Holding a grudge is letting someone live rent-free in your head.
‘Even if all the data point to an intelligent designer, such an hypothesis is excluded from science because it is not naturalistic’
Todd, S.C., correspondence to Nature 401(6752):423, 30 Sept. 1999.
‘Christianity has fought, still fights, and will continue to fight science to the desperate end over evolution, because evolution destroys utterly and finally the very reason Jesus’ earthly life was supposedly made necessary. Destroy Adam and Eve and the original sin, and in the rubble you will find the sorry remains of the Son of God. If Jesus was not the redeemer who died for our sins, and this is what evolution means, then Christianity is nothing.’
G. Richard Bozarth, ‘The Meaning of Evolution’, American Atheist, p. 30. 20 September 1979.
‘I have faith and belief myself. I believe that the universe is comprehensible within the bounds of natural law and that the human brain can discover those natural laws and comprehend the universe. I believe that nothing beyond those natural laws is needed.’ ‘I have no evidence for this. It is simply what I have faith in and what I believe.’
Isaac Asimov, Counting the Eons, Grafton Books (Collins), London, p.10.
I am convinced that the battle for humankind’s future must be waged and won in the public school classroom by teachers who correctly perceive their role as the proselytizers of a new faith: a religion of humanity that recognizes and respects the spark of what theologians call divinity in every human being. These teachers must embody the same selfless dedication as the most rabid fundamentalist preachers, for they will be ministers of another sort, utilizing a classroom instead of a pulpit to convey humanist values in whatever subject they teach, regardless of the educational level—preschool day care or large state university. The classroom must and will become an arena of conflict between the old and the new—the rotting corpse of Christianity, together with all its adjacent evils and misery, and the new faith of humanism … . It will undoubtedly be a long, arduous, painful struggle replete with much sorrow and many tears, but humanism will emerge triumphant. It must if the family of humankind is to survive.
‘Oh but of course the story of Adam and Eve was only ever symbolic, wasn’t it? Symbolic?! Jesus had himself tortured and executed for a symbolic sin by a non-existent individual. Nobody not brought up in the faith could reach any verdict other than barking mad!’
Richard Dawkins – The full quote.
I have the finest mother That an boy could have; She cleanses all my scratches, And binds them all up with salve.
She fixes all my clothes, And doesn’t mind at all If I’ve torn my shirt Or outgrown it ’cause I’m tall
She helps me with my lessons, And takes the greatest pain To be sure I understand them, And my interest doesn’t wane.
She welcomes all my friends, And let’s us use her stuf; Poppin’ corn and makin’ candy, Till we’ve had enough.
She teaches me of God, And helps me understand The way to live to gain A home in heaven’s land.
No, I wouldn’t trade my mother For all the jewels of the earth; Cause there is no way to tell, What an awful lot she’s worth.
God never wrought miracles to convince atheism, because his ordinary works convince it.
Francis Bacon
God moves in a mysterious way His wonders to perform; He plants his foot steps in the sea And rides upon the storm.
William Cowper
This is a poem that I learnt when my little brother was about five years old, it made me think, and still makes me think “What ever I do some one is watching me, maybe not my little brother but every thing I do impacts someone.”
A careful boy I want to be A little brother follows me. I do not dare to go astray For fear he’ll go the selfsame way. I cannot once escape his eyes; Whate’er he sees me do, he tries; Like me he says me’s going to be– That little brother following me. He thinks that I am good and fine; Believes in every word of mine. The bad in me he must not see– That little brother following me. I must remember as I go, Through summer’s sun and winter’s snow, I’m building for the years to be That little brother following me.
Recent Comments