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The eminent astronomer Sir Fred Hoyle has pointed out that it’s just about as unlikely that any complex living structure could spring into existence suddenly by luck alone. He said it’s rather like taking a junkyard and letting a hurricane blow through it and the hurricane has the luck to spontaneously assemble the Boeing 747. Richard Dawkins, lecture 3 Climbing Mount Improbable
Meet the Reverend William Paley. An old enemy of evolution. He put forward the most lucid argument to the existence of a creator. And his argument has been used ever since to try and shoot down Darwin. Paley likened all living things to a clock or watch. Random forces, he said, cannot explain how who all these beautiful springs and gears came together to tell time, nor can they explain the organs of living things. No purposeless process could ever fashion such intricate detail. No blind leap of chance could ever construct such complex machinery. Richard Dawkins, The Blind Watchmaker, Horizon, BBC 1987
Not vision, no foresight, no sight at all. If it can be said to play the role of watchmaker in Nature, it is the blind watchmaker. ibid.
Natural Selection ... has no vision, no foresight, no sight at all. If it can be said to play the role of watchmaker in nature, it is the blind watchmaker. Richard Dawkins, The Blind Watchmaker ch1, 1986
Suppose I had found a watch upon the ground, and it should be enquired how the watch happened to be in that place … the inference, we think, is inevitable; that the watch must have had a maker, that there must have existed, at some time and at some place or other, an artificer or artificers, who formed it for the purpose which we find it actually to answer; who comprehended its construction, and designed its use. William Paley, Natural Theology, 1802
I go in with twenty object lessons and preach for an hour. Heidi Ewing & Rachel Grady, Jesus Camp 2006, Pastor Becky Fischer
When seagulls follow a trawler, it is because they think sardines will be thrown into the sea. Eric Cantona
Analogies decide nothing, that is true, but they can make one feel more at home. Sigmund Freud, New Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis, 1933
No man putteth a piece of new cloth unto an old garment, for that which is put in to fill it up taketh from the garment, and the rent is made worse.
Neither do men put new wine into old bottles: else the bottles break, and the wine runneth out, and the bottles perish: but they put new wine into new bottles, and both are preserved. Matthew 9:16&17
The solution of the difficulty is that the two mental pictures which experiment lead us to form – the one of the particles, the other of the waves – are both incomplete and have only the validity of analogies which are accurate only in limiting cases. Werner Heisenberg
The world is full of hopeful analogies and handsome, dubious eggs, called possibilities. George Eliot
While analogies are useful, however, they can also be misleading. They smuggle in assumptions that can be wrong. Michael Mandelbaum
cf.
Though analogy is often misleading, it is the least misleading thing we have. Samuel Butler
We must be clear that when it comes to atoms, language can be used only as in poetry. The poet, too, is not nearly so concerned with describing facts as with creating images and establishing mental connections. Niels Bohr
In nature there’s something call the food chain. It’s where the shark eats the little shark, and the little shark eats the littler shark, and so on and so on and so on until you get down to the single-celled shark. So now you replace sharks with paper companies. And that is all you need to know about business. The Office US s5e13: Prince Family Paper, Michael, NBC 2008
The licked cupcakes in the chastity lesson always represented females. In Young Women’s, the cupcakes represented us – we didn’t want to be a licked cupcake. No-one wants a cupcake licked by someone else.
In Young Men’s, the cupcakes also represented girls. You boys were taught not to lick cupcakes that weren't yours. No-one else wants a licked cupcake, and neither do you.
Never once was I told that boys could be licked cupcakes. Never. What boys did was, I guess, none of our business. All we girls knew was not to let boys lick our cupcakes, or no one would want us. The burden of chastity was ours to bear, and the prospects of forgiveness for failure were grim ...
