ateism.nu

function writeHead() { document.write(""); document.write("ateism.nu"); document.write("

"); document.write("

"); //Här anges huvudmenyn - en rad per länk writeTopLink("index.html", "Startsidan"); writeTopLink("artiklar.html", "Artiklar"); writeTopLink("bocker.html", "Böcker"); writeTopLink("video.html", "Video"); writeTopLink("lankar.html", "Länkar"); writeTopLink("mailto:l_johan_k@yahoo.se", "e-post"); //Slut på huvudmenyn document.write("

"); } function writeTopLink(Url, Text) { document.write("

"); } function writeSideLink(Url, Text) { document.write("

"); } function writeSideParagraph(Text) { document.write("

" + Text + "

"); } function writeDelimiter() { document.write("

"); } function writeFoot() { document.write("

"); writeRandomQuote(); document.write("

© 2010 Johan Karlsson - Design: Anders Hesselbom - Title photo: NASA

"); } function writeRandomQuote() { var index=Math.round(Math.random()*423); // *5 betyder 0 till 5 switch(index) { case 0: writeQuote("The meme for blind faith secures its own perpetuation by the simple unconscious expedient of discouraging rational inquiry.", "Richard Dawkins"); break; case 1: writeQuote("(...) även om ateism kunde varit logisk försvarbart före Darwin, så gjorde Darwin det möjligt att vara en intellektuellt tillfredsställd ateist.", "Richard Dawkins"); break; case 2: writeQuote("Att förklara uppkomsten av DNA/proteinmaskinen genom att ta till en övernaturlig skapare är att inte förklara någonting alls eftersom skaparens uppkomst lämnas oförklarad. Man blir tvungen att säga något i stil med 'Gud har alltid funnits', och om man tillåter sig en så bekväm utväg, kan man ju lika väl en gång för alla säga: 'DNA har alltid funnits', eller: 'Livet har alltid funnits' och anse frågan besvarad.", "Richard Dawkins"); break; case 3: writeQuote("Ju mer vi slipper av underverk, hög osannolikhet, fantastiska sammanträffanden och märkliga slumphändelser, och ju mer vi kan dela upp märkliga slumphändelser i kumulativa serier av små slumpvisa steg, desto mer tillfredsställande för förnuftet kommer vår förklaring att vara.", "Richard Dawkins"); break; case 4: writeQuote("(...) att universum skulle ha skapats för bara 6000 år sedan. Denna teori saknar inte bara stöd. Den är oförenlig inte bara med ortodox biologi och geologi utan med den fysikaliska teorin om radioaktiviteten och med kosmologin (...).", "Richard Dawkins"); break; case 5: writeQuote("Nästan alla folk har utvecklat egna skapelsemyter och den som finns i Första Mosebok råkar bara vara den som råkade ha accepterats av en viss stam av herdar i Främre Orienten. Den har inte högre status än t.ex. den myt hos en västafrikansk stam, som hävdar att världen skapats ur exkrementer från myror.", "Richard Dawkins"); break; case 6: writeQuote("(...) att Darwinsk evolution skulle vara beroende av slumpen är inte endast felaktig. Den är raka motsatsen till sanningen. Slumpen ingår som en mindre ingrediens i Darwins recept men den viktiga ingrediensen är kumulativ selektion som är raka motsatsen till slumpen.", "Richard Dawkins"); break; case 7: writeQuote("Today the theory of evolution is about as much open to doubt as the theory that the earth goes round the sun.", "Richard Dawkins"); break; case 8: writeQuote("Vetenskap är det oegennyttiga sökandet efter den objektiva sanningen om den materiella världen.", "Richard Dawkins"); break; case 9: writeQuote("Scientific beliefs are supported by evidence, and they get results. Myths and faiths are not and do not.", "Richard Dawkins"); break; case 10: writeQuote("Never say, and never take seriously anyone who says, 'I cannot believe that so-and-so could have evolved by gradual selection'. I have dubbed this kind of fallacy the 'Argument from Personal Incredulity'. Time and again, it has proven the prelude to an intellectual banana-skin experience.", "Richard Dawkins"); break; case 11: writeQuote("(...) it seems that it would take less than half a million years to evolve a good camera eye (...). It's no wonder 'the' eye has evolved at least 40 times independently around the animal kingdom (...). It is a geological blink.", "Richard Dawkins"); break; case 12: writeQuote("If there is only one Creator who made the tiger and the lamb, the cheetah and the gazelle, what is He playing at? Is he a sadist who enjoys spectator blood sports? (...) Is He manoeuvring to maximise David Attenborough's television ratings?", "Richard Dawkins"); break; case 13: writeQuote("The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil and no good, nothing but blind pitiless indifference.", "Richard Dawkins"); break; case 14: writeQuote("It is grindingly, creakingly, crashingly obvoius that, if Darwinism were really a theory of chance, it couldn't work. You don't need to be a mathematician or physicist to calculate that an eye or a haemoglobin molecule would take from here to infinity to self-assemble by sheer higgedly-piggedly luck. Far from being a difficulty peculiar to Darwinism, the astronomic improbability of eyes and knees, enzymes and elbow joints and the other living wonders is precisely the problem that any theory of life must solve, and that Darwinism uniquely does solve. It solves it by breaking the improbability up into small, manageable parts, smearing out the luck needed, going round the back of Mount Improbable and crawling up the gentle slopes, inch by million-year inch. Only God would essay the mad task of leaping up the precipice in a singel bound. And if we postulate him as our cosmic designer we are left in exactly the same position as when we started. Any Designer capable of constructing the dazzling array of living things would have to be intelligent and complicated beyond all imagining. And complicated is just another word for improbable - and therefore demanding of explanation. A theologian who ripostes that his god is sublimely simple has (not very) neatly evaded the issue, for a sufficiently simple god, whatever other virtues he might have, would be too simple to be capable of designing a universe (to say nothing of forgiving sins, answering prayers, blessing unions, transubstantiating wine, and the many other achievements variously expected of him).", "Richard Dawkins"); break; case 15: writeQuote("There is a supremely banal reason why transitional forms are generally lacking at the species level. I can explain it best with an analogy. Children turn gradually and continuously into adult but, for legal purposes, the age of majority is taken to be a particual birthday, often the eighteenth. It would therefore be possible to say, 'There are 55 million people in Britain but not a single one of them is intermediate between non-voter and voter.' Just as, for legal purposes, a juvenile changes into a voter as midnight strikes on eighteenth birthday, so zoologists always insist on classifying a speciemen as in one species or another. If a specimen is intermediate in actual form (as many are) zoologists' legalistic conventions still force them to jump one way or the other when naming it. Therefore the creationists' claim that there are no intermediates has to be true by definition at the species level, but it has no implications about the real world - only implications about zoologists' naming conventions.", "Richard Dawkins"); break; case 16: writeQuote("We are going to die, and that makes us the lucky ones. Most people are never going to die because they are never going to be born. The potential people who could have been here in my place but who will in fact never see the light of day outnumber the sand grains of Arabia. Certainly those unborn ghosts include greater poets than Keats, scientists greater than Newton. We know this because the set of possible people allowed by our DNA so massively exceeds the set of actual people. In the teeth of these stupefying odds it is you and I, in our ordinariness, that are here.", "Richard Dawkins"); break; case 17: writeQuote("The Grand Canyon, whose rocks, from deepest to shallowest, span most of the period we are now talking about, is only around one mile deep. If the strata of the Grand Canyon were stuffed with fossils and no intervening rock, there would be room within its depth to accomadate only about one 600th of the generations that have successively died. This calculation help us to keep in proportion fundamentalist demands for a 'continuous' series of gradually changing fossils before they will accept the fact of evolution. The rocks of the earth simply don't have room for such a luxury - not by many orders of magnitude. Whichever way you look at it, only an extremely small proportion of creatures has the good fortune to be fossilized. As I have said before, I should consider it an honour.", "Richard Dawkins"); break; case 18: writeQuote("In an earlier column, of 29 July 1994, Bernard Levin had made light of the idea of quarks ('The quarks are coming! The quarks are coming! Run for your lives...'). After further cracks about 'noble science' having given us mobile telephones, collapsible umbrellas and multi-striped toothpaste, he broke into mock seriousness: Can you eat quarks? Can you spread them on your bed when the cold weather comes! This sort of thing doesn't really deserve a reply, but the Cambridge metallurgist Sir Alan Cottrell gave it two sentences, in a Letter to the Editor a few days later. Sir: Mr Bernard Levin asks 'Can you eat quarks?' I estimate that he eats 500,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,001 quarks a day...Yours faithfully..", "Richard Dawkins"); break; case 19: writeQuote("This is the ancient 'Argument from Design', also called the 'Argument from Paley's Watchmaker', or the 'Argument from Irreducible Complexity'. I have less kindly called it the 'Argument from Personal Incredulity' because it always has the form: 'I personally cannot imagine a natural sequence of events whereby X could have come about. Therefore it must have come about by supernatural means.' Time and again scientists have retorted that if you make this argument, is says less about nature than about the poverty of your imagination. The 'Argument from Personal Incredulity' would lead us to invoke the supernatural every time we see a good conjuror whose tricks we cannot fathom.", "Richard Dawkins"); break; case 20: writeQuote("The main objection to the irreducible complexity argument amounts to a demonstration that the allegedly irreducible complex entity, the flagellar motor, the blood-clotting cascade, the Krebs cycle, or whatever it might be, is actually reducible. The personal incredulity was simply wrong. To this we add the reminder that, even if we can't yet think of a step-by-step pathway by wich the complexity might have evolved, the eager slide to assuming that it is therfore supernatural is either sacrilegious or lazy, according to taste.", "Richard Dawkins"); break; case 21: writeQuote("Miller's indignation at 'Intelligent Design Theory' receives a boost from an interesting source: his deep religious convictions, which are more fully articulated in Finding Darwin's Good. Miller's God (if not Darwin's) is the God revealed in - or perhaps synonymous with - the deep lawfullness of nature. The creationist quest to demonstrate God through the negative route of the Argument from Personal Incredulity tuns out, as Miller shows, to assume that God capriciously violates his own laws. And this, to those - like Miller - of a thougtfully religious disposition, is a cheat and demeaning sacriliege. As a non-religious person I can symphatetically buttress Miller's argument with a parallel one of my own. If not sacrilegious, the intelligent design style of argument from personal incredulity is lazy. I have satirised it in an imagined conversation between Sir Andrew Huxley and Sir Alan Hodgkin, both sometime presidents of the Royal Society, who shared the Nobel Price for working out the molecular biophysics of the nerve impulse. 