Ever Tried, Ever Failed...

The man himself.

There's a quote that's been bouncing around in my head for the past few weeks. It comes from Samuel Beckett's novella Worstward Ho, and it goes like this:

Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.

Seems a bit gloomy at first, doesn't it? What a pessimistic outlook, to believe you're in a constant state of failure. The common saying goes, "If at first you don't succeed, try, try again"—the implication being that eventually, you will.

Beckett's quote makes no such promise. If you try again, you'll fail again. But it's the last bit that's really stuck with me.

Fail better.

That two-word sentence, to me, crystallizes the essence of what makes us human. We're such tremendous failures, the human race. We still have no idea what we're doing, broadly speaking. We're puny, fragile, ignorant things. And yet we keep trundling along. We make mistakes... and eventually, we fail better.

It's not just the human race. It's the essence of science, of how we unlock the world around us. Our understanding of the universe has been built up incrementally, painstakingly over millennia.

There was a time when we thought the seat of our consciousness was in the heart and not the brain. What a spectacular failure. Today we know the specific functions of most parts of the brain, yet we still don't have a clue how they come together to create a "self." We've failed again—but better. Success is not in the nature of science. We don't set out to prove things, but rather to create flawed yet increasingly accurate models of the world.

And it's not just humanity or science. It's the essence of me. I fail constantly. I failed today. I'll fail tomorrow. And when I do, I will pick myself up, dust myself off and say:

No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.

My 5 Favorite Freethought Quotes

Now that I've done five installments of my Powerful Thoughts series, I thought it might be a good time to go back through and pick my five favorite quotes from among them. There were so many great ones that it was almost impossible to choose, so I made a Google doc for my 15 favorites. Here are the top five along with my comments:

5. "Answers are a luxury enjoyed only every now and then. So early on, learn to love the questions themselves." –Neil deGrasse Tyson

Curiosity is a great thing because it so often gives rise to discovery, but sometimes the answers elude us. It's easy to grow impatient and settle on the first convenient explanation that comes along even when the real answer is still out there. So we need to value the process of forming and testing hypotheses as much as actually arriving at conclusions—to value the journey as much as the destination. It requires us to think of unanswered questions not as obstacles to be overcome, but as invitations to explore our world.

4. "Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason, than that of blindfolded fear." –Thomas Jefferson

How wonderful it is that the same man who authored this quote was also a central Founding Father and our third president. We needed someone of his wisdom to guide this country in its formative years. During this period of American Enlightenment, intellectuals were already starting to question Christianity and embrace deism. But in a letter offering advice to his nephew, Jefferson had the audacity to suggest something that would be unthinkable to most people at the time.

The quote, highlighted on a page of the original letter.

This encouragement of radical, intrepid questioning should be an inspiration to skeptics everywhere. And he follows this by steamrolling the most common obstacle to investigating one's faith—the fear of divine retribution—in a way that beautifully echoes Galileo's disbelief that "the same God who has endowed us with senses, reason and intellect has intended us to forgo their use".

3. "Forget Jesus. The stars died so that you could be here today." –Lawrence Krauss

Plucked from a legendary 2009 physics lecture entitled "A Universe From Nothing," this statement on our origins may at first seem shallow in its irreverence, but I don't see it that way. Too often religions like Christianity rely on the beauty of ideas rather than their truth, making reality look cold and alienating by comparison. People take solace in God's invisible guiding hand and fear that a world without him would be desolate, chaotic, meaningless.

But Krauss shows that in some ways, the natural world can beat the supernatural even at its own game. An innocent god-man being tortured and killed on our behalf is an inspiring tale (if a gruesome and illogical one), but it can't hold a candle to the breathtaking magnificence of cosmology. All the heavier atoms in your body—the oxygen and carbon, the nitrogen and calcium—had to be forged within the blazing furnaces of stars. They later became supernovae, exploding so chaotically that they briefly outshone entire galaxies, forming nebulae rich with heavy elements that then collapsed to form solar systems—and eventually, in our case, intelligent life. Here's Neil deGrasse Tyson again, describing this process:

As Carl Sagan said, "We are a way for the cosmos to know itself." Truth, it seems, is far more worthy than fiction of our awe and admiration.

2. "Mythology is someone else's religion, different enough from your own for its absurdity to be obvious." –Anonymous

What a perfect summary of the double standard inherent within every exclusivist religion in history. It's so easy for Christians and Buddhists and Muslims to look at each other and scoff at those other peculiar beliefs, all while retaining an intense blind spot with regard to one's own. So persistent is this bias that even I as a former Christian suffer from it, despite my deconversion.

