Are you Stephen Hawkings? But are you Stephen Hawkings though? Do you wish to be Stephen Hawkings? When you are at home, right, when you are at home, right, when you are at home, do you pretend to be Stephen Hawkings? The Catherine Tate Show s3e7: Gingers for Justice, schoolgirl to science teacher, BBC 2006
Science is eating the lunch of Religion. Steven Weinberg, interview Professor Richard Dawkins
They felt that science would be a corrosive to religious belief and they were worried about it. Damn it, I think they were right. Steven Weinberg
Religions die when they are proven to be true. Science is the record of dead religions. Oscar Wilde
You will find men like him in all of the world’s religions. They know that we represent reason and science, and, however confident they may be in their beliefs, they fear that we will overthrow their gods. Not necessarily through any deliberate act, but in a subtler fashion. Science can destroy a religion by ignoring it as well as by disproving its tenets. No one ever demonstrated, so far as I am aware, the nonexistance of Zeus or Thor, but they have few followers now. Arthur C Clarke, Childhood’s End
Science is the only religion of mankind. ibid.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. Arthur C Clarke, Profiles of the Future (Clarke’s Third Law)
When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong. Arthur C Clarke, Profiles of the Future, 1962
Now, the invention of the scientific method and science is, I’m sure we’ll all agree, the most powerful intellectual idea, the most powerful framework for thinking and investigating and understanding and challenging the world around us that there is, and that it rests on the premise that any idea is there to be attacked and if it withstands the attack then it lives to fight another day and if it doesn’t withstand the attack then down it goes. Religion doesn’t seem to work like that; it has certain ideas at the heart of it which we call sacred or holy or whatever. That’s an idea we’re so familiar with, whether we subscribe to it or not, that it’s kind of odd to think what it actually means, because really what it means is ‘Here is an idea or a notion that you’re not allowed to say anything bad about; you’re just not. Why not? – because you’re not!’ Douglas Adams
The fact that we live at the bottom of a deep gravity well, on the surface of a gas covered planet going around a nuclear fireball 90 million miles away and think this to be normal is obviously some indication of how skewed our perspective tends to be. Douglas Adams, The Salmon of Doubt: Hitchhiking the Galaxy One Last Time
We are stuck with technology when what we really want is just stuff that works. ibid.
‘But what about the End of the Universe? We’ll miss the big moment.’
‘I’ve seen it. It’s rubbish,’ said Zaphod, ‘nothing but a gnab gib.’
‘A what?’
‘Opposite of a big bang. Come on, let’s get zappy.’ Douglas Adams, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe
Humans are not proud of their ancestors, and rarely invite them round to dinner. Douglas Adams
Formerly, when religion was strong and science weak, men mistook magic for medicine; now, when science is strong and religion weak, men mistake medicine for magic. Thomas Szasz, The Second Sin, 1973
The religion that is afraid of science dishonours God and commits suicide ... Every influx of atheism, of scepticism, is thus made useful as a mercury pill assaulting and removing a diseased religion, and making way for truth. Ralph Waldo Emerson
Bad times have a scientific value. These are occasions a good learner would not miss. Ralph Waldo Emerson
I believe with all my heart in a respectful even loving concordat between science and religion. Stephen Jay Gould
Science is an integral part of culture. It’s not this foreign thing, done by an arcane priesthood. It’s one of the glories of human intellectual tradition. Stephen Jay Gould
Scepticism is the agent of reason against organized irrationalism – and is therefore one of the keys to human social and civic decency. Stephen Jay Gould
The priests of the different religious sects ... dread the advance of science as witches do the approach of daylight, and scowl on the fatal harbinger announcing the subdivision of the duperies on which they live. Thomas Jefferson
And here is the point, about myself and my co-thinkers. Our belief is not a belief. Our principles are not a faith. We do not rely solely upon science and reason, because these are necessary rather than sufficient factors, but we distrust anything that contradicts science or outrages reason. We may differ on many things, but what we respect is free inquiry, openmindedness, and the pursuit of ideas for their own sake. Christopher Hitchens, God is Not Great p5
Religion has run out of justifications. Thanks to the telescope and the microscope, it no longer offers an explanation of anything important. ibid. p282
So this is where all the vapid talk about the ‘soul’ of the universe is actually headed. Once the hard-won principles of reason and science have been discredited, the world will not pass into the hands of credulous herbivores who keep crystals by their sides and swoon over the poems of Khalil Gibran. The ‘vacuum’ will be invaded instead by determined fundamentalists of every stripe who already know the truth by means of revelation and who actually seek real and serious power in the here and now. One thinks of the painstaking, cloud-dispelling labour of British scientists from Isaac Newton to Joseph Priestley to Charles Darwin to Ernest Rutherford to Alan Turing and Francis Crick, much of it built upon the shoulders of Galileo and Copernicus, only to see it casually slandered by a moral and intellectual weakling from the usurping House of Hanover. An awful embarrassment awaits the British if they do not declare for a republic based on verifiable laws and principles, both political and scientific. Christopher Hitchens
Beware the irrational, however seductive. Shun the ‘transcendent’ and all who invite you to subordinate or annihilate yourself. Distrust compassion; prefer dignity for yourself and others. Don’t be afraid to be thought arrogant or selfish. Picture all experts as if they were mammals. Never be a spectator of unfairness or stupidity. Seek out argument and disputation for their own sake; the grave will supply plenty of time for silence. Suspect your own motives, and all excuses. Do not live for others any more than you would expect others to live for you. Christopher Hitchens
That which can be asserted without evidence, can be dismissed without evidence. Christopher Hitchens, attributions & variations
We owe a huge debt to Galileo for emancipating us all from the stupid belief in an Earth-centered or man-centered (let alone God-centered) system. He quite literally taught us our place and allowed us to go on to make extraordinary advances in knowledge. Christopher Hitchens
There is a conflict between Religion and Science. Sam Harris, lecutre New York Society for Ethical Culture 2005
Every one of the world’s ‘great’ religions utterly trivializes the immensity and beauty of the cosmos. Books like the Bible and the Koran get almost every significant fact about us and our world wrong. Every scientific domain – from cosmology to psychology to economics – has superseded and surpassed the wisdom of Scripture. Sam Harris
Are you really surprised by the endurance of religion? What ideology is likely to be more durable than one that conforms, at every turn, to our powers of wishful thinking? Hope is easy; knowledge is hard. Science is the one domain in which we human beings make a truly heroic effort to counter our innate biases and wishful thinking. Science is the one endeavour in which we have developed a refined methodology for separating what a person hopes is true from what he has good reason to believe. The methodology isn’t perfect, and the history of science is riddled with abject failures of scientific objectivity. But that is just the point – these have been failures of science, discovered and corrected by – what, religion? No, by good science. Sam Harris
The core of Science is not a mathematical model – it is intellectual honesty. Sam Harris
It is also worth noting that one can obtain a Phd in any branch of science for no other purpose than to make cynical use of scientific language in an effort to rationalize the glaring inadequacies of the Bible. A handful of Christians appear to have done this; some have even obtained their degrees from reputable universities. No doubt, others will follow in their footsteps. While such people are technically ‘scientist’, they are not behaving like scientists. They simply are not engaged in an honest inquiry into the nature of the universe. And their proclamations about God and the failures of Darwinism do not in the least signify that there is a legitimate scientific controversy about evolution. Sam Harris, The End of Faith
There is a sense in which the road to atheism is paved not with science but with religious intentions. Jonathan Miller
Too stupid to understand science? Try religion. T-shirts and bumper stickers
Science flies to the moon; religion flies into buildings. Spongebobbluvr82