'I say, Huxley, this is a terribly difficult problem. I can't see how the nerve impulses works, can you?' 'No, Hodgkin, I can't, and these differential equations are fiendishly hard to solve. Why don't we just give up and say that the nerve impulse propagates by nervous energy?' 'Excellent idea, Huxley, let's write the letter to Nature now: it'll only take one line, then we can turn to something easier.'", "Richard Dawkins"); break; case 22: writeQuote("Bombardier beetles of the genus Brachinus (...) [mixes] chemicals to make an explosion. The ingridients are made and held in separate (obviously!) glands. When danger threatens, they are squirted into a chamber near the rear end of the beetle, where they explode, forcing noxious (caustic and boiling-hot) liquid out through a directed nozzle at the enemy. The case is well known to creationists, who love it. They think it is self-evidently impossible to evolve by gradual degrees because the intermediate stages would all explode. (...) I enjoyed demonstrating the error of this argument during my Royal Institution Christmas Lectures for Children, shown on BBC television 1991. Donning a Second World War helmet, and inviting nervous members of the audience to leave, I mixed hydroquinone and hydrogen peroxide, the two ingredients of the bombardier explosion. Nothing happened. It didn't even get warm. The explosion requires a catalyst. I raised the concentration of catalyst gradually, which steadily increased the hot woosh to a satisfactory climax. In nature, the beetle provides the catalyst, and would have had no difficulty in gradually, and safely, increasing the dose over evolutionay time.", "Richard Dawkins"); break; case 23: writeQuote("The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jelaous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive; bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriously malevolent bully.", "Richard Dawkins"); break; case 24: writeQuote("[theology], unlike science or most other branches of human scholarship, has not moved on in eighteen centuries.", "Richard Dawkins"); break; case 25: writeQuote("In another book I recounted the words of an Oxford astronomer who, when I asked him one of those same deep questions, said 'Ah, now we move beyond the realm of science. This is where I have to hand you over to our good friend the chaplain.' I was not quick-witted enough to utter the response I later wrote: 'But why the chaplain? Why not the gardener or the chef?' Why are scientists so cravenly respectful towards the ambitions of theologians, over questions that theologians are certainly no more qualified to answer than scientists themselves.", "Richard Dawkins"); break; case 26: writeQuote("(...) imagine, by some remarkable set of circumstances, that forensic archaeologists unearthed DNA evidence to show that Jesus really did lack a biological father. Can you imagine religous apologists shrugging their shoulders and saying anything remotely like the following? 'Who cares?' Scientific evidence is completely irrelevant to theological questions. Wrong magisterium! We're concerned only with ultimate questions and with moral values. Neither DNA nor any other scientific evidence could ever have any bearing on the matter, one way or the other.'.", "Richard Dawkins"); break; case 27: writeQuote("Creationist 'logic' is always the same. Some natural phenomenom is too statistically improbable, too complex, to beautiful, too awe-inspiring to have come into existence by chance. Design is the only alternative to chance that the authors can imagine. Therefore a designer must have done it. And science's answer to this faulty logic is also always the same. Design is not the only alternative to chance. Natural selection is a better alternative. Indeed, design is not a real alternative at all because it raises an even bigger problem that it solves: who designed the designer? Chance and design both fail as solutions to the problem of statistical improbability, because one of them is the problem, and the other one regresses to it. Natural selection is a real solution. It is the only workable solution, it is a solution of stunning elegance and power.", "Richard Dawkins"); break; case 28: writeQuote("Here is the message that an imaginary 'intelligent design theorist' might broadcast to scientists: 'If you don't understand how something works, never mind: just give up and say God did it. You don't know how the nerve impulses works? Good! You don't understand how memories are laid down in the brain? Excellent! Is photosynthesis a bafflingly complex process? Wonderful! Please don't go to work on the problem, just give up, and appeal to God. Dear scientist, don't work on your mysteries. Bring us your mysteries, for we can use them. Don't squander precious ignorance by researching it away. We need those glorius gaps as a last refugee for God.' St Augustine said it quite openly: 'There is another form of temptation, even more fraught with danger. This is the disease of curiosity. It is this which drive us to try and discover the secrets of nature, those secrets which are beyond our understanding, which can avail us nothing and which man should not wish to learn'.", "Richard Dawkins"); break; case 29: writeQuote("Fundamentalists know they are right because they have read the truth in a holy book and they know, in advance, that nothing will budge them from their belief. The truth of the holy book is an axiom, not the end product of a process of reasoning. The book is true, and if the evidence seems to contradict it, it is the evidence that must be thrown out, not the book. By contrast, what I, as a scientist, believe (for example, evolution) I believe not because of reading a holy book but because I have studied the evidence. It really is a very different matter. Books about evolution are believed not because they are holy. They are believed because they present overwhelming quantities of mutually buttressed evidence. In principle, any reader can go and check that evidence. When a science book is wrong, somebody eventually discovers the mistake and it is corrected in subsequent books. That conspicuously doesn't happen with holy books.", "Richard Dawkins"); break; case 30: writeQuote("A formative influence on my undergraduate self was the response of a respected elder statesmen of the Oxford Zoology Department when an American visitor had just publicly disproved his favourite theory. The old man strode to the front of the lecture hall, shook the American warmly by the hand and declared in ringing, emotional tones: 'My dear fellow, I wish to thank you. I have been wrong these fifteen years.' And we clapped our hands red.", "Richard Dawkins"); break; case 31: writeQuote("Every time you drink a glass of water, you are probably imbibing at least one atom that passed through the bladder of Aristotle. A tantalisingly surprising result, but it follows by Huxley-style organized common sense from Wolpert's observation that 'there are many more molecules in a glass of water than there are glasses of water in the sea'.", "Richard Dawkins"); break; case 32: writeQuote("There is mystery in the universe, beguiling mystery, but it isn't capricious, whimsical, frivolous in its changeability. The universe is an orderly place and, at a deep level, regions of it behave like other regions, times behave like other times. If you put a brick on a table it stays there unless something lawfully moves it, even if you meanwhile forget it's there. Poltergeists and sprites don't intervene and hurl it about for reasons of mischief or caprice. There is mystery but not magic, strangeness beyond the wildest imagining, but no spells or witchery, no arbitrary miracles.", "Richard Dawkins"); break; case 33: writeQuote("It really comes down to parsimony, economy of explanation. It is possible that your car engine is driven by psychokinetic energy, but if it looks like a petrol engine, smells like a petrol engine and performs exactly as well as a petrol engine, the sensible working hypothesis is that it is a petrol engine. (...) If you hear hooves clip-clopping down a London street, it could be a zebra or even a unicorn, but, before we assume that it's anything other than a horse, we should demand a certain minimal standard of evidence.", "Richard Dawkins"); break; case 34: writeQuote("By all means let's be open-minded, but not so open-minded that our brains drop out.", "Richard Dawkins"); break; case 35: writeQuote("What has theology ever said that is of the smallest use to anybody? When has theology ever said anything that is demonstrably true and is not obvious? I have listened to theologians, read them, debated against them. I have never heard any of them ever say anything of the smallest use, anything that was not either platitudinously obvious or downright false. If all the achievements of scientists were wiped out tomorrow, there would be no doctors but witch doctors, no transport faster than horses, no computers, no printed books, no agriculture beyond subsistence peasant farming. If all the achievements of theologians were wiped out tomorrow, would anyone notice the smallest difference? Even the bad achievements of scientists, the bombs, and sonar-guided whaling vessels work! The achievements of theologians don't do anything, don't affect anything, don't mean anything.", "Richard Dawkins"); break; case 36: writeQuote("A universe with a God would look quite different from a universe without one. A physics, a biology where there is a God is bound to look different. So the most basic claims of religion are scientific. Religion is a scientific theory.", "Richard Dawkins"); break; case 37: writeQuote("I am sometimes accused of arrogant intolerance in my treatment of creationists. Of course arrogance is an unpleasant characteristic, and I should hate to be thought arrogant in a general way. But there are limits! To get some idea of what it is like being a professional student of evolution, asked to have a serious debate with creationists, the following comparison is a fair one. Imagine yourself a classical scholar who has spent a lifetime studying Roman history in all its rich detail. Now somebody comes along, with a degree in marine engineering or mediaeval musicology, and tries to argue that the Romans never existed. Wouldn't you find it hard to suppress your impatience? And mightn't it look a bit like arrogance?", "Richard Dawkins"); break; case 38: writeQuote("Out of all of the sects in the world, we notice an uncanny coincidence: the overwhelming majority just happen to choose the one that their parents belong to. Not the sect that has the best evidence in its favour, the best miracles, the best moral code, the best cathedral, the best stained glass, the best music: when it comes to choosing from the smorgasbord of available religions, their potential virtues seem to count for nothing, compared to the matter of heredity.", "Richard Dawkins"); break; case 39: writeQuote("Faith is the great cop-out, the great excuse to evade the need to think and evaluate evidence. Faith is belief in spite of, even perhaps because of, the lack of evidence.", "Richard Dawkins"); break; case 40: writeQuote("The great beauty of Darwin's theory of evolution is that it explains how complex, difficult to understand things could have arisen step by plausible step, from simple, easy to