This is why I love Daniel Dennett's suggestion that schoolchildren be taught a mandatory, neutral, fact-based class on world religions. Only the most cripplingly stubborn parents could object to an impartial presentation of alternative belief systems. Yet many students would come out with a more critically informed view of each religion—including their own. The more information kids can access about religions from all cultures, the less likely they are to succumb to the ingroup-outgroup bias that allows religious exclusivism to thrive.

1. "I had no need of that hypothesis." –Pierre-Simon Laplace

This famed quip was in reply to none other than Napoleon, who told Laplace, "They tell me you have written this large book on the system of the universe, and have never even mentioned its Creator." Laplace's response encompasses so much in just a few words: the principle of parsimony, the relentless march of science, the ever-diminishing God of the gaps. Although it was probably just an offhand remark, his calm yet firm rejection of God as explanation is emblematic of the human race's steadily increasing storehouse of knowledge.

No need of that hypothesis.

After millions of years of cowering at shadows, we have finally begun to crawl out from the darkness and into the light. We need only to let our eyes adjust to the dazzling brilliance we've discovered. It is my hope that for any incredible explanation that lacks equally incredible evidence, we, as a civilization, will soon have no need of that hypothesis.

Powerful Thoughts, Vol. 5

It's only been a few weeks since the previous installment of Powerful Thoughts, but what can I say? My cup of skepticism runneth over; there are just too many good quotes to choose from. So once again, here are some about God:

• "God is dead: but considering the state Man is in, there will perhaps be caves, for ages yet, in which his shadow will be shown." –Friedrich Nietzsche
• "Kill one man and you are a murderer. Kill millions and you are a conqueror. Kill everyone and you are a God." –Jean Rostand
• "If I were granted omnipotence, and millions of years to experiment in, I should not think Man much to boast of as the final result of all my efforts." –Bertrand Russell
• "If he knows all, why warn him of our needs and fatigue him with our prayers? If he is everywhere, why erect temples to him? If he is just, why fear that he will punish the creatures that he has, filled with weaknesses?" –Percy Bysshe Shelley
• "You know when you want something really bad and you close your eyes and you wish for it? God's the guy that ignores you." –from The Island

On Christianity:

• "Those who defend their abusers are the most comprehensively enslaved." –QualiaSoup on rationalizing religious atrocity
• "'Oh great, you ate the apple. Now I have to kill my son.' –God" –from reddit
• "There is no such thing as a Christian child, only a child of Christian parents." –from reddit
• "Moderate Christianity seems like a contradiction because its teachings are not something to casually think about here and there." –from reddit
• "That's an awfully nice soul you've got there. It'd be a shame if something happened to it..." –reddit on Pascal's Wager
• "So far as I can remember, there's not one word in the Gospels in praise of intelligence." –Bertrand Russell
• "What could be more terroristic than 'Believe this or burn for an eternity'? The answer is nothing." –Brian Sapient
• "To say that God was communicating in metaphor through the Bible writers is to say that God needed communications training." –Valerie Tarico
• "If Christ were here now there is one thing he would not be—a Christian." –Mark Twain

On religion in general:

• "Religion claims to set its followers free... while insisting they kiss the hand of their jailer." –Paula Kirby
• "All religions are the same: religion is basically guilt, with different holidays." –Cathy Ladman
• "The cosmos is a gigantic fly-wheel making 10,000 revolutions a minute. Man is a sick fly taking a dizzy ride on it. Religion is the theory that the wheel was designed and set spinning to give him a ride." –H.L. Mencken
• "Rooting morality in a being beyond our comprehension only pushes morality beyond our comprehension." –QualiaSoup
• "The day gay marriage is legalized, nothing will change. And that is what religions are afraid of." –from reddit
• "[Religion] is partly the terror of the unknown and partly...the wish to feel that you have a kind of elder brother who will stand by you in all your troubles and disputes." –Bertrand Russell
• "Religion. It's given people hope in a world torn apart by religion." –Jon Stewart

On reason, science and skepticism:

