only be unworthy but also fatal
For a doctrine which is able 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 ....
If it is one of the goals of religions to liberate mankind as far as possible from the bondage of egocentric cravings, desires, and fears, scientific reasoning can aid religion in another sense.
Although it is true that it is the goal of science to discover (the) rules which permit the association and foretelling of facts, this is not its only aim.
It also seeks to reduce the connections discovered to the smallest possible number of mutually independent conceptual elements.
It is in this striving after the rational unification of the manifold that it encounters its greatest successes, even though it is precisely this attempt which causes it to run the greatest risk of falling a prey to illusion.
But whoever has undergone the intense experience of successful advances made in this domain, is moved by the profound reverence for the rationality made manifest in existence.
By way of the understanding he achieves a far reaching emancipation from the shackles of personal hopes and desires, and thereby attains that humble attitude of mind toward the grandeur of reason, incarnate in existence, and which, in its profoundest depths, is inaccessible to man.
This attitude, however, appears to me to be religious in the highest sense of the word.
And so it seems to me that science not only purifies the religious impulse of the dross of its anthropomorphism but also contributes to a religious spiritualization of our understanding of life.
Albert Einstein (1879-1955)
The religion of the future will be a cosmic religion. It should transcend personal God and avoid dogma and theology. Covering both the natural and the spiritual, it should be based on a religious sense arising from the experience of all things natural and spiritual as a meaningful unity. Buddhism answers this description. If there is any religion that could cope with modern scientific needs it would be Buddhism.
Albert Einstein (1879-1955)
But if there is no solace in the fruits of our research, there is at least some consolation in the research itself. Men and women are not content to comfort themselves with tales of gods and giants, or to confine their thoughts to the daily affairs of life; they also build telescopes and satellites and accelerators, and sit at their desks for endless hours working out the meaning of the data they gather. The effort to understand the universe is one of the very few things that lifts human life a little above the level of farce, and gives it some of the grace of tragedy.
Steven Weinberg The First Three Minutes. In formulating his ethical system Aristotle started with Plato's query: What is the end of life, the highest good toward which a man can aspire? Reasoning inductively, Aristotle showed that a man's highest aim is not merely to live, for that aim he shares with the whole of nature. Nor is it to feel, for that is shared with the animals. As man is the only being in the universe who possesses a rational soul, Aristotle concluded that man's highest aim is the activity of the soul in conformity with reason. Although Plato taught that every man should concentrate upon the particular virtue which was most necessary for him at his own stage of evolution, he declared that Justice is the highest of all virtues, being inherent in the soul itself. That idea is clarified by Mr. Judge's statement that "all is soul and spirit ever evolving under the rule of law (or Justice) which is inherent in the whole." Aristotle, on the other hand, taught that the highest virtue is intellectual contemplation.
I do not feel frightened by not knowing things, by being lost in a mysterious universe without any purpose, which it is as far as I can tell. It does not frighten me.
Richard Feynman (From the book GENIUS by James Gleick)
And the cause of everything is that which we call God. To know God and to live is the same thing. God is Life. What am I? A part of the infinite. It is indeed in these words that the whole problem lies. The essence of any religion lies solely in the answer to the question: why do I exist, and what is my relationship to the infinite universe that surrounds me? It is impossible for there to be a person with no religion (i.e. without any kind of relationship to the world) as it is for there to be a person without a heart. He may not know that he has a religion, just as a person may not know that he has a heart, but it is no more possible for a person to exist without a religion than without a heart. Leo Tolstoy, 1879