Putting all this together, we see that religion is like Sagan's invisible dragon. The missing evidence for any god is simply too glaring, and the special pleading too unconvincing, to make its existence anything more than a logical possibility. It's reasonable to conclude, provisionally but confidently, that the absence of evidence for God is indeed evidence for his absence.
Jerry CoyneRelated topics
absence anything dragon pleading possibility putting religion seeRelated quotes
The essence of religion is inertia; the essence of science is change. It is the function of the one to preserve, it is the function of the other to improve. If, as in Egypt, they are firmly chained together, either science will advance, in which case the religion will be altered, or the religion will preserve its purity, and science will congeal.
William Winwood Reade
The Duce told me that he foresaw the possibility of a conflict between Germany and Russia. He said that we could not stay out of this because it involved the struggle against communism. It was, therefore, necessary to make arrangements for the bringing together between Ljubljana and Zagreb of a motorized division, of an armored division, and of the grenadier division.
Ugo Cavallero
I am interested in the creativity of the criminal attitude because I recognize in it the existence of a special condition of crazy creativity. A creativity without morals fired only by the energy of freedom and the rejection of all codes and laws. For freedom rejects the dictated roles of the law and of the imposed order and for this reason is isolated.
Joseph Beuys
The problem of religion and the problem of orthodox Christianity are not one and the same thing. Much that we see around us today of unbelief and criticism, and the negation of our so-called truths, is based upon the fact that religion has been largely superseded by creed, and doctrine has taken the place of living experience. It is this living experience which is the keynote of this book.
Alice Bailey
The woman who fights against her father still has the possibility of leading an instinctive, feminine existence, because she rejects only what is alien to her. But when she fights against the mother she may, at the risk of injury to her instincts, attain to greater consciousness, because in repudiating the mother she repudiates all that is obscure, instinctive, ambiguous, and unconscious in her own nature.
Carl Jung