• "Do not be frightened from this inquiry by any fear of its consequences. If it ends in a belief that there is no god, you will find incitements to virtue in the comfort and pleasantness you feel in its exercise, and the love of others which it will procure you." –Thomas Jefferson
• "I had no need of that hypothesis." –Pierre-Simon Laplace, in reply to Napoleon, who asked why he didn't include God in his calculations of planetary orbits
• "Don't think that because the light of science is dimmer today than tomorrow that you are justified to sneer in the dark." –from reddit
• "Earth is a bacteria planet with a temporary infestation of vertebrates." –from reddit
• "[W]hat is called for is an exquisite balance between two conflicting needs: the most skeptical scrutiny of all hypotheses that are served up to us and at the same time a great openness to ideas." –Carl Sagan
• "You can get into a habit of thought in which you enjoy making fun of all those other people who don't see things as clearly as you do. We have to guard carefully against it." –Carl Sagan
• "[Some] think: 'My God! How Horrible! I am only a machine!' But if I should find out I were a machine, my attitude would be totally different. I would say: 'How amazing! I never before realized that machines could be so marvelous!'" –Ray Smullyan
• "[S]cience is a form of arrogance control." –Carol Tavris and Elliot Aronson
• "Answers are a luxury enjoyed only every now and then. So early on, learn to love the questions themselves." –Neil deGrasse Tyson
• "The skeptic does not mean him who doubts, but him who investigates or researches, as opposed to him who asserts and thinks he has found." –Miguel de Unamuno

And a few more cringeworthy quotes from fundamentalists and other extremists:

• "Today we are engaged in a final, all-out battle between communistic atheism and Christianity." –Joseph McCarthy, at the onset of McCarthyism
• "The Internet has given atheists, agnostics, skeptics, the people who like to destroy everything that you and I believe, the almost equal access to your kids as your youth pastor and you have... whether you like it or not." –Josh McDowell
• "[T]here's something wrong in this country when gays can serve openly in the military but our kids can't openly celebrate Christmas." –Rick Perry
• "Just like what Nazi Germany did to the Jews, so liberal America is now doing to the evangelical Christians. It's no different. ...It is the Democratic Congress, the liberal-based media and the homosexuals who want to destroy the Christians. Wholesale abuse and discrimination...[m]ore terrible than anything suffered by any minority in history." –Pat Robertson
• "Just because public opinion says something doesn't mean it's right...people said blacks were less than human." –Rick Santorum on gay marriage

You read that last one right, by the way: Santorum used the wrongful discrimination against one minority group as an example... to justify discrimination against another minority group. It's unbelievable what politicians can get away still with saying in the second decade of the 21st century. A couple of decades from now, society will look back at those quotes from Santorum and Perry with the same disgust we have for the racism of politicians like George Wallace and Strom Thurmond.

On a brighter note, plenty of the more clever and insightful quotes from this batch come from the younger generation—the denizens of YouTube and reddit. This dovetails nicely with Adam Lee's observation that the demographics of the recent Reason Rally skewed decidedly toward the youthful end of the spectrum. With all the bright, budding minds sprouting up, maybe there's a little hope for us after all.

Powerful Thoughts, Vol. 4

Welcome to the fourth installment in this series! It's been a while since the last one, but I've amassed so many awesome quotes over the past few months that the fifth will be coming up very soon. Here are some on the topic of God:

• "They say that God is everywhere, and yet we always think of Him as somewhat of a recluse." –Emily Dickinson
• "I see only with deep regret that God punishes so many of His children for their numerous stupidities, for which only He Himself can be held responsible; in my opinion, only His nonexistence could excuse Him." –Albert Einstein
• "I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with senses, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use." –Galileo Galilei
• "Would God give a bird wings and make it a crime to fly? Would he give me brains and make it a crime to think?" –Robert Ingersoll
• "Is it not better to place a question mark upon a problem while seeking an answer than to put the label "God" there and consider the matter solved?" –Joseph Lewis
• "If triangles invented a god, they would make him three-sided." –Charles de Montesquieu

On Christianity:

• "Christianity, above all, consoles; but there are naturally happy souls who do not need consolation. Consequently, Christianity begins by making such souls unhappy, for otherwise it would have no power over them." –André Gide
• "Anyone who can worship a trinity and insist that his religion is a monotheism can believe anything—just give him time to rationalize it." –Robert Heinlein
• "There is in every village a torch: The schoolteacher. And an extinguisher: The priest." –Victor Hugo
• "The church is not a pioneer; it accepts a new truth, last of all, and only when denial has become useless." –Robert Ingersoll
• "History, I believe, furnishes no example of a priest-ridden people maintaining a free civil government." –Thomas Jefferson
• "The Christian resolution to find the world ugly and bad has made the world ugly and bad." –Friedrich Nietzsche
• "Moral justice cannot take the innocent for the guilty even if the innocent would offer itself. ... It is then no longer justice. It is indiscriminate revenge." –Thomas Paine

On religion in general:

• "Blind faith is an ironic gift to return to the Creator of human intelligence." –Anon
• "Religion, n. A daughter of Hope and Fear, explaining to Ignorance the nature of the Unknowable." –Ambrose Bierce
• "Where knowledge ends, religion begins." –Benjamin Disraeli
• "Man would indeed be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hope of reward after death." –Albert Einstein
• "The whole religious complexion of the modern world is due to the absence, from Jerusalem, of a lunatic asylum." –Havelock Ellis
• "Men rarely (if ever) manage to dream up a god superior to themselves. Most gods have the manners and morals of a spoiled child." –Robert A. Heinlein
• "If every trace of any single religion were wiped out and nothing were passed on, it would never be created exactly that way again." –Penn Jillette
• "Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by the rulers as useful." –Seneca the Younger (attributed)

On reason, science and skepticism:

• "Tolerance of intolerance is cowardice." –Ayaan Hirsi Ali
• "Skepticism is the first step towards truth." –Denis Diderot
• "What is true is already so. Owning up to it doesn't make it worse. Not being open about it doesn't make it go away." –Eugene Gendlin
• "There are all kinds of interesting questions that come from a knowledge of science, which only adds to the excitement and mystery and awe of a flower. It only adds. I don't understand how it subtracts." –Richard Feynman
• "Don't swallow your moral code in tablet form." –Christopher Hitchens
• "Man is not a rational animal, he is a rationalizing animal." –Robert Heinlein
• "Reason is poor propaganda when opposed by the yammering, unceasing lies of shrewd and evil and self-serving men." –Robert Heinlein
• "The hardest part about gaining any new idea is sweeping out the false idea occupying that niche." –Robert Heinlein
• "It is a very odd world where people reject reason and yet benefit from the riches of reason." –Robin Ince

And finally, a few facepalm-inducing fundie quotes:

• "No one...fails to become a Christian because of lack of arguments; he fails...because he loves darkness rather than light and wants nothing to do with God." –William Lane Craig
• "I hope I live to see the day when, as in the early days of our country, we won't have any public schools. The churches will have taken them over again and Christians will be running them." –Jerry Falwell
• "The fact that [John Kerry] would not support a federal marriage amendment [banning gay marriage], it equates in our minds as someone 150 years ago saying I'm personally opposed to slavery, but if my neighbor wants to own one or two that's OK." –Jerry Falwell
• "I resist Islamic immigration into the United States. ... I think our immigration policies ought to be reserved for...Christians[.]" –Bryan Fischer
• "What harm would it do, if a man told a good strong lie for the sake of the good and for the Christian church … a lie out of necessity, a useful lie, a helpful lie, such lies would not be against God, he would accept them." –Martin Luther
• "Reason is the Devil's harlot, who can do nought but slander and harm whatever God says and does." –Martin Luther

It's always a bit of a shock reading the religious quotes after the skeptical ones. To plummet from insightful brilliance to the depths of intellectual desolation can be pretty depressing. I recommend going back over your favorite quotes from the other categories to cheer you up again. I'm partial to Montesquieu's three-sided triangle god myself: what a clear and powerful way to sum up the human tendency to create anthropomorphic deities.

Quotable Me, Vol. 3

Occasionally when I have a quick thought and either don't have the time or the inspiration to flesh it out into a blog post, I jot it down on my Twitter feed. Credit for a few of these goes to the sources I was reading or listening to at the time, which I sometimes condense down into a sentence or two. Here's some of the stuff I've posted over the past few months. 

On Christianity:

• Christians don't realize that each jump they make—from supernaturalism to theism to Christianity to fundamentalism—adds another layer of far-fetched assumptions.
• "Not a true Christian" is meaningless from an outsider's perspective since Christianity has no clear, accepted, universal definition.
• The idea that the earth is 6,000 years old causes serious problems for YECs, but the idea that the Flood was just 4,350 years ago is far worse.
• I've come up with a fun game. I tell a lie, and others spend centuries trying to find a way in which it's true. I'll call it... apologetics.
• Apologist (n.) – Someone whose livelihood depends on convincing you that genocide is actually a good thing when God does it.
• I've found that many Christians judge how well others understand the Bible based solely on how much others agree with their interpretation.

On God, religion and atheism:

• The rejection of this life in anticipation of a second one is the ultimate impediment to human progress.
• Vagueness is among religion's most powerful tools. Believers can disagree on every point of doctrine yet still take solace in the same book.
• Calling an unexplained phenomenon a miracle is not an explanation, but an admission of ignorance.
• God-based morality isn't objective. It's still dependent on a particular person; that person just happens to be an omnipotent dictator.
• Religion's most pervasive problem—and its greatest strategic advantage—is that for most people, it's "opt-out."
• Some people try so hard to label atheism a religion due solely to atheists' passion... so can we call "labeling atheism a religion" a religion too?
• If a god exists who punishes questioning and rewards blind faith, reason is the greatest curse he has ever conferred upon humanity.