And as for the pompous pricks in Salt Lake City, ‘The Brethren’, they don’t respect women. They’re misogynistic assholes. Men who respect women don’t tell them how many earrings they can wear! They don’t shame men for marrying women more educated than themselves. They don’t seal themselves to other women after their long-suffering wives die, becoming eternal polygamists. They don’t tell young girls, contrary to the best interest of their families, to have babies before they're finished with school. I can’t stand those lying bastards! If I could, I’d fly to Salt Lake and kick Hinckley’s wrinkly, incontinent ass! KimberleyAnn, RFM board post 15th May 2007, ‘The Licked Cupcakes’
I very distinctly remember an object lesson in Young Women’s. A counselor in the bishopric came in and said he was going to give us a piece of peppermint candy. He opened it but ‘accidentally’ dropped it, then stepped on it, and just got it gross and dirty. Then he picked it up and asked us if any of us wanted it. Of course none of us did. Then he compared it to sleeping around.
Then, I remember lesson where someone literally had a salad prepared and brought it to class (may have been a Saturday stake youth activity, not sure). They asked us if we liked salad, and someone or all of us may have eaten it. Then he dumped a small amount of dirt in the salad and stirred it. He asked if anyone would eat the salad now. Of course no one would. He said ‘but there is hardly any dirt in the salad, are you sure you don't want it?’ No, we didn’t want it. Eventually he made the point that even just a little sin can ruin things. Always Thinking, RFM board post 10th November 2007, ‘Peppermint Candy’
When I was about 14 or so, I went to a combined mutual night (all the teenaged boys and girls together).
We were all given make believe airline tickets and told we were all going on a flight to a fun and exciting tropical paradise. Some of the adult members were dressed as stewardesses, pilot etc. We all boarded this make believe plane (between the chapel and cultural hall where there is a twelve-foot wide space between the big curtain dividers). They served us snacks and tried hard to make it seem real. Most of us were cutting up, not paying much attention because the whole thing was a little pre-adolescent.
Then it happened. The pilot comes on and says we have some sort of engine trouble, they blink the lights for about a minute while engine noises, wind and stuff are piped through the sound system then some sort of plane crash noise. Some of us boys are still carrying on hamming it up screaming like the girls etc. Then all goes quiet and everything goes dark.
One of the leaders then states, ‘You are all dead now.’ Things got pretty serious at this point. We all got sober. It wasn’t funny anymore.
Then a few lights went on and an adult member came in dressed in white and started saying things like, ‘Were you ready to die tonight? Your time is up and it’s too late to repent, Where will you go? Will you be with your family forever or somewhere else?’ etc. Some of the girls started crying and everything really hit an all-time low. Inconceivable, board post 10th November 2007, ‘The Plane Crash’
It was a stake fireside, I was about twenty, and this guy is giving a talk and he held up a plate and said that this plate came from Nauvoo and had been in their family since that time and it was really special to the family and that he was going to pass it around. Well the first six pews in the center were filled and I was on the second row, when it got to the third row and suddenly right behind me you heard the plate break. Everyone was stunned and in silence – part of it was underneath me and I was throwing the parts back towards the guy being so shy and scared.
The guy who was giving the talk came down and took the plate and was almost in tears – finally when he came back up to the stand he smiled and said it wasn’t true it was an old plate but was just a regular plate. People were saying like ‘What the hell!’ He asked how we felt when we heard the sound of the plate break and some answered that they felt really bad and then he said that we should feel this way towards non-members we should feel sad and sorry for them. As I looked back – this guy and the guy behind me who was in on it, should have been flogged.
This is the way they keep people in line so just like the old story of taking the rope off the elephant and it won’t wonder very far as it still thinks it’s bound to the tree. thestyleguy, RMF board post 10th November 2007, ‘The Broken Plate’
This was done at about five or six homes. The Young Women were hurt and offended and apparently were saying mean things about the door shutters and some Young Women were in tears. There were two leaders with each tribe and only one knew this was a lesson, the other was just as hurt as the girls.
After enough of this shunning, the leader in the know explained to the girls that they were turned away so they would know how Joseph and Mary felt, being turned away over and over again on a cold night when they were trying to find shelter.