Whenever a theory appears to you as the only possible one, take this as a sign that you have neither understood the theory nor the problem which it was intended to solve.
—Karl Popper
Whenever a theory appears to you as the only possible one, take this as a sign that you have neither understood the theory nor the problem which it was intended to solve.
—Karl Popper
Most of the members of Team Kimberlin have at one time or another claimed to be atheists. This post about Dread Pirate #BrettKimberlin on Religion ran ten years ago today.
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Mark Singer quotes The Dread Pirate Kimberlin describing his religious beliefs on pages 35 and 36 of Citizen K.
Until the children hit adolescence, Carolyn often took them to Sunday services at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church. Brett was confirmed there, along with his brothers and sister, but he had no faith.
Brett: “I was the only one who wouldn’t pray. Mom used to tell me to wear a suit and tie to church. I said, ‘Mom, if there’s a God, he doesn’t care what I’m wearing.’ I went to Sunday School and learned the Lord’s Prayer and stuff, but I felt totally alienated from this fraud. From the age of six, I didn’t buy into it at all. No brainwashing this boy. I have a very open mind. For instance, I wouldn’t say that I believe in psychic phenomena. But I believe in the possibility of psychic phenomena. Just as I don’t close my mind to the possibility of some universal force. There are obviously things that we still don’t know about, but all this organized religion I just don’t buy at all. I don’t like any kind of groups. A lot of people got into meditation for religious reasons. The reason I liked transcendental meditation was because there was no religion involved. There were no other rules.”
Yeah, no rules to be subject to.
The Gentle Reader who is familiar with Genesis 3 will remember the lie that Satan told Eve, “… and you will be like God …”
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We have very different worldviews which lead to radically different understandings of Truth.
One cannot conceive anything so strange and so implausible that it has not already been said by one philosopher or another.
—Rene Descartes
You will certainly not doubt the necessity of studying astronomy and physics, if you are desirous of comprehending the relation between the world and Providence as it is in reality, and not according to imagination.
—Maimonides
Ideas, like large rivers, never have just one source.
—Willy Ley
Reason is the natural order of truth; but imagination is the organ of meaning.
—C. S. Lewis
Faith is a state of openness or trust.
—Alan Watts
Which form of proverb do you prefer Better late than never, or Better never than late?
—Lewis Carroll
Not everything has a name. Some things lead us into a realm beyond words.
—Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
All are lunatics, but he who can analyze his delusions is called a philosopher.
—Ambrose Bierce
The only fence against the world is a thorough knowledge of it.
—John Locke
In all things of nature there is something of the marvelous.
—Aristotle
Start with what is right rather than what is acceptable.
—Franz Kafka
An explanation of cause is not a justification by reason.
—C. S. Lewis
Schizophrenia beats dining alone.
—Oscar Levant
Of what use is a philosopher who doesn’t hurt anybody’s feelings?
—Diogenes
Did you ever stop to think, and forget to start again?
—A. A. Milne
By nature all men are equal in liberty, but not in other endowments.
—Thomas Aquinas
Truth, like gold, is to be obtained not by its growth, but by washing away from it all that is not gold.
—Leo Tolstoy
To stand on one leg and prove God’s existence is a very different thing from going on one’s knees and thanking Him.
—Søren Kierkegaard
You will certainly not doubt the necessity of studying astronomy and physics, if you are desirous of comprehending the relation between the world and Providence as it is in reality, and not according to imagination.
—Maimonides
I would trade all of my technology for an afternoon with Socrates.
—Steve Jobs
We consider it a good principle to explain the phenomena by the simplest hypothesis possible.
—Ptolemy
Deus, dona hominibus videre in parvo communes notitias rerum parvarum atque magnarum. God, grant us men to see in a small thing principles which are common things both small and great.
—Augustine of Hippo
Douter de tout ou tout croire, ce sont deux solutions également commodes, qui l’une et l’autre nous dispensent de réfléchir. To doubt everything or to believe everything are two equally convenient solutions; both dispense with the necessity of reflection.
—Henri Poincaré