On science and skepticism:

• Acknowledging a gap in our knowledge is the first step toward filling it.
• Once belief without sufficient evidence is permitted, everything is permitted.
• As a family that has worked its way to riches is nobler than royalty, so is humanity's evolution nobler than special creation.
• Denialists express parallel ignorance. Creationists: "Show me the transitional fossils!" Birthers: "Show me the birth certificate!"
• Idea for countering bias: when you find an opposing argument that you don't know how to answer, add it to a list so you can't brush it off.
• Three words that should never appear together: "required to believe."

Pretty soon I'll also post the fourth installment in my anthology of skeptical quotes from non-me sources.

Powerful Thoughts, Vol. 3

Welcome to the third installment in my anthology of quotes about atheism and related topics. Here are ones centered on God and religion:

• "Two hands working can do more than a thousand clasped in prayer." –Anon
• "Isn't it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too?" –Douglas Adams
• "If you believe what you like in the Gospels and reject what you don't like, it is not the Gospel you believe, but yourself." –St. Augustine
• "Thank god gay people can't legally marry each other and destroy the sanctity of what Kim Kardashian did." –Alex Blagg
• "Be thankful that you have a life, and forsake your vain and presumptuous desire for a second one." –Richard Dawkins
• "It is better to leave God out of the moral debate and find good human reasons for supporting the approach we advocate." –Richard Holloway
• "You don't get rich writing science fiction. If you want to get rich, you start a religion." –sci-fi author & Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard
• "There is not enough love and goodness in the world for us to be permitted to give any of it away to imaginary things." –Friedrich Nietzsche
• "Religion is the way we honour our ancestors' errors." –Mark M. Otoysao
• "For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring." –Carl Sagan
• "Religions are like fireflies: they require darkness in order to shine." –Arthur Schopenhauer
• "No woman should accept any religion that assigns her a role that is at best secondary to men." –Sheila Tobias
• "Religions are like politicians: they're easier to believe when they're vague." –from Reddit

And here are the ones centered around science and skepticism:

• "We are all just a car crash or a slip away from being a different person." –neuropsychologist Paul Broks
• "The first principle is that you must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool." –Richard Feynman
• "For every complex problem, there is a solution that is clear, simple, and wrong." –H. L. Mencken
• "Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies." –Friedrich Nietzsche
• "The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt." –Bertrand Russell
• "Science is not perfect. It's often misused; it's only a tool, but it's the best tool we have. Self-correcting, ever-changing, applicable to everything; with this tool, we vanquish the impossible." –Carl Sagan
• "[Humans] probably are to intelligence what the first replicator was to biology." –Anna Salomon
• "If your philosophy is not unsettled daily then you are blind to all the universe has to offer." –Neil deGrasse Tyson
• "The strength of a theory is not what it can explain, but what it can't." –Eliezer Yudkowsky
• "Facts do not need to be unexplainable to be beautiful; truths are not less worth learning if someone else knows them." –Eliezer Yudkowsky
• "If science is a religion, it is the religion that heals the sick and reveals the secrets of the stars." –Eliezer Yudkowsky

Finally, some outrageous quotes from fundamentalists:

• "God has provided a more secure foundation for our faith than the shifting sands of evidence and argument." –Christian apologist William Lane Craig
• "If somehow through my studies my reason were to turn against my faith, then so much the worse for my reason!" –Craig on his belief in Christianity
• "Why are you reading those infidel websites anyway, when you know how destructive they are to your faith?" –Craig to a Christian expressing doubts
• "How can you have judgment if you have no faith, and how can I trust you with power if you don't pray?" –Newt Gingrich in a recent GOP debate

As much as I enjoy the stimulating and provocative quotes from thinkers that are critical of religion, I find myself fascinated by the quotes from fundamentalists. Really, Newt Gingrich? Nonbelievers lack judgment and can't be trusted with power? Maybe you should try telling that straight to the faces of openly non-believing world leaders like Fredrik Reinfeldt (Sweden), Julia Gillard (Australia), Jens Stoltenberg (Norway) and Michelle Bachelet (Chile). I might expect this from ordinary religious extremists, but as of this writing, Gingrich is neck and neck with Mitt Romney as the highest-polling Republican presidential nominee. I'm not sure whether he truly believes what he said or merely wanted to appeal to voters, but either way it's appalling to hear this from someone who has a non-trivial chance at being our next president.

And then there are the three jaw-dropping quotes from William Lane Craig, considered by many to be the foremost Christian apologist on the planet. Coming from a man who claims to champion reason and evidence during his public debates, these views represent the absolute peak of intellectual dishonesty. To ignore logic, and to advise others to flee from opposing arguments, is simply beyond the pale. I can only imagine his outrage if atheists advised each other to take this approach. If Craig ever had a shred of my respect, he's certainly lost it now.

