Reasonal Doubt

CRITICAL THOUGHT

"One can't prove that god doesn't exist. But science makes god unnecessary."
-Stephen Hawking

"The realm of atheism is focused on critical thinking and intellectual exploration. It employs investigation, research and analysis. It entertains doubt and skepticism. It is concerned with gathering evidence and examining data. It engages in argument and questioning. It seeks to discover what is true and factual. And it respects the scientific method."

-M. Lebeau

"Maintaining standards of evidence is the most important and least appreciated idea in science. Modern science was established in the late Renaissance period when networks of researchers began working out best practices for linking evidence with conclusions. In the face of science denial and attempts to create a post-truth society, we have to protect the primacy of standards of evidence in science and society."

-Quote

Science Buddies: What is Scientific Method?
Most Important Boring Idea in the Universe
Sciencing: Steps in Scientific Research
What is Research?

Quotes: Scientific Truth

“That which can be asserted without evidence, can be dismissed without evidence.”
-Christopher Hitchens

“Why did god plague us with the power to think? Why do you deny the one faculty which lifts mankind above all creatures on earth: the power of his brain to reason?”
-Lawrence & Lee (Inherit the Wind)

“If it can be destroyed by the truth is deserves to be destroyed by the truth.”
-Carl Sagan

"I can do all things through evidence-based best practice which strengthens me."

-Peer Review 24:7

“I have never seen the slightest scientific proof of the religious theories of heaven and hell, of future life for departed individuals, or of a personal god.”
-Thomas Edison

“Science adjusts its views based on what is observed. Religion is the denial of observation so that belief can be preserved.”
-Tim Minchin

“Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.”
-Carl Sagan

“One of the biggest problems with the world today is that we have large groups of people who will accept whatever they hear on the grapevine, just because it suits their worldview—not because it is actually true or because they have evidence to support it. The really striking thing is that it would not take much effort to establish validity in most of these cases… but people prefer reassurance to research.”
-Neil DeGrasse Tyson

DARE TO DOUBT
HERE I STAND
SPIRITUAL PERSPECTIVE

"All thinking men are atheists."

-Ernest Hemingway

“The concept of intelligent design encourages us to stop looking for answers. It would have us steer in the opposite direction of scientific curiosity. How can anyone suggest that science will never come up with a natural explanation for something, for anything? Shouldn’t we work the problems a bit more before giving up? Shouldn’t we have more faith in the power of science and of the human mind?”
-Guy Harrison

The argument isn't evolution vs creation. It's logic and reason vs superstition

and ignorance.

“The key conflict is between irrational blind faith and rational, logical minds.
-Taslima Nasrin

"I am a strong advocate for free thought on all subjects, and freedom of thought is best promoted by the gradual illumination of men's minds, which follows from the advance of science.”
-Charles Darwin

“Science is expanding, and with it our vision of the universe. Although this new and constantly changing view may not always give us comfort, it does have the virtue of truth according to our most effective resources for acquiring knowledge. No philosophy, moral outlook, or religion can be inconsistent with the findings of science and hope to endure among educated people.”
-Heinz R. Pagels

"There must be no barriers to freedom of inquiry. There is no place for dogma in science. The scientist is free, and must be free to ask any question, to doubt any assertion, to seek for any evidence, to correct any errors."

-J. Robert Oppenheimer

"All truth passes through three stages: First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident."
-Arthur Schopenhauer

"The ultimate goal of all research is not objectivity, but truth."
-Helene Deutsch

Science Buddies: What is Scientific Method?
Most Important Boring Idea in the Universe
Sciencing: Steps in Scientific Research
What is Research?

Quotes: Scientific Truth

"I believe there exists, and I feel within me, an instinct for the truth, or knowledge or discovery, of something of the same nature as the instinct of virtue, and that our having such an instinct is reason enough for scientific researches without any practical results ever ensuing from them."

-Charles Darwin

"A person of science rises ever, in seeking truth; and if they never find it in its wholeness, they discover nevertheless very significant fragments; and these fragments of universal truth are precisely what constitutes science."

-Claude Bernard

"A mere inference or theory must give way to a truth revealed; but a scientific truth must be maintained, however contradictory it may appear to the most cherished doctrines of religion."

-Sir David Brewster

"Science, my boy, is composed of errors, but errors that it is right to make, for they lead step by step to the truth."

-Jules Verne

"Nor must we forget that in science there are no final truths."

-Claude Lévi-Strauss

"Anyone who doesn’t take truth seriously in small matters cannot be trusted in large ones either."

-Albert Einstein

"Aristotle discovered all the half-truths which were necessary to the creation of science."

-Alfred North Whitehead

"As in the experimental sciences, truth cannot be distinguished from error as long as firm principles have not been established through the rigorous observation of facts."

-Louis Pasteur

DARE TO DOUBT
HERE I STAND
SPIRITUAL PERSPECTIVE

"Philosophy begins where religion ends. Just as chemistry begins where alchemy runs out. And astronomy takes the place of astrology."
-Christopher Hitchens

"Better a cruel truth than a comfortable delusion."