understand beginnings. We start our explanation from almost infinitely simple beginnings: pure hydrogen and a huge amount of energy. Our scientific, Darwinian explanations carry us through a series of well-understood gradual steps to all the spectacular beauty and complexity of life. The alternative hypothesis, that it was all started by a supernatural creator, is not only superfluous, it is also highly improbable. It falls foul of the very argument that was originally put forward in its favour. This is because any God worthy of the name must have been a being of colossal intelligence, a supermind, an entity of extremely low probability--a very improbable being indeed.", "Richard Dawkins"); break; case 41: writeQuote("The achievements of religion in past history -- bloody crusades, torturing inquisitions, mass-murdering conquistadors, culture-destroying missionaries, legally enforced resistance to each new piece of scientific truth until the last possible moment (...). And what has it all been in aid of? I believe it is becoming increasingly clear that the answer is absolutely nothing at all. There is no reason for believing that any sort of gods exist and quite good reason for believing that they do not exist and never have. It has all been a gigantic waste of time and a waste of life. It would be a joke of cosmic proportions if it weren't so tragic.", "Richard Dawkins"); break; case 42: writeQuote("But is there any evidence that evolution actually has happened? The answer is yes; the evidence is overwhelming. Millions of fossils are found in exactly the places and at exactly the depths that we should expect if evolution had happened. Not a single fossil has ever been found in any place where the evolution theory would not have expected it, although this could very easily have happened: a fossil mammal in rocks so old that fishes have not yet arrived, for instance, would be enough to disprove the evolution theory. The patterns of distribution of living animals and plants on the continents and islands of the world is exactly what would be expected if they had evolved from common ancestors by slow, gradual degrees. The patterns of resemblance among animals and plants is exactly what we should expect if some were close cousins, and others more distant cousins to each other. The fact that the genetic code is the same in all living creatures overwhelmingly suggests that all are descended from one single ancestor. The evidence for evolution is so compelling that the only way to save the creation theory is to assume that God deliberately planted enormous quantities of evidence to make it look as if evolution had happened. In other words, the fossils, the geographical distribution of animals, and so on, are all one gigantic confidence trick. Does anybody want to worship a God capable of such trickery? It is surely far more reverent, as well as more scientifically sensible, to take the evidence at face value. All living creatures are cousins of one another, descended from one remote ancestor that lived more than 3,000 million years ago.", "Richard Dawkins"); break; case 43: writeQuote("For me, the important point is that, even if the physicist needs to postulate an irreducible minimum that had to be present in the beginning, in order for the universe to get started, that irreducible minimum is certainly extremely simple. By definition, explanations that build on simple premises are more plausible and more satisfying than explanations that have to postulate complex and statistically improbable beginnings. And you can't get much more complex than an Almighty God!", "Richard Dawkins"); break; case 44: writeQuote("It is fashionable to wax apocalyptic about the threat to humanity posed by the AIDS virus, 'mad cow' disease, and many others, but I think a case can be made that faith is one of the world's great evils, comparable to the smallpox virus but harder to eradicate.", "Richard Dawkins"); break; case 45: writeQuote("(...) the evidence that makes me believe in evolution is not only overwhelmingly strong; it is freely available to anyone who takes the trouble to read up on it. Anyone can study the same evidence that I have and presumably come to the same conclusion.", "Richard Dawkins"); break; case 46: writeQuote("Most religions offer a cosmology and a biology, a theory of life, a theory of origins, and reasons for existence. In doing so, they demonstrate that religion is, in a sense, science; it's just bad science. Don't fall for the argument that religion and science operate on separate dimensions and are concerned with quite separate sorts of questions. Religions have historically always attempted to answer the questions that properly belong to science. Thus religions should not be allowed now to retreat away from the ground upon which they have traditionally attempted to fight. They do offer both a cosmology and a biology; however, in both cases it is false.", "Richard Dawkins"); break; case 47: writeQuote("You cannot be both sane and well educated and disbelieve in evolution. The evidence is so strong that any sane, educated person has got to believe in evolution.", "Richard Dawkins"); break; case 48: writeQuote("I find that the reason that I am no longer religious is that the argument from design has been undermined by evolution. So if the basis for your religion is the argument from design, if the reason why you are religious is that you look at the world and you say, 'Isn't it beautifully designed! Isn't it elegant! Isn't it complicated!' then Darwinism really does pull the rug out from under that argument. If your reason for being religious has nothing to do with that, if your reason for being religious is some still, small voice inside you which utterly convinces you, then the argument from design, I suppose, has no bearing on that. But what, I think, Darwinism has done is utterly to destroy the argument from design which, I believe, is probably, historically, the dominant reason for believing in a supernatural being.", "Richard Dawkins"); break; case 49: writeQuote("The alternative hypothesis, that it was all started by a supernatural creator, is not only superfluous, it is also highly improbable. It falls foul of the very argument that was originally put forward in its favour. This is because any God worthy of the name must have been a being of colossal intelligence, a supermind, an entity of extremely low probability -- a very improbable being indeed. (...) Science offers us an explanation of how complexity (the difficult) arose out of simplicity (the easy). The hypothesis of God offers no worthwhile explanation for anything, for it simply postulates what we are trying to explain. It postulates the difficult to explain, and leaves it at that. We cannot prove that there is no God, but we can safely conclude the He is very, very improbable indeed.", "Richard Dawkins"); break; case 50: writeQuote("Religion teaches the dangerous nonsense that death is not the end.", "Richard Dawkins"); break; case 51: writeQuote("To fill a world with religion, or religions of the Abrahamic kind, is like littering the streets with loaded guns.", "Richard Dawkins"); break; case 52: writeQuote("(...) faith to me means knowing something just because you know it's true, rather than because you have seen any evidence that it's true.", "Richard Dawkins"); break; case 53: writeQuote("A creator who created the universe or set up the laws of physics so that life would evolve or who actually supervised the evolution of life, or anything like that, would have to be some sort of super-intelligence, some sort of mega-mind. That mega-mind would have had to be present right at the start of the universe. The whole message of evolution is that complexity and intelligence and all the things that would go with being a creative force come late, they come as a consequence of hundreds of millions of years of natural selection. There was no intelligence early on in the universe. Intelligence arose, it's arisen here, maybe it's arisen on lots of other places in the universe. Maybe somewhere in some other galaxy there is a super-intelligence so colossal that from our point of view it would be a god. But it cannot have been the sort of God that we need to explain the origin of the universe, because it cannot have been there that early.", "Richard Dawkins"); break; case 54: writeQuote("You prepare for it [death] by facing up to the truth, which is that life is what we have and so we had better live our life to the full while we have it, because there is nothing after it. We are very lucky accidents or at least each one of us is -- if we hadn't been here, someone else would have been. I take all this to reinforce my view that I am fantastically lucky to be here and so are you, and we ought to use our brief time in the sunlight to maximum effect by trying to understand things and get as full a vision of the world and life as our brains allow us to, which is pretty full.", "Richard Dawkins"); break; case 55: writeQuote("Much as I'd like the vet to put me down when I'm past it, he'd be tried for murder because I'm human.", "Richard Dawkins"); break; case 56: writeQuote("We are all atheists about most of the gods that humanity has ever believed in. Some of us just go one god further.", "Richard Dawkins"); break; case 57: writeQuote("There may be some deep questions about the cosmos that are forever beyond science. The mistake is to think that they are therefore not beyond religion, too.", "Richard Dawkins"); break; case 58: writeQuote("Religion offends every bone in Dawkins's rational, atheist body. 'You can see why people may want to believe in something,' he acknowledges. 'The idea of an afterlife where you can be reunited with loved ones can be immensely consoling - though not to me. But to maintain such a belief in the face of all the evidence to the contrary is truly bewildering.' If individual faith is, for Dawkins, an expression of an ignorance, collective faith and organised religion embody something much more pernicious.", "Richard Dawkins"); break; case 59: writeQuote("Of course, we would love to know more about the exact moment of Big Bang,' he says, 'but interposing an outside intelligence does nothing to add to that knowledge, as we still know nothing about the creation of that intelligence.", "Richard Dawkins"); break; case 60: writeQuote("I had my first doubts when I was nine,' he recalls, 'when I realised there were lots of different religions and they couldn't all be right.'", "Richard Dawkins"); break; case 61: writeQuote("And what if, by some mischance, he were to find there is a God when he dies? He looks at me as if I were mad. 'The question is so preposterous that I can hardly grace it with a hypothetical answer,' he says finally. 