Quotable Me, Vol. 2

A few months ago I compiled some of the short observations I've made on my Twitter account, @OtherSideReflec. This is the second installment. Again, much of the credit for these ideas should go to the many brilliant freethinkers I've been fortunate enough to learn from over the past year or two.

Here are some comments on Christianity:

• Of all the tricks Christianity has pulled, the greatest is to convince people that a loving God can punish us eternally simply for unbelief.
• Some Bible translations (e.g. NIV) purposely bury contradictions and atrocities. Imagine the outrage if atheists designed a translation to worsen them.
• The Bible says nothing about gay marriage. If Christians want to base their argument on the Bible, they should be arguing to outlaw homosexuality entirely.
• If a Christian explains away a passage as metaphor, just ask, "A metaphor for what?" It's kind of pointless if no one actually knows what it means.
• One of the weirdest claims about the Bible is that it's a "unified" book. Read Leviticus, Psalms, Mark and Revelation. Then try saying that.
• God's reasoning: "I'll give humans dozens of cognitive biases, then send them to hell if they don't believe based on a warm fuzzy feeling. It's perfect!"
• Jesus' crucifixion demonstrates his loving self-sacrifice in the same morbid and incoherent way as a madman presenting us with the gift of his own severed limb.
• Discoveries the Bible could have predicted: atoms, sanitation, relativity, the brain's function, evolution, heliocentrism, electricity, America, exoplanets, Newton's laws, tectonic plates, vaccines, DNA, radioactivity, Antarctic fauna...

On religion, God and atheism:

• "Islam is a religion of peace!" No, a subset of Muslims are people of peace, in direct defiance of their holy book.
• Science and religion are quite compatible. All religion has to do is yield to science on every subject where science has something to say.
• God's traits remind me of two kids arguing over action figures. "Mine has infinite power!" "Well mine knows everything, and he's outside time!"
• If a prophecy is only recognized after its "fulfillment," it either wasn't a prophecy at all or was far too vague to be impressive.
• Following divine command theory has the same moral value as obeying someone who has a gun to your head.
• People who only do good because God says to don't have morality, but rather a superficially accurate simulation of it.
• It's ironic that the words in the Pledge of Allegiance between "one nation" and "indivisible" are themselves divisive.
• Liberal religion's relationship to extremism: "All that's needed for evil to triumph is that good men do nothing."
• Sending inherently sinful humans to hell for not being perfect is about as fair as sending a goldfish to hell because it can't do calculus.

And on skepticism:

• Reports that the Washington Monument was tilted after August's earthquake are a perfect example of how expectations warp our perceptions.
• Literally any belief, when shown to be false, can be preserved with sufficient rationalization.
• I suspect the Dunning–Kruger effect extends to cognitive biases as well: people bad at avoiding bias likely think they're above average.
• For some reason, even the most fearsome supernatural entities cower in the face of controlled laboratory conditions.

I like the Twitter format quite a bit. The 140-character limit does get a little cramped, but it's still an ideal place to jot down any thoughts that I don't feel compelled to flesh out into a full blog post, as well as to post links to atheism- and science-related news stories. It even helped lead to the arrest (and hopefully rehabilitation) of Dennis Markuze, a notorious spammer who constantly made graphic death threats against many atheist bloggers. Who says Twitter is a waste of time?

Powerful Thoughts, Vol. 2

I've posted both my own pithy thoughts on religion and skepticism related topics and those of various other thinkers (which isn't to say that I equate my ideas with theirs–on the contrary, I owe them a great deal for helping me formulate my views in the first place). By now I've compiled more than enough additional quotes for another installment.

We'll start with the ones related to God and religion:

• "The word 'militant' is applied to the religious when they bomb and to atheists when they speak with non-deferential clarity." –Anon
• "If God exists, I hope he has a good excuse." –Woody Allen
• "I distrust those people who know so well what God wants them to do because I notice it always coincides with their own desires." –Susan B. Anthony
• "To surrender to ignorance and call it God has always been premature, and it remains premature today." –Isaac Asimov
• "Faith is nothing more than the license religious people give one another to keep believing when reasons fail." –Sam Harris
• "Every pulpit is a pillory, in which stands a hired culprit, defending the justice of his own imprisonment." –Robert Ingersoll
• "Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason, than that of blindfolded fear." –Thomas Jefferson
• "The invisible and the non-existent look very much alike." –Delos B. McKown
• "A casual stroll through the lunatic asylum shows that faith does not prove anything." –Friedrich Nietzsche
• "Every world spins in pain. If there is any kind of supreme being...it is up to all of us to become his moral superior." –Terry Pratchett
• "Saying the United States is a Christian nation is just as ridiculous as saying it is a white nation." –from Reddit

