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9a9b3dc
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Shallow men believe in luck or in circumstance. Strong men believe in cause and effect.
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causation
kalam-cosmological-argument
inspirational
causality
serendipity
cause-and-effect
necessity
darwinism
chance
naturalism
luck
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Ralph Waldo Emerson |
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0ab6b31
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About once or twice every month I engage in public debates with those whose pressing need it is to woo and to win the approval of supernatural beings. Very often, when I give my view that there is no supernatural dimension, and certainly not one that is only or especially available to the faithful, and that the natural world is wonderful enough--and even miraculous enough if you insist--I attract pitying looks and anxious questions. How, in that case, I am asked, do I find meaning and purpose in life? How does a mere and gross materialist, with no expectation of a life to come, decide what, if anything, is worth caring about? Depending on my mood, I sometimes but not always refrain from pointing out what a breathtakingly insulting and patronizing question this is. (It is on a par with the equally subtle inquiry: Since you don't believe in our god, what stops you from stealing and lying and raping and killing to your heart's content?) Just as the answer to the latter question is: self-respect and the desire for the respect of others--while in the meantime it is precisely those who think they have divine permission who are truly capable of any atrocity--so the answer to the first question falls into two parts. A life that partakes even a little of friendship, love, irony, humor, parenthood, literature, and music, and the chance to take part in battles for the liberation of others cannot be called 'meaningless' except if the person living it is also an existentialist and elects to call it so. It could be that all existence is a pointless joke, but it is not in fact possible to live one's everyday life as if this were so. Whereas if one sought to define meaninglessness and futility, the idea that a human life should be expended in the guilty, fearful, self-obsessed propitiation of supernatural nonentities... but there, there. Enough.
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existence
morality
faith
religion
god
life
secular-ethics
supernaturalism
meaning-of-life
debate
existentialism
ethics
materialism
naturalism
atheism
respect
self-respect
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Christopher Hitchens |
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260fb5a
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Study, along the lines which the theologies have mapped, will never lead us to discovery of the fundamental facts of our existence. That goal must be attained by means of exact science and can only be achieved by such means. The fact that man, for ages, has superstitiously believed in what he calls a God does not prove at all that his theory has been right. There have been many gods - all makeshifts, born of inability to fathom the deep fundamental truth. There must be something at the bottom of existence, and man, in ignorance, being unable to discover what it is through reason, because his reason has been so imperfect, undeveloped, has used, instead, imagination, and created figments, of one kind or another, which, according to the country he was born in, the suggestions of his environment, satisfied him for the time being. Not one of all the gods of all the various theologies has ever really been proved. We accept no ordinary scientific fact without the final proof; why should we, then, be satisfied in this most mighty of all matters, with a mere theory
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immortality
makeshift
satisfaction
theory
wonder
reason
science
truth
inspirational
superstitious
falsehood
miracles
study
theology
naturalism
gods
destruction
soul
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Thomas A. Edison |
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14b4a95
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When it occurs to a man that nature does not regard him as important, and that she feels she would not maim the universe by disposing of him, he at first wishes to throw bricks at the temple, and he hates deeply the fact that there are no bricks and no temples.
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mankind
naturalism
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Stephen Crane |
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99f357d
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But recently I have learned from discussions with a variety of scientists and other non-philosophers (e.g., the scientists participating with me in the workshop on the future of naturalism) that they lean the other way: free will, in their view, is obviously incompatible with naturalism, with determinism, and very likely incoherent against any background, so they cheerfully insist that of course they don't have free will, couldn't have free will, but so what? It has nothing to do with morality or the meaning of life. Their advice to me at the symposium was simple: recast my pressing question as whether naturalism (materialism, determinism, science...) has any implications for what we may call moral competence. For instance, does neuroscience show that we cannot be responsible for our choices, cannot justifiably be praised or blamed, rewarded or punished? Abandon the term 'free will' to the libertarians and other incompatibilists, who can pursue their fantasies untroubled. Note that this is not a dismissal of the important issues; it's a proposal about which camp gets to use, and define, the term. I am beginning to appreciate the benefits of discarding the term 'free will' altogether, but that course too involves a lot of heavy lifting, if one is to avoid being misunderstood.
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free-will
science
incompatibilism
sean-carroll
determinism
naturalism
consciousness
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Daniel C. Dennett |
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cac6115
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"There is no indisputable proof for the big bang," said Hollus. "And there is none for evolution. And yet you accept those. Why hold the question of whether there is a creator to a higher standard?"