'But, to quote Bertrand Russell, I suspect I would say, 'There's not enough evidence, God'.", "Richard Dawkins"); break; case 62: writeQuote("Might we even dare to hope that, by 2151, there won't be any Catholics or Protestants left, only people", "Richard Dawkins"); break; case 63: writeQuote("I, as a scientific educator, am dismayed by the 50 percent of the American population who believe the world is 6000 years old (an error equivalent to believing that the distance from New York to San Francisco is shorter than a cricket pitch) (...)", "Richard Dawkins"); break; case 64: writeQuote("I don't want just to annoy people - I want to change people's minds.", "Richard Dawkins"); break; case 65: writeQuote("The God of the Old Testament is a sheer monster. Anyone who denies that simply hasn't read the Old Testament.", "Richard Dawkins"); break; case 66: writeQuote("Thou shalt not kill' really means 'Thou shalt not kill another Jew'.", "Richard Dawkins"); break; case 67: writeQuote("Some people still take the book of Genesis literally and believe Earth is less than 10,000 years old – which is after the domestication of the dog. This is naive creationism. It's like believing the distance from New York to San Francisco is a mere 7.8 metres.", "Richard Dawkins"); break; case 68: writeQuote("The religion and any sort of dogma are the biggest obstacle against the Truth.", "Richard Dawkins"); break; case 69: writeQuote("I would be the first person to accept God once evidence comes in favour of it.", "Richard Dawkins"); break; case 70: writeQuote("[ID] is not a scientific argument at all, but a religious one. It might be worth discussing in a class on the history of ideas, in a philosophy class on popular logical fallacies, or in a comparative religion class on origin myths from around the world. But it no more belongs in a biology class than alchemy belongs in a chemistry class, phlogiston in a physics class or the stork theory in a sex education class. In those cases, the demand for equal time for 'both theories' would be ludicrous. Similarly, in a class on 20th-century European history, who would demand equal time for the theory that the Holocaust never happened?", "Richard Dawkins"); break; case 71: writeQuote("The weight of the evidence has become so heavy that opposition to the fact of evolution is laughable to all who are acquainted with even a fraction of the published data. Evolution is a fact: as much a fact as plate tectonics or the heliocentric solar system.", "Richard Dawkins"); break; case 72: writeQuote("Most Christians happily disavow Baal and the Flying Spaghetti Monster without reference to monographs of Baalian exegesis or Pastafarian theology.", "Richard Dawkins"); break; case 73: writeQuote("There is no such thing as a Christian child: only a child of Christian parents.", "Richard Dawkins"); break; case 74: writeQuote("No, please, do not mistake passion, which can change its mind, for fundamentalism, which never will. Passion for passion, an evangelical Christian and I may be evenly matched. But we are not equally fundamentalist. The true scientist, however passionately he may 'believe', in evolution for example, knows exactly what would change his mind: evidence! The fundamentalist knows that nothing will.", "Richard Dawkins"); break; case 75: writeQuote("Perhaps you believe in God because life would be intolerable without him. That's an even weaker argument. Maybe life just is intolerable. Tough! All sorts of things are intolerable, but it doesn't make them untrue. It may be intolerable that you are starving, but you won't make a stone edible by believing - no matter how passionately and sincerely - that it is made of cheese.", "Richard Dawkins"); break; case 76: writeQuote("Religious faith is not only a major force for evil in the world. Its very foundations are undermined and denied by scientific logic. Imagine a world where nobody is afraid to follow such thoughts wherever they may lead.", "Richard Dawkins"); break; case 77: writeQuote("One of the central themes of this book, however, is that religious moderates are themselves the bearers of a terrible dogma: they imagine that the path to peace will be paved once each of us has learned to respect the unjustified beliefs of others. I hope to show that the very ideal of religious tolerance - born of the notion that every human being should be free to believe whatever he wants about God - is one of the principal forces driving us toward the abyss.", "Sam Harris"); break; case 78: writeQuote("Tell a devout Christian that his wife is cheating om him, or that frozen yogurt can make a man invisible, and he is likely to require as much evidence as anyone else, and to be persuaded only to the extent that you give it. Tell him that the book he keeps by his bed was written by an invisible deity who will punish him wiht fire for eternity if he fails to accept its every incredible claim about the universe, and he seems to require no evidence whatsoever.", "Sam Harris"); break; case 79: writeQuote("Imagine that we could revive a well-educated Christian of the fourteenth century. The man would prove to be a total ignoramus, except on matters of faith. His beliefs about geography, astronomy, and medicine would embarass even a child, but he would know more or less everything there is to know about God. Though he would be considered a fool to think that the earth is the center of the cosmos, or that trepanning constitutes a wise medical invention, his religious ideas would still be beyond reproach.", "Sam Harris"); break; case 80: writeQuote("It is time we recognized that belief is not a private matter; it has never been merely private. In fact, beliefs are scarcely more private than actions are, for every belief is a fount of action in potentia. The belief that it will rain puts an umbrella in the hand of every man or woman who owns one. It should be easy enough to see that belief in the full efficiacy of prayer for instance, becomes an emphatically public concern the moment it is actually put into practice: the moment a surgeon lays aside his wordly instruments and attempts to suture his patients with prayer, or a pilot tries to land a passenger jet with nothing but repetitions of the word 'Hallelujah' applied to the controls, we are swiftly delivered from the provinces of private faith to those of a criminal court.", "Sam Harris"); break; case 81: writeQuote("The fact that I would feel good if there were a God does not give me the slightests reasons to believe that one exists. This is easily seen when we swap the existence of God for some other consoling proposition. Let's say that I want to believe that there is a diamond buried somewhere in my yard that is the size of a refrigerator. It is true that it would feel uncommonly good to believe this. But do I have any reason to believe that there is actually a diamond in my yard that is thousands of times larger that any yet discovered? No.", "Sam Harris"); break; case 82: writeQuote("On almost every page, the Koran instructs observant Muslims to despise non-beliviers. On almost every page, it prepares the ground for religous conflict. Anyone who can read passages [in the Koran] (...) and still not see a link between Muslim faith and Muslim violence should propably consult a neurologist.", "Sam Harris"); break; case 83: writeQuote("According to the most common interpretation of biblical prophecy, Jesus will return only after things have gone horribly awry here on earth. It is, therefore, not an exaggeration to say that if the city of New York were suddenly replaced by a ball of fire, some significant percentage of the American population would see a silver lining in the subsequent mushroom cloud, as it would suggest to them that the best thing that is ever going to happen was about to happen: the return of Christ.", "Sam Harris"); break; case 84: writeQuote("Of course, the Church's position on abortion takes no more notice of the details of biology than it does of the reality of human suffering. It has been estimated that 50 percent of all human conceptions end in spontaneus abortion, usually without a woman even realizing that she was pregnant. In fact, 20 percent of all recognized pregnancies end in miscarriage. There is an obvious truth here that cries out for acknowledgment: if God exists, He is the most prolific abortionist of all.", "Sam Harris"); break; case 85: writeQuote("Atheism is nothing more than the noises reasonable people make in the presence of unjustified religious beliefs.", "Sam Harris"); break; case 86: writeQuote("The idea that Islam is a 'peaceful religion hijacked by extremists' is a fantasy, and it is now a particularly dangerous fantasy for Muslims to indulge.", "Sam Harris"); break; case 87: writeQuote("The Bible, it seems certain, was written by men and women who thought the earth was flat and who would have considered a wheelbarrow a breathtaking example of emerging technology.", "Sam Harris"); break; case 88: writeQuote("Indeed, religion is as much a living spring of violence today as it was at any time in the past. The recent conflicts in Palestine (Jews v Muslims), the Balkans (Orthodox Serbians v Catholic Croatians; Orthodox Serbians v Bosnian and Albanian Muslims), Northern Ireland (Protestants v Catholics), Kashmir (Muslims v Hindus), Sudan (Muslims v Christians and animists), Nigeria (Muslims v Christians) and Iran and Iraq (Shia v Sunni) are merely a few cases in point. These are places where religion has been the explicit cause of millions of deaths in the past decade.", "Sam Harris"); break; case 89: writeQuote("But by failing to live by the letter of the texts -while tolerating the irrationality of those who do -religious moderates betray faith and reason equally.", "Sam Harris"); break; case 90: writeQuote("Words like 'God' and 'Allah' must go the way of 'Apollo' and 'Baal' or they will unmake our world.", "Sam Harris"); break; case 91: writeQuote("En människa som gjorde något som alls liknar vad Gud enlig kristendomen gör med mänskligheten, vore ett monstrum av ondska.", "Ingemar Hedenius"); break; case 92: writeQuote("Jag kan inte slå mig till ro med att tron säger en sak och vetande en annan och att tron kan har rätt på sitt område och vetandet på sitt. Ty så snart en motsägelse mellan tro och vetande har blivit konstaterad, vet jag att vetandet självt, uttryckligen eller underförstått, säger att trons ståndpunkt är en illusion.", "Ingemar Hedenius"); break; case 93: writeQuote("Satsen, att en självmotsägande åskådning aldrig är sann utan alltid orimlig, är en ofrånkomlig princip, lika strängt bevisbar som satsen att två gånger två är fyra och lika lite dogmatisk som den. Och denna princip gäller alla åskådningar, religiösa lika väl som profana, teologiska teorier om andelivets realiteter lika väl som beskrivningar av vår religion. (...) Att den ortodoxa kristendomens Gud inte existerar, det kan visserligen bevisas, emedan denne Gud har logiskt oförenliga egenskaper; han är ju både kärleksfull, och icke kärleksfull, allsmäktig och icke allsmäktig. (...) Fastän vetenskapen inte kan bevisa ateismens riktighet, ökar den ständigt osannolikheten för tron på en verksam Gud.", "Ingemar Hedenius"); break; case 94: writeQuote("Min utgångspunkt är en maxim, som jag har insett vara kärnan i den intellektuella moral, jag omfattar. Och det är att inte tro på något, som det inte finns några förnuftiga skäl att anse vara sant.", "Ingemar Hedenius"); break; case 95: writeQuote("Antagandet av Guds existens vilar på grunder, som inte har relevans i vetenskapliga sammanhang och Gud förekommer inte i vetenskapliga teoribildningar, emedan vetenskapen har upphört att intressera sig för denna storhet. (...) Att begreppet Gud sedermera har försvunnit ur vetenskapen beror därpå, att man inte har behövt detta begrepp. Det har nämligen genomgående visat sig vara möjligt att beskriva verkligheten utan att anta några övernaturliga entiteter, och man har inte haft någon teoretisk fördel av att på försök införa sådana vid behandling av ouppklarade problem. Guds försvinnande ut vetenskapen beror alltså på tillämpningen av vetenskapens fundamentala förenklingsprincip 'Occams rakkniv'. Denna princip säger, att förnuftet inte får anta fler storheter än den vetenskapliga förklaringstekniken kan kräva'. (...) det är en metodregel för all vetenskaplig forskning att aldrig försöka och ännu mindre känna sig nödsakad att konstatera några spår av Gud i verkligheten. Denna genom en tyst överenskommelse antagna återhållsamhet i fråga om teologiska förklaringsgrunder har inte verkat hämmande på vetenskapens utveckling eller av forskarna själva känts som ett hinder för tankens frihet. Tvärtom har den gått hand i hand med vetenskapens hela segertåg i modern tid och sålunda rättfärdigat sig som en sund metodisk princip. Men med varje nytt område av verkligheten, som den metodologiska ateistiska vetenskapen finner förklaringar till, minskar sannolikheten för antagandet av en Gud, som är verksam i universum.", "Ingemar Hedenius"); break; case 96: writeQuote("Om något har en naturlig historia är det vetenskapen, som trots alla misstag och yttre hinder nått sina glänsande resultat uteslutande genom enskilda personers trogna flit och metodiskt uppövade intelligens. Om något vittnar om människans egen förmåga är det vetenskapen, om något vederlägger den primitiva uppfattningen att gudomliga ingripanden måste till för att något stort skall åstadkommas, är det den.", "Ingemar Hedenius"); break; case 97: writeQuote("To define twentieth-century humanism briefly, I would say that it is a philosophy of joyous service for the greater good of all humanity in this natural world and advocating the methods of reason, science, and democracy.", "Corliss Lamont"); break; case 98: writeQuote("Humanism believes in a naturalistic metaphysics or attitude toward the universe that considers all forms of the supernatural as myth; and that regards Nature as the totality of being and as a constantly changing system of matter and energy which exists independently of any mind or consciousness.