And here are some related to science and skepticism:

• "Just because something is obvious doesn't mean it's true." –Anon
• "If animal body plans do reflect design, we can conclude that the designer wanted to make things look as though they had evolved." –Jerry Coyne
• "Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away." –Philip K. Dick
• "The Creator, if he exists, has an inordinate fondness for beetles." –J.B.S. Haldane
• "Certainty is responsible for some of the most awful terrors in the world." –Anthony Hopkins
• "Forget Jesus. The stars died so you could be here today." –Lawrence Krauss
• "The very meaninglessness of life forces man to create his own meaning... However vast the darkness, we must supply our own light." –Stanley Kubrick
• "You know what they call 'alternative medicine' that's been proved to work? Medicine." –Tim Minchin
• "The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently." –Friedrich Nietzche
• "How many people here have telekinetic powers? Raise my hand." –Emo Philips
• "Believing in microevolution but not macroevolution is like saying you believe in millimeters but not miles." –from Reddit
• "Science is atheistic in the sense that plumbing is atheistic. It limits itself to the study of natural causes." –Eugenie Scott
• "He must be very ignorant, for he answers every question he is asked." –Voltaire
• "Most people are happy to explain away even the most compelling data rather than abandon their cherished beliefs." –Richard Wiseman

And finally, a few fundamentalist quotes:

• "What God sanctioned in the Old Testament, and permitted in the New, cannot be a sin." –Rev. Richard Fuller, in 1845, on slavery
• "Monkeys are still having babies; why don't they have another human today?" –YEC Kent Hovind
• "You know, it's a theory that's out there. It's got some gaps in it. In Texas we teach both creationism and evolution." –Republican presidential candidate Rick Perry, unaware that Texas doesn't teach creationism

I like being able to present comedians and ordinary internet denizens along with legendary thinkers like Voltaire and Nietzsche. It helps to demonstrate that the source of an idea doesn't really matter, because it's the meaning that counts. In my first installment I went through a lot of trouble to ensure the veracity of every quote, but it occurred to me that if they offer insightful commentary on the nature of belief and science, that insight is valuable regardless of who it came from.

Quotable Me

Previously I posted some memorable quotes from various thinkers on religion, atheism, skepticism and other topics that I'd previously posted on Twitter. Now I've compiled the tweets containing my own thoughts on those subjects. Some of these ideas are mine, but many of them are distillations of what I've learned from reading and listening to others.

Here are some bite-sized thoughts on Christianity:

• Even if Christianity somehow turned out to be true, 99% of Christians would still believe in it for terrible reasons.
• To most Christians, the Bible consists of the NT and a few OT bits like Genesis and Psalms. Books like Leviticus and Deuteronomy don't even exist.
• Why didn't God (a perfect communicator) convey criteria for salvation (the most vital topic possible) so Christians would all agree on them?
• Early Christian sects like the Marcionists and Gnostics often viewed the OT god as a wicked tyrant. I kind of wish they'd won the doctrine wars.
• We can't fully comprehend eternity, so no one can ever grasp just how awful hell would be, and how unjust it would be as punishment.
• Christians ask if you think you're "good" to begin their evangelism spiel. But of course they really mean "perfect," so why not just say so up front?
• Every believer in the resurrection should believe in UFOs: they're also BS, but at least they're based on extensive modern testimony and not an ancient book.
• It's remarkable that the Old Testament contains so much violence and yet manages to remain mind-crushingly dull.
• Funny how Harold Camping's explanation of May 21—a spiritual beginning of judgment—looks identical to nothing having happened at all.

On religion, God and atheism:

• If you wouldn't accept something as evidence for another religion, don't accept it as evidence for yours.
• Even some atheists think religion automatically deserves respect. Why shouldn't it be held to the same standard as other beliefs?
• Vague "God hypotheses" yield no useful predictions; specific ones are easily falsified.
• Religion offers you a cure to a disease you don't have.
• Not only is "no atheists in foxholes" false, it'd be worthless even if true, because people are less rational in dangerous situations.
• When people say God works in mysterious ways, they mean he works exactly as if he wasn't working at all.
• It still amazes me that most just accept the existence of a parallel reality that overlays and interacts with the physical world.
• I wonder how long it'd take for religion to die out with zero child indoctrination? My guess: 80% gone within 50 years, 95% gone in 100.
• Isn't derisively declaring "I don't have enough faith to be an atheist" a tacit admission that faith is a bad thing?
• "You're just rebelling against God!" Um... to the extent that I "rebel" against any other fictional villain, I guess.
• I think maybe half of all religious belief would evaporate if everyone on earth had to learn about the actual psychology of said beliefs.

