I wondered recently, during an idle conversation, whatever became of that monumental media presence Rush Limbaugh. Now I know. He's been upstaged. Check out the following quote: "They're almost always biologists—the "science" with the greatest preponderance of women. The distaff MIT "scientist" who fled the room in response to Larry…
Yesterday I wrote a post describing how I discovered Bertrand Russell while I was an intellectually frustrated and isolated teen-aged boy. Back then, I was startled to see someone else who was publicly critical of religious institutions. Thinking about those days yesterday provoked me to scour the Internet today for some of Russell’s well-known quotes. There are many more Russell quotes out there than these; he was a prolific writer.
Russell, best known for being a mathematician and logician, dismayed many people while he was alive. After all, he didn’t believe in God. He spoke openly of sexual pleasure being a good thing; he protested against the Vietnam war. Now, however, many of his writings seem only like common sense.
I admired Russell’s clean writing style, his sense of wit, his astute observations and his good heart.
In my opinion, these are two topics that should always be discussed together. I’ve collected these quotes over the years:
Heaven: “a place so inane, so dull, so useless, so miserable, that nobody has ever ventured to describe a whole day in heaven, though plenty of people have described a day at the seaside.” –George Bernard Shaw
Theist and atheist: the fight between them is as to whether God shall be called God or shall have some other name. –Willard R. Espy
“We don’t know a millionth of one percent about anything.” — Thomas Alva Edison
“I do not feel obliged to believe that same God who endowed us with the sense, reason, and intellect, had intended for us to forgo their use.” –Galileo Galilei
“I believe in God, only I spell it Nature.” –Frank Lloyd Wright
“I distrust those people who know so well what God wants them to do, because I notice it always coincides with their own desires.” — Susan B. Anthony
“It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education.” – Albert Einstein
It has been said that man is a rational animal. All my life I have been searching for evidence which could support this. –Bertrand Russell
The Gay Lesbian Straight Education Network (GLSEN) supplies high school LGBT rights groups around the United States with a wealth of useful information, tools, and event and activity guides. For the last few years, I’ve appreciated the planning guides GLSEN provides as a source of brainstorming and public-relations hints. But looking through a GLSEN binder of open forum topics and public speaking tips recently, I came across an unusual and off-putting suggestion:
“Do NOT compare the LGBT Rights movement to the Civil Rights movement.”
Wait, what? The battle for LGBT rights mirrors the Civil Rights movement in a variety of ways. The reactionary backlash and lack of logic behind opponents’ arguments read exactly the same, complete with desperate biblical references. Take for example this judge’s ruling in Loving v. Virginia, a pre-Civil-Rights case on interracial marriage:
“Almighty God created the races white, black, yellow, malay and red, and he placed them on separate continents. And but for the interference with his arrangement there would be no cause for such marriages. The fact that he separated the races shows that he did not intend for the races to mix.”
Indeed, and Almighty God also created Adam and Eve, not, as the social conservatives say, Adam and Steve. The slow social acceptance and increase in violent hate crimes look much the same, too. So what differentiates Gay Rights from Civil Rights, again?
Well, nothing really. It just ruffles a lot of (black, evangelical) feathers to make the comparison. Apparently GLSEN doesn’t …
"I have only made this letter longer because I have not had the time to make it shorter." Blaise Pascal, (1623-1662) Lettres provinciales. Not that the story need be long, but it will take a long while to make it short. Henry David Thoreau If I had more time, I…