We all need to get the balance right between action and reflection. With so many distractions, it is easy to forget to pause and take stock.
All scientific progress requires a climate of strong skepticism.
If the history of science shows us anything, it is that we get nowhere by labeling our ignorance “God”.
If the history of science teaches us anything, it is that what conquers our ignorance is research, not giving up and attributing our ignorance to the miraculous work of a creator.
Science has only two things to contribute to religion: an analysis of the evolutionary, cultural, and psychological basis for believing things that aren't true, and a scientific disproof of some of faith's claims (e. g. , Adam and Eve, the Great Flood). Religion has nothing to contribute to science, and science is best off staying as far away from faith as possible. The "constructive dialogue" between science and faith is, in reality, a destructive monlogue, with science making all the good points, tearing down religion in the process.
The fact that both Jews and Christians ignore some of God's or Jesus's commands, but scrupulously obey others, is absolute proof that people pick and choose their morality not on the basis of its divine source, but because it comports with some innate morality that they derived from other sources.
We don't have faith in reason; we use reason because, unlike revelation, it produces results and understanding. Even discussing why we should use reason employs reason!
Life is a poem most people never read.
All my life I had lived on the presumption that there was no existence beyond. . . flesh, the moment of being alive. . . then nothing. I had searched in superstition. . . But there was nothing. Then I heard the sound of my own life leaving me. It was so. . . tender. I regretted that I had paid it no attention. Then I believed in the wisdom of what other men had found before me. . . I saw that those simple things might be true. . . I never wanted to believe in them because it was better to fight my own battle. You can believe in something without compromising the burden of your own existence.
When you talk about cooperation, it means cooperation between two legal governments, not cooperation between foreign government and any faction within Syria.
I grew up in Venezuela, and when I was 14-years-old, my parents decided to sell everything and come to America. Five of us lived in a two bedroom house. It wasn't a sad truth, it was just the way it was [at the time]. That feeling is so universal for every immigrant.