(...) Humanism, drawing especially upon the laws and facts of science, believes that we human beings are an evolutionary product of the Nature of which we are a part; that the mind is indivisibly conjoined with the functioning of the brain; and that as an inseparable unity of body and personality we can have no conscious survival after death. (...) Humanism, in accordance with scientific method, believes in the unending questioning of basic assumptions and convictions, including its own. Humanism is not a new dogma, but is a developing philosophy ever open to experimental testing, newly discovered facts, and more rigorous reasoning.", "Corliss Lamont"); break; case 99: writeQuote("(...) Humanism is the viewpoint that people have but one life to lead and should make the most of it in terms of creative work and happiness; that human happiness is its own justification and requires no sanction or support from supernatural sources; that in any case the supernatural, usually conceived of in the form of heavenly gods or immortal heavens, does not exist; and that human beings, using their own intelligence and cooperating liberally with one another, can build an enduring citadel of peace and beauty upon this earth.", "Corliss Lamont"); break; case 100: writeQuote("(...) the very important law of parsimony, which demands that any scientific explanation be based on the fewest assumptions necessary to account for all the facts involved. This cardinal principle of economy or simplicity of hypothesis developed during the late Middle Ages and became particularly associated, in the fourteenth century, with the views of an English philosopher, William of Ockham. The precise formulation, 'Entities [of explanation] are not to be multiplied without necessity,' was later given the name of Ockham’s Razor. (...) This fundamental law of the simplicity of hypothesis has been a paramount intellectual tool in the advance of science. (...) The law means only that we should not bring in unnecessary hypotheses to explain a situation, whether it happens to be comparatively simple or comparatively complex . The principle of parsimony expresses negatively the scientific rule that every hypothesis must meet the requirements of affirmative empirical proof before being accepted.(...) Applying this law to the question of Divinity, we can see that it rules out as superfluous the hypothesis of a supernatural God as Creator or First Cause or Prime Mover of the universe. It eliminates the God of monotheism as an explanation of the behavior of our vast cosmos just as it eliminates the hundreds upon hundreds of more limited gods of animism and polytheism, including all those attractive and picturesque deities of ancient Greece and Rome, as an explanation of natural phenomena. In the same way the law of parsimony makes a supernatural Soul for the universe at large as unnecessary and unsound, scientifically and philosophically, as a supernatural soul for each individual person and animal.", "Corliss Lamont"); break; case 101: writeQuote("In the framework of the Humanist world-view the everpresent glory of the visible natural takes the place of the traditional glory of the invisible supernatural.", "Corliss Lamont"); break; case 102: writeQuote("We all of us make this assumption about the uniformity of nature, every minute of the day. Even if you are just sitting down doing nothing, you relax in the assumptions that gravity is not about to stop keeping you sitting down, that the material the chair is made of will not suddenly turn to liquid, and that the tea you're drinking won't suddenly poison you.", "Julian Baggini"); break; case 103: writeQuote("We are now in a position to reject the claim often made that atheism is just a faith position like religious belief. This is an interesting claim, because if it is a faith position 'just like' religious belief, then the religious are in no position to criticize atheist for their beliefs. Indeed, the religious should question the wisdom of this line of attack: if their own and competing beliefs are all just faith positions, then aren't we left with a kind of relativism, where there are no grounds for establishing the truth of falsity of any belief system and it is rather a case of believing 'what works for you'?", "Julian Baggini"); break; case 104: writeQuote("[That] the beliefs of atheists require at least as much faith as those of religious believers (...) cannot be shown. This is beacause the atheist position is based on evidence and arguments to best explanation. The atheist believes in what she has good reason to believe in and doesn't believe in supernatural entities that there are few reasons to believe in, none of them strong. If this is a faith position then the amount of faith required is extremely small.", "Julian Baggini"); break; case 105: writeQuote("Vetenskapen är en process; den är ett sätt att tänka, en metod att närma sig och möjligen lösa problem, en väg längs vilken man kan skapa ordning och kanske förnuft ut oorganiserade och kaotiska observationer. Genom den vetenskapliga forskningen får vi användbara slutsatser och resultat som är övertygande och kring vilken det finns en tendens att vara ense. Dessa vetenskapliga slutsatser betraktas vanligen som representerande ett rimligt närmande till 'sanningen' - som senare kan bli föremål för korrigeringar. Vetenskapen utlovar inte den absoluta sanningen, inte heller anser den att någon sådan nödvändigt existerar. Vetenskapen utlovar inte ens att allt i hela universum är tillgänglig för den vetenskapliga processen. Den vetenskapliga forskningen sysslar bara med de delar och förhållanden i universum som kan observeras på ett rimligt sätt och för vilka de redskap forskningen använder är tillräckliga. (...) Forskningsprocessen innebär därför en långsamt framåtgående rörelse genom åtkomliga delar av universum - ett gradvis avslöjande av delarna i det stora mysteriet.", "Isaac Asimov"); break; case 106: writeQuote("En teori är, när den framläggs av en kompetent vetenskapsman, ett genomarbetat och detaljerat försök att förklara en serie observationer som för övrigt verkar obesläktade och utan samband med varandra. Den grundar sig på otaliga observationer, ett ingående resonemang och, när detta behövs, noggrann matematisk slutledning. För att nå framgång måste en teori bekräftas av andra vetenskapsmän genom många ytterligare observationer och prövningar och den måste, när detta är möjligt, lägga fram förutsägelser som kan prövas och bekräftas. Teorin kan bli - och blir - förfinad och förbättrad genom fler och bättre observationer. (...) Ingen anständig vetenskapsman tvivlar på att atomer, evolutionen, kvanta eller relativistisk rörelse existerar (...).", "Isaac Asimov"); break; case 107: writeQuote("Om fundamentalisterna envisas med att pracka på oss en bokstavlig tro på skapelseberättelsen i Första Moseboken, om de försöker tvinga oss att acceptera en jord och ett universum som bara är några tusen år gammalt, och om de förnekar oss evolutionen, då kräver jag att de skall acceptera bokstavligen varenda passage i Bibeln - och det innebär att vi får en platt jord och en tunn metallhimmel. Och om de inte tycker om det - vad bryr väl jag mig om det?", "Isaac Asimov"); break; case 108: writeQuote("[Isaac Asimov i brev till en ung kreationist] 'Jag föreslog (...) att han i sin nästa bön kunde be Gud ge honom utbildning, så att han slapp förbli lika okunnig livet igenom.", "Isaac Asimov"); break; case 109: writeQuote("If we insist on the Bible's being literary true, then we must abandon the scientific method totally and completely. There's no way that we can at the same time try to discover the truth by means of observation and reason and also accept the Bible as true.", "Isaac Asimov"); break; case 110: writeQuote("The Bible says that every plant, and every animal, was created after its own kind, which would indicate that species have been as they are now from the very beginning and have never changed. Despite what the creationists say, the fossil record, as well as very subtle biochemical evidence, geological evidence, and all sorts of other evidence, indicates that species have changed, that there has been a long evolutionary process that has lasted over three billion years.", "Isaac Asimov"); break; case 111: writeQuote("The Bible is a human document. (...) I don't think that anything is divinely inspired. I think everything that human beings possess of intelligent origin is humanly inspired, with no exceptions.", "Isaac Asimov"); break; case 112: writeQuote("(...) in any fight between evolutionists and creationists, evolution will win as long as human beings have sense.", "Isaac Asimov"); break; case 113: writeQuote("Let me begin by presenting this 'Reagan Doctrine' (...): 'No one who disbelieves in God and in an afterlife can possibly be trusted.", "Isaac Asimov"); break; case 114: writeQuote("If I were not an atheist, I would believe in a God who would choose to save people on the basis of the totality of their lives, and not the pattern of their words. I think He would prefer an honest and righteous atheist to a TV preacher whose every word is God, God, God, and whose every deed is foul, foul, foul.", "Isaac Asimov"); break; case 115: writeQuote("To surrender to ignorance and call it God has always been premature, and it remains premature today.", "Isaac Asimov"); break; case 116: writeQuote("A theory (as the word is used by scientists) is a detailed description of some facet of the universe's workings that is based on long observation and, where possible, experiment. It is the result of careful reasoning from these observations and experiments that has survived the critical study of scientists generally.", "Isaac Asimov"); break; case 117: writeQuote("The details of evolutionary theory are in dispute precisely because scientists are not devotees of blind faith and dogmatism. They do not accept even as great thinker as Darwin without question, nor do they accept any idea, new or old, without thorough argument. Even after accepting an