The Born Again Hedonist

The Christian God

2011-06-27T12:29:00.000-07:00

“If a man beats his male or female slave with a club and the slave dies as a result, the owner must be punished. But if the slave recovers within a day or two, then the owner shall not be punished, since the slave is his property." -- Exodus 21:20-21

Isaac Asimov

2009-01-04T05:59:00.000-08:00

"[W]hen people thought the Earth was flat, they were wrong. When people thought the Earth was spherical they were wrong. But if you think that thinking the Earth is spherical is just as wrong as thinking the Earth is flat, then your view is wronger than both of them put together."

Sam Harris

2008-12-20T16:53:00.000-08:00

"Nothing that a Christian and a Muslim can say to each other
will render their beliefs mutually vulnerable to discourse, because
the very tenets of their faith have immunized them against the power of conversation. Believing strongly, without evidence, they have kicked themselves loose of the world. It is therefore in the very nature of faith to serve as an impediment to further inquiry."

David Hume

2008-10-26T16:37:00.001-07:00

"In our reasonings concerning matter of fact, there are all imaginable degrees of assurance, from the highest certainty to the lowest species of moral evidence. A wise man, therefore, proportions his belief to the evidence."

Julian Huxley

2008-08-14T16:34:00.000-07:00

I recall the story of the philosopher and the theologian. The two were engaged in disputation and the theologian used the old quip about a philosopher being like a blind man, in a dark room, looking for a black cat--which wasn't there. "That may be," said the philosopher; "but a theologian would have found it."

Denis Diderot

2008-07-14T17:51:00.000-07:00

"Scepticism is the first step towards truth."

Carl Sagan

2008-06-02T13:09:00.000-07:00

"The suppression of uncomfortable ideas may be common in religion or in politics, but it is not the path to knowledge, and there's no place for it in the endeavor of science. We do not know beforehand where fundamental insights will arise from about our mysterious and lovely solar system. The history of our study of our solar system shows us clearly that accepted and conventional ideas are often wrong, and that fundamental insights can arise from the most unexpected sources."

Bertrand Russell

2008-05-30T16:30:00.000-07:00

"Most of the greatest evils that man has inflicted upon man have come through people feeling quite certain about something which, in fact, was false."

Robert Green Ingersoll

2008-05-14T20:10:00.000-07:00

"I admit that reason is a small and feeble flame, a flickering torch by stumblers carried in the star-less night, -- blown and flared by passion's storm, -- and yet, it is the only light. Extinguish that, and nought remains."

Sam Harris

2008-05-12T15:58:00.000-07:00

"The president of the United States has claimed, on more than one occasion, to be in dialogue with God. If he said that he was talking to God through his hairdryer, this would precipitate a national emergency. I fail to see how the addition of a hairdryer makes the claim more ridiculous or offensive."

Mark Twain

2008-05-01T17:39:00.000-07:00

"Often, the less there is to justify a traditional custom, the harder it is to get rid of it."

Baron d'Holbach

2008-04-26T16:01:00.000-07:00

"When we examine the opinions of men, we find that nothing is more uncommon, than common sense; or, in other words, they lack judgment to discover plain truths, or to reject absurdities, and palpable contradictions."

Voltaire

2008-04-18T14:48:00.001-07:00

"Love truth, but pardon error."

David Hume

2008-04-14T12:46:00.001-07:00

"All sentiment is right; because sentiment has a reference to nothing beyond itself, and is always real, wherever a man is conscious of it. But all determinations of the understanding are not right; because they have a reference to something beyond themselves, to wit, real matter of fact; and are not always conformable to that standard."

Christopher Hitchens

2008-04-08T17:37:00.000-07:00

"My own view is that this planet is used as a penal colony, lunatic asylum and dumping ground by a superior civilization, to get rid of the undesirable and unfit. I can't prove it, but you can't disprove it either. It happens to be my view, but it doesn't challenge any of the findings of Darwin or Huxley or Einstein or Hawking."

Mark Twain

2008-03-31T14:43:00.000-07:00

"Arguments have no chance against petrified training; they wear it as little as the waves wear a cliff."

Sam Harris

2008-03-28T14:46:00.001-07:00

"The core of science is not mathematical modeling. It is intellectual honesty. It is a willingness to have our certainties about the world constrained by good evidence and good argument."

Richard Dawkins

2008-03-14T11:34:00.000-07:00

"My last vestige of "hands off religion" respect disappeared in the smoke and choking dust of September 11th 2001, followed by the "National Day of Prayer," when prelates and pastors did their tremulous Martin Luther King impersonations and urged people of mutually incompatible faiths to hold hands, united in homage to the very force that caused the problem in the first place."

Christopher Hitchens

2008-03-04T11:49:00.001-08:00

"What can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence."

Sam Harris

2008-02-22T15:51:00.000-08:00

"Every religion preaches the truth of propositions for which it has no evidence. In fact, every religion preaches the truth of propositions for which no evidence is even conceivable."