macgyver - 22 May 2012 08:26 AM

“Everyone here who believes in telekinesis please raise my hand”

“Science, not religion, has taught me my most useful values, among them intellectual honesty.  It is better to go without answers than to accept those that merely resolve puzzlement.”

B. F. Skinner

macgyver - 22 May 2012 08:26 AM

“Everyone here who believes in telekinesis please raise my hand”

Love it, macgyver! 

Here’s a similar one, though not as clever, attributed to a N.Y. City police detective: “I’ve gone into hundreds of [fortune-teller’s parlors], and have been told thousands of things, but nobody ever told me I was a policewoman getting ready to arrest her.”

This is one of my current favorites:

“Thinking is skilled work. It is not true that we are naturally endowed with the ability to think clearly and logically—without learning how, or without practicing… People with untrained minds should no more expect to think clearly and logically than people who have never learned and never practiced can expect to find themselves good carpenters, golfers, bridge-players, or pianists.”

Alfred Mander, psychologist (1947)

Take care,

Derek

macgyver - 22 May 2012 08:26 AM

“Everyone here who believes in telekinesis please raise my hand”

I believe that was from the comedian Steven Wright.

Take care,

Derek

Good one, Derek. Yesterday I saw another good one on thinking by His Awesomeness, Neil deGrasse Tyson:

“Knowing how to think empowers you far beyond those who know only what to think.”

If 50 million people believe a foolish thing, it is still a foolish thing. — Anatole France (1844-1924)

Equal Opportunity Curmudgeon - 23 May 2012 05:37 AM

If 50 million people believe a foolish thing, it is still a foolish thing. — Anatole France (1844-1924)

Stolen.

“It is not the function of the government to keep the citizen from falling into error; it is the function of the citizen to keep the government from falling into error.”—U.S. Supreme Court Justice, Robert H. Jackson, 1950

Take care,

Derek

Something from the Enlightenment era:

“If we go back to the beginning of things, we shall always find that ignorance and fear created the gods; that imagination, rapture, and deception embellished or distorted them; that weakness worships them, that credulity nourishes them; that custom spears them; and that tyranny favours them in order to profit from the blindness of men” - Baron d’ Holbach

“Say what you will about the ten commandments, you must always come back to the pleasant fact that there are only ten of them”.

“Nature abhors a moron”.

H.L. Mencken

Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by rulers as useful.
—Seneca, quoted from Famous Dead Non-theists

“Infidelity does not consist in believing, or in disbelieving; it consists in professing to believe what he does not believe.”
— Thomas Paine

This one helped me when I was struggling with my (lack of) faith. I was pretending to believe in stuff I no longer believed.

From the movie Bruce Almighty, which features Morgan Freeman as God: (paraphrasing)

God to Bruce: “That’s the problem nowadays. Everyone is always looking UP for solutions to their problems.”

I like this because it fits with my little notion that even IF there’s a god and a heaven, heaven will be filled with mostly atheists and agnostics.

Ok here’s two.

I blame this all on the English; you sent a boatload of Pilgrims.  Just think if the Mayflower had been full of Italians.  Davis Lucas - vineyard owner from California commenting on his lawsuit against New York State prohibiting direct (mail) sales of wine from out of state.

The time between sundown and sunrise belongs to the teller of tales and makers of music.  From a t-shirt at Pocono’s Blues Fest 2005

“If you’re old, don’t try to change yourself, change your environment.”

B.F. Skinner