idea, they stand ready to overrule it, if appropriate new evidence arrives.", "Isaac Asimov"); break; case 118: writeQuote("Givetvis är det omöjligt att ge hundraprocentigt säkra bevis för att någon gud inte existerar. Det är lika omöjligt som att ge hundraprocentigt säkra bevis för att tomtar och troll inte existerar. Men allt vi vet om världen idag, pekar på att inga övernaturliga väsen eller gudar existerar. Det saknas goda skäl att tro att sådana varelser finns medan det finns goda skäl att tro att de inte finns. Ateistens hypotes är att gud inte existerar. Det är idag en mycket välgrundad hypotes. Värden förefaller vara naturligt, i motsats till övernaturlig.", "Christer Sturmark"); break; case 119: writeQuote("Men även om vi inte kan vara helt säkra på att den yttre verkligheten finns, så verkar det vara mer som talar för att den finns än som talar för att den inte finns. Den bästa förklaringen till att våra sinnesintryck uppvisar en så pass hög grad av regelbundenhet, och till att våra förutsägelser tenderar att slå in ganska ofta, är att våra uppfattningar oftast överensstämmer med verkligheten. (...) Dessutom verkar det ha högre överlevnadsvärde att tro att världen är som den verkligen är, snarare än att tro något annat: Om en tiger rusar mot mig, så har det ett större överlevnadsvärde att jag också tror att en tiger rusar mot mig, än att jag inte tror det.", "Christer Sturmark"); break; case 120: writeQuote("(...) om påståendet 'Alla sanningar är relativa' vore sant, då måste ju även detta påstående vara relativt, eller hur? Sant för vissa, men inte för andra. Hela idén med sanningsrelativism kollapsar då som ett korthus.", "Christer Sturmark"); break; case 121: writeQuote("Idén om gud finns, men inte gud.", "Christer Sturmark"); break; case 122: writeQuote("If I were granted omnipotence, and millions of years to experiment in, I should not think Man much to boast of as the final result of all my efforts.", "Bertrand Russell"); break; case 123: writeQuote("Three passions, simple but overwhelmingly strong, have governed my life: the longing for love, the search for knowledge, and unbearable pity for the suffering of mankind. Three passions, like great winds, have blown me hither and tither, in a wayward course, over a deep ocean of anguish, reaching to the very verge of despair.", "Bertrand Russell"); break; case 124: writeQuote("I was much cheered, on my arrival [to prison], by the warder at the gate, who had to take particulars about me. He asked my religion and I replied 'agnostic'. He asked how to spell it, and remarked with a sigh: 'Well, there are many religions, but I suppose they all worship the same God.' This remark kept me cheerful for about a week.", "Bertrand Russell"); break; case 125: writeQuote("I was told that the Chinese said that they would bury me by the Western Lake and build a shrine to my memory. I have some slight regret that this did not happen, as I might have become a god, which would have been very chic for an atheist.", "Bertrand Russell"); break; case 126: writeQuote("My own view on religion is that of Lucretius. I regard it as a disease born of fear and as a source of untold misery to the human race.", "Bertrand Russell"); break; case 127: writeQuote("Christ taught that you should give your goods to the poor, that you should not fight, that you should not go to church, and that you should not punish adultery. Neither Catholics nor Protestants have shown any strong desire to follow His teaching in any of these respects.", "Bertrand Russell"); break; case 128: writeQuote("If you consider the total amount of matter in the world and compare it with the amount forming the bodies of intelligent beings, you will see that the latter bears an almost infinitesimal proportion to the former. Consequently, even if it is enormously improbable that the laws of chance will produce an organism capable of intelligence out of a casual selection of atoms, it is nevertheless probable that there will be in the universe that very small number of such organisms that we do in fact find.", "Bertrand Russell"); break; case 129: writeQuote("The knowledge exists by which universal happiness can be secured; the chief obstacle to its utilization for that purpose is the teaching of religion. Religion prevents our children from having a rational education; religion prevents us from removing the fundamental causes of war; religion prevents us from teaching the ethic of scientific co-operation in place of the old fierce doctrines of sin and punishment. It is possible that mankind is on the threshold of a golden age; but, if so, it will be necessary first to slay the dragon that guards the door, and this dragon is religion.", "Bertrand Russell"); break; case 130: writeQuote("(...) for a long time [I] accepted the argument of the First Cause, until one day, at the age of eighteen, I read John Stuart Mill's Autobiography, and I there found this sentence: 'My father taught me that the question, Who made me? cannot be answered, since it immediately suggests the further question, Who made God?' That very simple sentence showed me, as I still think, the fallacy in the argument of the First Cause.", "Bertrand Russell"); break; case 131: writeQuote("When you come to look into this argument from design, it is a most astonishing thing that people can believe that this world, with all the things that are in it, with all its defects, should be the best that omnipotence and omniscience have been able to produce in millions of years. I really cannot believe it. Do you think that, if you were granted omnipotence and omniscience and millions of years in which to perfect your world, you could produce nothing better than the Ku Klux Klan, the Fascisti, and Mr. Winston Churchill?", "Bertrand Russell"); break; case 132: writeQuote("There is one very serious defect to my mind in Christ's moral character, and that is that He believed in hell. I do not myself feel that any person that is really profoundly humane can believe in everlasting punishment.", "Bertrand Russell"); break; case 133: writeQuote("You find as you look around the world that every single bit of progress of humane feeling, every improvement in the criminal law, every step toward the diminution of war, every step toward better treatment of the colored races, or ever mitigation of slavery, every moral progress that there has been in the world, has been consistently opposed by the organized churches of the world. I say quite deliberately that the Christian religion, as organized in its churches, has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world.", "Bertrand Russell"); break; case 133: writeQuote("As far as I can see, the view to which we are committed, one which I have stated on a former occasion, is that we ought not to believe, and we ought not to try to cause others to believe, any proposition for which there is no evidence whatever.", "Bertrand Russell"); break; case 134: writeQuote("To my mind the essential thing is that one should base one's arguments upon the kind of grounds that are accepted in science, and one should not regard anything that one accepts as quite certain, but only as probable in a greater or a less degree. Not to be absolutely certain is, I think, one of the essential things in rationality.", "Bertrand Russell"); break; case 135: writeQuote("(...) if I am to convey the right impression to the ordinary man in the street I think I ought to say that I am an atheist, because when I say that I cannot prove that there is not a God, I ought to add equally that I cannot prove that there are not the Homeric gods.", "Bertrand Russell"); break; case 136: writeQuote("I wish to propose a doctrine which may, I fear, appear wildly paradoxical and subversive. The doctrine in question is this: that it is undesirable to believe a proposition when there is no ground whatever for supposing it true.", "Bertrand Russell"); break; case 137: writeQuote("The scepticism that I advocate amounts only to this: (1) that when the experts are agreed, the opposite opinion cannot be held to be certain; (2) that when they are not agreed, no opinion can be regarded as certain by a non-expert; and (3) that when they all hold that no sufficient grounds for a positive opinion exist, the ordinary man would do well to suspend his judgment.", "Bertrand Russell"); break; case 138: writeQuote("The argument [from First Cause] suffers, however, from the same defect as that of the elephant and the tortoise. It is said (I do not know with what truth) that a certain Hindu thinker believed the earth to rest upon an elephant. When asked what the elephant rested upon, he replied that it rested upon a tortoise. When asked what the tortoise rested upon, he said, 'I am tired of this. Suppose we change the subject.' This illustrates the unsatisfactory character of the First-Cause argument.", "Bertrand Russell"); break; case 139: writeQuote("The earth is a very tiny corner of the universe. It is a little fragment of the solar system. The solar system is a little fragment of the Milky Way. And the Milky Way is a little fragment of the many millions of galaxies revealed by modern telescopes. In this little insignificant corner of the cosmos there is a brief interlude between two long lifeless epochs. In this brief interlude, there is a much briefer one containing man. If really man is the purpose of the universe the preface seems a little long.", "Bertrand Russell"); break; case 140: writeQuote("Many orthodox people speak as though it were the business of sceptics to disprove received dogmas rather than of dogmatists to prove them. This is, of course, a mistake. If I were to suggest that between the Earth and Mars there is a china teapot revolving about the sun in an elliptical orbit, nobody would be able to disprove my assertion provided I were careful to add that the teapot is too small to be revealed even by our most powerful telescopes. But if I were to go on to say that, since my assertion cannot be disproved, it is intolerable presumption on the part of human reason to doubt it, I should rightly be thought to be talking nonsense. If, however, the existence of such a teapot were affirmed in ancient books, taught as the sacred truth every Sunday, and instilled into the minds of children at school, hesitation to believe in its existence would become a mark of eccentricity and entitle the doubter to the attentions of the psychiatrist in an enlightened age or of the Inquisitor in an earlier time.", "Bertrand Russell"); break; case 141: writeQuote("Den heliga skrift kan aldrig ljuga eller ta miste utan förmedlar absoluta och okränkbara sanningar. Jag skulle endast ha velat tillägga, att även om Skriften inte tar fel kan detta likväl mer än en gång vara fallet med dem som tolkar och kommenterar dem. Ett synnerligen allvarligt och dessutom vanligt misstag är att man nöjer sig med textens bokstavliga innebörd.", "Galileo Galilei"); break; case 142: writeQuote("Det finns många ställen i Skriften där textens ord tycks avvika från sanningen, men den har utformats så för att rätta sig efter enfalden hos gemene man. De få som förtjänar att skiljas från hopen behöver visa uttolkare, som klarlägger Skriftens verkliga innebörd och anför de särskilda skäl som gjort att den begagnat just dessa ord.", "Galileo Galilei"); break; case 143: writeQuote("Eftersom många ställen i Den heliga skrift inte endast medger utan kräver tolkningar som skiljer sig från ordens skenbara innebörd, borde den enligt min uppfattning komma i sista hand när fysikaliska frågor debatteras.", "Galileo Galilei"); break; case 144: writeQuote("Företeelser i naturen som