-Edward Abbey

"Falsehood is so easy, truth so difficult."

-George Eliot

"In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act."
-George Orwell

"Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies."

-Friedrich Nietzsche

I propose to raise a revolution against the lie that the majority has the monopoly of the truth."

-Henrik Johan Ibsen

"What one man calls god, another man calls the law of physics."
-Nikola Tesla

"You know, in high school if you didn't believe in science, it was just called failing."

-Michelle Wolfe

“Science can teach us, and I think our own hearts can teach us, no longer to look around for imaginary supports, no longer to invent allies in the sky, but rather to look to our own efforts to make this world a fit place to live in, instead of the sort of place that the churches in all these centuries have made it.”
-Bertrand Russell

"The moment you declare a set of ideas to be immune from criticism, satire, derision, or contempt, freedom of thought becomes impossible."

-Salman Rushdie

“Many people think that religious belief should be above challenge or somehow out of bounds. I disagree. There is a lot of good to be found in the world’s religions. I would never deny that. However, the dark side of religion cannot be overlooked. When claims for the existence of gods negatively impact world peace, the education of children, the development of new medical cures, safety and justice for women, and the progress of science, they must be challenged.”
-Guy Harrison

"Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence."
-John Adams

"The fact that an opinion has been widely held is no evidence whatever that it is not utterly absurd."

-Bertrand Russell

"I believe that people grew by facing reality. We should welcome information, even if the new evidence shows that our previous views were mistaken. Whatever the revelation, the facts are friendly. The facts are always friendly. Every bit of evidence one can acquire, in any area, leads one that much closer to what is true."

-Carl Rogers

"An unexamined faith is not worth having, for fundamentalism and uncritical certitude entail the rejection of one of the great human gifts: that of free will, of the liberty to make up our own minds based on evidence and tradition and reason."
-Jon Meacham

Science Buddies: What is Scientific Method?
Most Important Boring Idea in the Universe
Sciencing: Steps in Scientific Research
What is Research?

Quotes: Scientific Truth

“Religion is something left over from the infancy of our intelligence. It will fade away as we adopt reason and science as our guidelines.”
-Bertrand Russell

"God is an ever-receding pocket of scientific evidence."
-Neil de Grasse Tyson

Plato is my friend, Aristotle is my friend, but my greatest friend is truth."

-Sir Isaac Newton

"For my part, I too much value the pursuit of truth and the discovery of any new fact in nature, to avoid inquiry because it appears to clash with prevailing opinions."

-Sir William Crookes

Science Buddies: What is Scientific Method?
Most Important Boring Idea in the Universe
Sciencing: Steps in Scientific Research
What is Research?

Quotes: Scientific Truth

“I simply go with what works. And what works is the healthy skepticism embodied in the scientific method. Believe me, if the bible had ever been shown to be a rich source of scientific answers and enlightenment, we would be mining it daily for cosmic discovery.”
-Neil DeGrasse Tyson

“The evidence of evolution pours in, not only from geology, paleontology, biogeography, and anatomy (Darwin's chief sources), but from molecular biology and every other branch of the life sciences. To put it bluntly but fairly, anyone today who doubts that the variety of life on this planet was produced by a process of evolution is simply ignorant -- inexcusably ignorant, in today’s world. Doubts about the power of Darwin's idea of natural selection to explain this evolutionary process are still intellectually respectable, however, although the burden of proof for such skepticism has become immense.”
-Daniel Dennett

"God said it. I believe it. And that's good enough for me."

"Truth and reality stand on their own merit. Only lies need belief. Therefore, religion deserves our fearless disrespect."

-Quote

"Errors, like straws, upon the surface flow;
He who would search for pearls must dive below."

-John Dryden

"Gentlemen, that is surely true, it is absolutely paradoxical; we cannot understand it, and we don’t know what it means. But we have proved it, and therefore we know it is the truth."

-Benjamin Peirce

"In this age of information, if you are not an atheist, I sincerely hope that you are either illiterate or seven years old."
-Michael A. Sherlock

DARE TO DOUBT
HERE I STAND
SPIRITUAL PERSPECTIVE

"For the holy bible and the phenomena of nature proceed alike from the divine word, the former as the dictate of the holy ghost and the latter as the observant executrix of god's commands. It is necessary for the bible, in order to be accommodated to the understanding of every man, to speak many things which appear to differ from the absolute truth so far as the bare meaning of the words is concerned. But nature, on the other hand, is inexorable and immutable; she never transgresses the laws imposed upon her, or cares a whit whether her abstruse reasons and methods of operation are understandable to men. For that reason it appears that nothing physical which sense-experience sets before our eyes, or which necessary demonstrations prove to us, ought to be called in question (much less condemned) upon the testimony of biblical passages which may have some different meaning beneath their words."

-Galileo Galilei