Eric wrote:
Nothing like a Mark Twain quote to release frustrations and make it laughable: (though I would have liked him to include atheists along with religion and politics)
In religion and politics people's beliefs and convictions are in almost every case gotten at second-hand, and without examination, from authorities who have not themselves examined the questions at issue but have taken them at second-hand from other non-examiners, whose opinions about them were not worth a brass farthing.
- Autobiography of Mark Twain
It's another one of man's great paradoxes that he takes at second-hand the opinions of ill-informed authority figures on the most important aspects of life (religion, politics, etc.). But he sees himself as the great authority on those aspects of life that are the most trivial (sports).
Eric wrote:Nothing like a Mark Twain quote to release frustrations and make it laughable: (though I would have liked him to include atheists along with religion and politics)
In religion and politics people's beliefs and convictions are in almost every case gotten at second-hand, and without examination, from authorities who have not themselves examined the questions at issue but have taken them at second-hand from other non-examiners, whose opinions about them were not worth a brass farthing.
- Autobiography of Mark Twain
A bit much to expect from an atheist, but then, to turn to another ever-quotable atheist:
"Do not allow yourselves to be deceived: Great Minds are Skeptical. ... There is nothing more necessary than truth, and in comparison with it everything else has only secondary value. This absolute will to truth: what is it? Is it the will to not allow ourselves to be deceived? Is it the will not to deceive? ... One does not want to be deceived, under the supposition that it is injurious, dangerous, or fatal to be deceived." - Friedrich Nietzsche
Could we simplify and say, "no one wants to be caught believing the moon is a piece of cheese"?