uppenbarats för oss genom sinnenas vittnesbörd eller nödvändiga demonstrationer borde därför aldrig ifrågasättas med stöd av lösryckta bibelcitat där orden tycks ha en annan innebörd, ty varje mening i Skriften är inte underkastad så stränga krav som varje skeende i naturen.", "Galileo Galilei"); break; case 145: writeQuote("(...) uppfattningar som vi tillskriver Den heliga skrift är falska, så snart de inte stämmer överens med demonstrerade sanningar. Med hjälp av dessa bör vi efterforska Skriftens sanna innebörd och inte bruka våld mot naturen eller föreneka erfarenheter och säkra bevis vid blotta klangen av ord, som vårt enkla förstånd uppfattar som bokstavligt sanna.", "Galileo Galilei"); break; case 146: writeQuote("Jag kan inte tro att samme Gud, som har givit oss sinnen, förnuft och intellekt, skulle vilja att vi åsidosatte dessa gåvor för att på andra sätt ge oss den kunskap som dessa kan förmedla.", "Galileo Galilei"); break; case 147: writeQuote("(...) den Helige Ande vill lära oss hur vi skall kunna gå till himlen, inte hur himlen går.", "Galileo Galilei"); break; case 148: writeQuote("I frågor som gäller naturen och inte berör tron vill de förmå oss att avstå från vad förnuftet och sinnenas vittnesbörd visat oss till förmån för något ställe i Skriften, vilken bakom orden skenbara innebörd ofta döljer någon annan mening.", "Galileo Galilei"); break; case 149: writeQuote("Den som utlägger texten och begränsar sig till dess bokstavliga innebörd kan därför missta sig och ur Skriften inte endast hämta motsägelser och det som är långtifrån sant utan även rena villoläror och hädelser.", "Galileo Galilei"); break; case 150: writeQuote("När frågor som gäller naturen diskuteras, borde man således enligt min uppfattning inte i första hand åberopa Skriftens auktoritet utan beakta sinnenas vittnesbörd och nödvändiga demonstrationer.", "Galileo Galilei"); break; case 151: writeQuote("Fast beslutna som de är att slå vakt om sina villfarelser döljer de sig under en mantel av hycklad religiositet och stöder sig på Bibelns auktoritet, vilken de utnyttjar med ringa förstånd för att vederlägga argument som de inte förstått eller ens lyssnat till.", "Galileo Galilei"); break; case 152: writeQuote("(...) sådana författare, som inte trängt in till Skriftens sanna mening, genom att missbruka dess auktoritet vill påtvinga andra människor slutsatser som strider mot det som är uppenbart och förnuftigt. Gud förbjude att detta missbruk skall vinna fotfäste och tillerkännas auktoritet, eftersom det i så fall skulle bli nödvändigt att inom kort förbjuda all vetenskaplig forskning.", "Galileo Galilei"); break; case 153: writeQuote("Av naturliga skäl är de personer vilka är oförmögna att helt förstå såväl Den heliga skrift som vetenskaperna betydligt fler än de intelligenta. Genom att flyktigt studera Bibeln skulle de förra tillskansa sig rätten att uttala sig i alla frågor som gäller naturen i kraft av något ord, som de illa förstått och som använts i annan betydelse av de fromma författarna.", "Galileo Galilei"); break; case 154: writeQuote("De vet att jag i mina filosofiska och astronomiska studier utgår från ett universum, som är så beskaffat att solen utan att ändra läge befinner sig i himlasfärernas mittpunkt och att jorden roterar kring sin egen axel och kring solen. De (...) döljer sig under en mantel av hycklad religiositet och stödjer sig på Bibelns auktoritet. (...) Det har därför inte varit svårt för dem att finna någon som inte ens tvekar att från själva predikstolen emfatiskt utpeka den nya läran och den som anammat den såsom förkastliga och kätterska (...)", "Galileo Galilei"); break; case 155: writeQuote("För att övertyga dessa förstockade herrar som bara är ute efter meningslösa applåder från de stupida och vulgära, skulle det inte räcka ens om stjärnorna kom ned till jorden för att vittna om sig själva. Låt oss uteslutande inrikta oss på att förskaffa oss själva kunskap, och låt oss finna vår tröst i detta!", "Galileo Galilei"); break; case 156: writeQuote("Jag har observerat, att unga män går till universitet i syfte att bli doktorer eller filosofer eller över huvud för att skaffa sig en fin titel, och att många sedan ägnar sig åt yrken som inte alla passar dem, medan andra som skulle vara synnerligen kompetenta hindras därifrån av affärer eller vardagslivets bekymmer, som omöjliggör för dem att ägna sig åt vetenskap. Sådana personer, som visserligen har ganska bra huvuden men som ändå inte kan läsa vad som är skriver på baos, går hela livet omkring med den föreställningen, att dessa väldiga foliovolymer innehåller saker och ting över deras fattningsförmåga, och som alltid kommer att förbli en sluten värld för dem; medan jag däremot skulle önska, att de insåge, att naturen inte bara har skänkt det ögon att se hennes under utan också en hjärna att fatta och förstå dem.", "Galileo Galilei"); break; case 157: writeQuote("Ty vem skulle sätta en gräns för människans förnuft? Vem skulle våga påstå, att vi vet allt som kan vetas? Det skulle därför vara klokt att inte belasta artiklarna angående frälsningen och trons ordning - mot vilka det inte finns risk att någon allvarlig motsägelse kan förekomma - med officiella tolkningar som inte behövs; detta i all synnerhet som detta krav kommer från personer, om vilka det är tillåtet att betvivla att de talar under gudomlig inspiration, medan vi däremot klart inser, att de är totalt i avsaknad av den förståelse som skulle behövas för att - jag säger inte motbevisa - men redan bara fatta de bevis som vetenskapen framlägger. Skriften sysslar med naturliga fenomen på ett flyktigt och alluderande sätt; det verkar som om detta arrangemang ville påminna oss om att det hela gäller inte dessa fenomen utan själen, och att Skriften, när det gäller naturen, anpassar sitt språk efter gemene mans.", "Galileo Galilei"); break; case 158: writeQuote("Naturligtvis skulle Gud ha kunnat få fåglar att flyga med ben gjorda av solitt guld och med ytterst små vingar. Han gjorde det inte, och detta torde betyda någonting. Det är endast för att skyla er egen okunnighet som ni ständigt hänvisar Gud till att ta sin tillflykt till ett underverk.", "Galileo Galilei"); break; case 159: writeQuote("The idea that God is an oversized white male with a flowing beard, who sits in the sky and tallies the fall of every sparrow is ludicrous. But if by 'God,' one means the set of physical laws that govern the universe, then clearly there is such a God. This God is emotionally unsatisfying (...) it does not make much sense to pray to the law of gravity.", "Carl Sagan"); break; case 160: writeQuote("How is it that hardly any major religion has looked at science and concluded, 'This is better that we thought! The Universe is much bigger than our prophets said, grander, more subtle, more elegant'? Instead they say, 'No, no,no! My god is a little god, and I want him to stay that way.' A religion, old or new, that stressed the magnificence of the Universe as revealed by modern science might be able to draw forth reserves of reverence and awe hardly tapped by the conventional faiths.", "Carl Sagan"); break; case 161: writeQuote("Look (...) at the pale blue dot (...). Take a good long look at it. Stare at the dot for any length of time and then try to convince yourself that God created the whole Universe for one of the 10 million or so species of life that inhabit that speck of dust. Now take it a step further: Imagine that everything was made just for a single shade of that species, or gender, or ethnic or religious subdivision. If this doesn't strike you as unlikely, pick another dot. Imagine it to be inhabited by a different form of intelligent life. They, too, cherish the notion of a God who has created everything for their benefit. How seriously do you take their claim?", "Carl Sagan"); break; case 162: writeQuote("It is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.", "Carl Sagan"); break; case 163: writeQuote("Think of how many religions attempt to validate themselves with prophecy. Think of how many people rely on these prophecies, however vague, however unfulfilled, to support or prop up their beliefs. Yet has there ever been a religion with the prophetic accuracy and reliability of science? (...) No other human institution comes close.", "Carl Sagan"); break; case 164: writeQuote("A central lesson of science is that to understand complex issues (or even simple ones), we must try to free our minds of dogma and to guarantee the freedom to publish, to contradict, and to experiment. Arguments from authority are unacceptable.", "Carl Sagan"); break; case 165: writeQuote("För mig finns det ingenting nedsättande i att medvetenhet och intelligens skulle kunna vara resultatet av 'bara materia' i tillräckligt komplicerade arrangemang. Jag uppfattar det tvärtom som glädjande att materien är så subtil och naturlagarna så förfinade.", "Carl Sagan"); break; case 166: writeQuote("Det är nödvändigt för oss att förstå vetenskapen om så bara för att överleva. Dessutom är vetenskap något roligt. Evolutionen har ordnat det så, att vi gläds åt att förstå saker - de som förstår får större utsikter att överleva.", "Carl Sagan"); break; case 167: writeQuote("(...) there is much more wonder in science than in pseudoscience. And in addition, to whatever measure this term has any meaning, science has the additional virtue, and it is not an inconsiderable one, of being true.", "Carl Sagan"); break; case 168: writeQuote("Evolutionen är ett faktum, inte en teori.", "Carl Sagan"); break; case 169: writeQuote("Evolutionens hemligheter är döden och tiden - den död, som drabbar ett ofantligt antal livsformer som varit ofullständigt anpassade till omgivningen, den tid som krävs för att en lång följd av små mutationer, som tillfälligtvis främjat anpassningen, skulle få hopa sig till mönster av gynnsamma mutationer. Till en del beror motståndet mot Darwin och Wallace på vår oförmåga att föreställa oss årtusendenas, och än mindre årmiljonernas, sakta gång. Vad betyder sjuttio miljoner år för varelser, som lever endast miljondelen så lång tid? Vi är liksom fjärilar, som fladdrar omkring en enda dag och tror att den är evigheten.", "Carl Sagan"); break; case 170: writeQuote("I mitt laboratorium vid Cornell-universitet arbetar vi bland annat med förbiologisk organisk kemi och gör en del iakttagelser om livets musik. Vi blandar samman gaser och driver gnistor genom dem, gaser som bildade jordens första atmosfär: väte, vatten, ammoniak, metan, svavelväte - alla finns förresten på planeten Jupiter idag och överallt i kosmos. Gnistorna motsvarar blixtrar - som också fanns i den urtida jordatmosfären och finns på dagens Jupiter. Reaktionskärlet är till en början genomskinligt och gaserna är i utgångsskedet fullständigt färglösa. Men efter tio minuters gnisbombardemang ser vi hur ett märkvärdigt brunt ämne sakta strömmar ned utmed kärlets insida. Glasväggen blir gradvis ogenomskinlig, täcks av ett tjockt lager brunt tjärliknande ämne. Om vi hade använt ultraviolett ljus och så simulerat den unga solens inverkan, hade resultaten blivit i stort sett detsamma. 