On evolution:

• Creationists: if evolution violated the Second Law of Thermodynamics, then so would prenatal development.
• I only believe in microdevelopment. Macrodevelopment from a zygote to an adult human is just a ridiculous theory!
• "Evolution isn't science, it's not observable and repeatable!" Oh, okay. I guess we'll be throwing out forensics and archaeology too, then?
• It would take a lot to falsify evolution—and that's fine, just as you wouldn't simply assume the theory of gravity was false if something fell up one day.

And on skepticism:

• Possibly the most difficult mental feat is to calmly and impartially correct cherished beliefs in the face of evidence.
• You can be biased and wrong or biased and right. Unbiased? There's no such thing.
• Deciding if a treatment works based only on your experience is like testing it with no controls, no blinds, and a sample size of one.
• Absolutely everyone is biased in how they take in new information. Those who don't acknowledge this can't even begin to counteract it.
• Certainty and correctness have virtually no correlation. What's important is how you arrive at your conclusions.
• The brain deludes itself constantly. For example: most people go their entire lives not realizing they can't see color in the periphery of their vision.
• Confirmation bias acts like a semi-permeable membrane: it lets information supporting your conclusion into your mind, and keeps contrary information out.
• On avoiding bias. Step 1: Gather all evidence. Step 2: Consider all evidence. Step 3: Draw conclusion. (Note: #3 comes last, not first.)
• Don't think of dissenting arguments as obstacles to your conclusions; think of them as tools you can use to clarify your thinking.
• Coincidences are deceptively common. In a group of 7 people, the chances that 2 will have birthdays within a week of each other is over 50%.
• Asking empirical questions about supernatural phenomena is the quickest way to reveal their absurdity.
• Correcting your mistakes is a greater virtue than being right the first time around.

While some people find tweeting to be a shallow form of communication, I think it's potentially very useful. It's not well-suited to fleshing out your ideas, but it forces you to take what you want to say and express it with efficiency and clarity. In the marketplace of ideas, the advantage often goes to those concepts that are can be quickly absorbed and understood. Since many people are averse to atheism and skepticism, this may help us get our ideas across before they close their minds.

Powerful Thoughts

Over the last couple of months I've posted a lot of my favorite quotes on topics such as theism and skepticism to my Twitter page, and I decided to compile them here. It's remarkable that combining just a few words in the right order can produce such powerful and thought-provoking ideas.

Here are some quotes on religion and theism:

• "What worries me about religion is that it teaches us to be satisfied with not understanding." –Richard Dawkins
• "All [divine command theorists] can say about Al Qaeda and the Taliban is that they’re mistaken about what God commands." –Chris Hallquist
• "When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours." –Stephen Roberts
• "As a kid I used to pray every night for a new bike. Then I realized the Lord doesn't work that way. So I just stole one and asked Him to forgive me." –comedian Emo Philips
• "With or without religion, good people can behave well and bad people can do evil; but for good people to do evil—that takes religion." –Steven Weinberg
• "Mythology is someone else's religion, different enough from your own for its absurdity to be obvious." –Anonymous

And on science, knowledge and skepticism:

• "Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is those who know little, and not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science." –Charles Darwin
• "The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance; it is the illusion of knowledge." –Stephen Hawking
• "Throughout history, every mystery ever solved has turned out to be... not magic." –Tim Minchin
• "You are not a Bayesian homunculus whose reasoning is 'corrupted' by cognitive biases. You just are cognitive biases." –Luke Muehlhauser
• "If you attend only to favorable evidence, picking and choosing from your gathered data, then the more data you gather, the less you know." –Eliezer Yudkowsky
• "If you are equally good at explaining any outcome, you have zero knowledge." –Eliezer Yudkowsky
• "Everything is a mystery from the dawn of human experience right up until someone solves it." –Eliezer Yudkowsky

And finally, a few rather telling quotes from believers:

• "The problem with Islam, then, is not that it has got the wrong moral theory; it’s that it has got the wrong God." –Christian apologist William Lane Craig
• "Natural science at the moment seems to overwhelmingly point to an old cosmos." –YECs Paul Nelson & John Reynolds
• ID must create a "theory of biological design. We don't have such a theory right now, and that's a real problem." –YEC/IDist Paul Nelson

I can't help but think how lucky I am to live in an age where all of these writers are instantly at my disposal. Darwin's writings can stand alongside those of a renowned modern genius like Hawking and lesser-known rationalists such as Eliezer Yudkowsky. The notion that we can only know what we know by "standing on the shoulders of giants" has never been more true than it is right now.