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science
big-bang
double-standards
materialism
id
macro-evolution
macroevolution
intelligent-design
religious-science-fiction
darwinism
theism
theistic-science-fiction
naturalism
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Robert J. Sawyer |
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f7f1a8e
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Science is opposed to theological dogmas because science is founded on fact. To me, the universe is simply a great machine which never came into being and never will end. The human being is no exception to the natural order. Man, like the universe, is a machine. Nothing enters our minds or determines our actions which is not directly or indirectly a response to stimuli beating upon our sense organs from without. Owing to the similarity of our construction and the sameness of our environment, we respond in like manner to similar stimuli, and from the concordance of our reactions, understanding is born. In the course of ages, mechanisms of infinite complexity are developed, but what we call 'soul' or 'spirit,' is nothing more than the sum of the functionings of the body. When this functioning ceases, the 'soul' or the 'spirit' ceases likewise. I expressed these ideas long before the behaviorists, led by Pavlov in Russia and by Watson in the United States, proclaimed their new psychology. This apparently mechanistic conception is not antagonistic to an ethical conception of life.
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universe
mind
nature
spirit
religion
science
life
behaviorism
behaviorists
first-cause
ivan-pavlov
ivan-petrovich-pavlov
john-b-watson
john-broadus-watson
stimuli
john-watson
pavlov
cosmology
astronomy
watson
goal
environment
determinism
ethics
theology
dogma
materialism
naturalism
consciousness
science-and-religion
life-after-death
physics
psychology
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Nikola Tesla |
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3cfa16e
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"It is either coincidence piled on top of coincidence," said Hollus, "or it is deliberate design."
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science
coincidenc-e
fine-tuning
id
intelligent-design
religious-science-fiction
theism
theistic-science-fiction
chance
naturalism
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Robert J. Sawyer |
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8a4826a
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No one disputes that seeming order can come out of the application of simple rules. But who wrote the rules?
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science
intelligent-design
religious-science-fiction
theism
theistic-science-fiction
naturalism
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Robert J. Sawyer |
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14ec96d
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"Nevertheless, he had, on a certain star-lit evening, said wonderingly and quite reverently: "Deh moon looks like hell, don't it?"
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humor
naturalism
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Stephen Crane |
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e2fc005
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The living cell is the most complex system of its size known to mankind. Its host of specialized molecules, many found nowhere else but within living material, are themselves already enormously complex. They execute a dance of exquisite fidelity, orchestrated with breathtaking precision. Vastly more elaborate than the most complicated ballet, the dance of life encompasses countless molecular performers in synergetic coordination. Yet this is a dance with no sign of a choreographer. No intelligent supervisor, no mystic force, no conscious controlling agency swings the molecules into place at the right time, chooses the appropriate players, closes the links, uncouples the partners, moves them on. The dance of life is spontaneous, self-sustaining, and self-creating.
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evolution
nature
science
life
molecules
complexity
cells
materialism
naturalism
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Paul Davies |
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622e758
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"Saint John, in a moment of confusion, tells us not to love the world because "all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life,is not of the Father, but is of the world." This injunction is at best a paradox. Our humble and astonishing inheritance is the world and only the world, whose existence we constantly test (and prove) by telling ourselves stories about it. The suspicion that we and the world are made in the image of something wonderfully and chaotically coherent far beyond our grasp, of which we are also part; the hope that our exploded cosmos and we, its stardust, have an ineffable meaning and method; the delight in retelling the old metaphor of the world as a book we read and in which we too are read; the conceit that what we can know of reality is an imagination made of language -- all this finds its material manifestation in that self-portrait we call a library. And our love for it, and our lust to see more of it, and our pride in its accomplishments as we wander through shelves full of books that promise more and more delights, are among our happiest, most moving proofs of possessing, in spite of all the miseries and sorrows of this life, a more intimate, consolatory, perhaps redeeming faith in a method behind the madness than any jealous deity could wish upon us."
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libraries
world
meaning
god
consolation
naturalism
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Alberto Manguel |
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6a289af
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But as the girl timidly accosted him, he gave a convulsive movement and saved his respectability by a vigorous side-step. He did not risk it to save a soul. For how was he to know that there was a soul before him that needed saving?
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stephen-crane
naturalism
soul
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Stephen Crane |
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6241450
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Anys was so skilled with plants and balms that she knew how to extract their fragrant oils, and these she wore on her person so that a light, pleasant scent, like summer fruits and flowers, always preceded her.
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year-of-wonders
herbalist
naturalism
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Geraldine Brooks |
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6918311
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Even connoisseurship can have politics, Slow Food wagers, since an eater in closer touch with his senses will find less pleasure in a box of Chicken McNuggets than in a pastured chicken or a rare breed of pig. It's all very Italian (and decidedly un-American) to insist that doing the right thing is the most pleasurable thing, and that the act of consumption might be an act of addition rather than subtraction.
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naturalism
pleasure
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Michael Pollan |