'Tjäran' utgör en ytterligt rik samling av komplexa organiska molekyler, däribland de ingående beståndsdelarna i proteier och nukleinsyror. Det visar sig att livets byggnadsmaterial kan tillverkas mycket lätt.", "Carl Sagan"); break; case 171: writeQuote("Jag är en samling av vatten, kalcium och organiska molekyler som heter Carl Sagan. Du är en samling av nästan identiskt lika molekyler med en annan kollektiv benämning. Men är det allt? Är vi ingenting annat än molekyler? Somliga människor finner denna tanke på något sätt förnedrande för människovärdet. För egen del finner jag tanken upplyftande, att vårt universum möjliggör evolution av så invecklade och sinnrika molekylmaskiner som vi är.", "Carl Sagan"); break; case 172: writeQuote("Vi lever i ett universum, där atomer blir till i stjärnornas inre, där tusen solar föds i varje sekund, där livet avlas fram genom solljus och blixtar i unga planeters luft och vatten, där råmaterialet till den biologiska evolutionen ibland tillverkas genom en stjärnas explosion på andra sidan Vintergatan, där ett så underbart ting som en galax har bildats hundra miljarder gånger om - ett kosmos av kvasarer och kvarkar, snöflingor och eldflugor, där det kan finnas svarta hål och andra universa och utomjordiska civilisationer, vars radiobudskap just nu når jorden. Hur bleka ter sig inte vidskepelsens och kvasivetenskapens anspråk vid en jämförelse, hur viktigt är det inte för oss att ägna oss åt att förstå vetenskapen, detta typiska mänsliga värv?", "Carl Sagan"); break; case 173: writeQuote("De som fruktar universum sådant det är, de som förnekar kunskapen och i stället hänger sig åt visionen om ett kosmos med människan i centrum, kommer att föredra vidskepelsens obseständiga tröst. De flyr världen i stället för att möta den. Men de som har modet att utforska världsalltet väv och byggnad, också då denna avviker i grunden från deras önskningar och fördomar, kommer att tränga in i dess allra djupaste mysterier.", "Carl Sagan"); break; case 174: writeQuote("Det finns ingen annan art på jorden som ägnar sig åt vetenskap. Hittills är den helt och hållet en mänsklig uppfinning, som genom det naturliga urvalet utvecklats i hjärnbarken av en enda orsak: den fungerar. Den är inte fulländad. Den kan missbrukas. Den är blott ett verktyg. Men den är det oöverträffat bästa verktyget vi äger, självkorrigerande, självutvecklande, tillämplig på allt. Den har två regler. För der första: det finns inga heliga sanningar, alla antaganden måste undersökas kritiskt, argument grundade på auktoritet är värdelösa. För det andra: det som är oförenligt med fakta måste utmönstras eller revideras. Vi måste förstå kosmos sådant det är och inte blanda ihop det med sådant som vi önskar det vore.", "Carl Sagan"); break; case 175: writeQuote("The supposed lack of intermediary forms in the fossil record remains the fundamental canard of current antievolutionism. Such transitional forms are sparse, to be sure, and for two sets of good reasons—geological (the gappiness of the fossil record) and biological (the episodic nature of evolutionary change, including patterns of punctuated equilibrium, and transition within small populations of limited geographic extent). (...) Still, our creationist incubi, who would never let facts spoil a favorite argument, refuse to yield, and continue to assert the absence of all transitional forms by ignoring those that have been found, and continuing to taunt us with admittedly frequent examples of absence.", "Stephen J. Gould"); break; case 176: writeQuote("Since we proposed punctuated equilibria to explain trends, it is infuriating to be quoted again and again by creationists – whether through design or stupidity I do not know – as admitting that the fossil record includes no transitional forms.” (...) Duane Gish writes, ‘According to Goldschmidt, and now apparently according to Gould, a reptile laid an egg from which the first bird, feathers and all, was produced.’ Any evolutionist who believed such nonsense would rightly be laughed off the intellectual stage; yet the only theory that could ever envision such a scenario for the origin of birds is creationism – with God acting in the egg. (...) I am both angry at and amused by the creationists; but mostly I am deeply sad.", "Stephen J. Gould"); break; case 177: writeQuote("Our confidence that evolution occurred centers upon three general arguments. First, we have abundant, direct, observational evidence of evolution in action, from both the field and laboratory. (...) The second and third arguments for evolution—the case for major changes—do not involve direct observation of evolution in action. They rest upon inference, but are no less secure for that reason. (...) The third argument is more direct: transitions are often found in the fossil record.", "Stephen J. Gould"); break; case 178: writeQuote("Well, evolution is a theory. It is also a fact. And facts and theories are different things, not rungs in a hierarchy of increasing certainty. Facts are the world's data. Theories are structures of ideas that explain and interpret facts. Facts do not go away when scientists debate rival theories to explain them. Einstein's theory of gravitation replaced Newton's, but apples did not suspend themselves in mid-air, pending the outcome. And humans evolved from apelike ancestors whether they did so by Darwin's proposed mechanism or by some other, yet to be discovered.", "Stephen J. Gould"); break; case 179: writeQuote("När Thomas Henry Huxley förlorade sin son, 'vår glädje och lycka', i scharlakansfeber försökte Charles Kingsley trösta honom med ett långt anförande om själens odödlighet. Huxley, som uppfann uttrycket 'agnostisk' för att beskriva sina egna känslor, tackade Kingsley för hans omtanke, men avvisade den föreslagna trösten därför att den saknade bevis. I en berömd passage, som många forskare tagit som motto i sina handlingar, skrev han: 'Min uppgift är att lära mina önskningar att anpassa sig efter fakta, inte att skapa fakta som harmonierar med mina önskningar. (...) Böj dig inför fakta som vore du ett litet barn, var beredd att överge varje förutfattad mening, följ ödmjukt med vart eller mot vilka avgrunder naturen än leder dig, ty annars kommer du inte att lära dig något.' Huxleys åsikter var ädla och hans sorg rörande. Men Huxley följde inte sina levnadsregler och ingen kreativ forskare har någonsin gjort det. Stora tänkare är aldrig passiva inför fakta. De ställer frågor om naturen; de följer henna aldrig ödmjukt. De har förhoppningar och aningar, och de anstränger sig hårt för att forma världen i ljuset av dessa. Därför gör stora tänkare också stora fel.", "Stephen J. Gould"); break; case 180: writeQuote("Broca såg sig själv som en objektivitetens apostel, en man som vek sig för fakta och bortsåg från vidskepelser och sentimentalitet. Han deklarerade att 'det finns ingen trossats, hur respektabel den än kan vara, inga intressen, oavsett hur legitima, som inte måste foga sig efter framåtskridandet i människans kunskaper och böja sig inför sanningen.'", "Stephen J. Gould"); break; case 181: writeQuote("(...) den idealiska designen är ett uselt argument för evolutionen, för den efterliknar den allsmäktige skaparens handlingssätt. Det är de udda arrangemangen och roliga lösningarna som utgör bevis för evolutionen - vägar som en förnuftig Gud aldrig skulle ha valt, men som en naturlig process, begränsad av historien, tvingats att följa.", "Stephen J. Gould"); break; case 182: writeQuote("When Wilberforce died in 1873, from a head injury after a fall from his horse, Huxley acerbically remarked that, for once, the bishop's brains had come into contact with reality - and the result had been fatal.", "Stephen J. Gould"); break; case 183: writeQuote("The pre-Darwinian Scottish evolutionist Robert Chambers devoted a striking metaphor to this point when he wondered if the adult mayfly, during its single day of earthly life, might mistake the active metamorphosis of a tadpole into a frog for proof of the immutability of species, since no visible change would occur during the mayfly's entire lifetime. (And so, Chambers agued by extension, we might miss the thruth of evolution if the process unrolled so slowly that we could never notice any changes during the entire history of potental human obervation.) Chambers wrote in 1844: 'Suppose that an ephemeron [a mayfly], hovering over a pool for its one April day of life, were capable of observing the fry of the frog in the waters below. In its aged afternoon, having seen no change upon them for such a long time, it would be little qualified to conceive that the external branchiae [gills] of these creatures were to decay, and be replaced with internal lungs, that feet were to be developed, the tail erased, and the animal then to become a denizen of the land.'", "Stephen J. Gould"); break; case 184: writeQuote("In my field of evolutionary biology, the most prominent urban legend - another 'truth' known by 'everyone' - holds that evolution may well be the way of the world, but one has to accept the idea with a dose of faith because the process occurs far too slowly to yield any observable results in a human lifetime. Thus, we can document evolution from the fossil record and infer the process from the taxonomic relationships of living species, but we cannot see evolution on human timescales 'in the wild'. In fairness, we professionals must shoulder some blame for this utterly false impression about evolution's invisibility in the here and now of everyday human life. (...) Nonethless, the claim that evolution must be too slow to see can only rank as an urban legend - though not a completely harmless tale in this case, for our creationist incubi can the use the fallacy as an argument against evolution at any scale, and many folks take them seriously because they just 'know' that evolutioncan never be seen in the immediate here and now. In fact, a precisely opposite situation actually prevails: biologist have documented a veriable glut of cases for rapid and eminently measurabel evolution on timescales of years and decades.", "Stephen J. Gould"); break; case 185: writeQuote("One day at lunch, the [catholic] priests called me over to their table to pose a problem that had been troubling them. What, they wanted to know, was going on in America with all this talk about 'scientific creationism'? One of the priests asked me: 'Is evolution really in some kind of trouble; and, if so, what could such trouble be? I have always been taught that no doctrinal conflict exists between evolution and Catholic faith, and the evidence for evolution seems both utterly satisfying and entirely overwhelming. Have I missed something?' A lively pastiche of French, Italian, and English conversation then ensued for half and hour or so, but the priests all seemed reassured by my general answer - 'Evolution has encountered no intellectual trouble; no new arguments have been offered. Creationism is a home-grown phenomenon of American sociocultural history - a splinter movement (unfortunately rather more of a beam these days) of Protestant fundamentalists who belive that every word of the Bible must be litteraly true, whatever such a claim might mean.' We all left satisfied, but I certainly felt bemused by the anomaly as my role as a Jewish agnostic, trying to reassure a group of priests that evolution remained both true and entirely consistent with religious belief.", "Stephen J. Gould"); break; case 186: writeQuote("A TRULY STUPID MISTAKE OFTEN INITIATES A PATH TO ENLIGHTENMENT", "Stephen J. Gould"); break; case 187: writeQuote("Archbishop James Ussher, the Anglican Primate of All Ireland (an ecclesiastical title for a leader among bishops, not a zoological designation for a monkey's uncle (...)", "Stephen J. Gould"); break; case 188: writeQuote("We might (...) continue to espouse biblical literalism and insist the the earth is but a few thousand years old, with humans created by God just a few days after the inception of planetary time. But such mythology is not an option for thinking people (...)", "Stephen J. Gould"); break; case 189: writeQuote("I ett av sina mest underbart idiotiska resonemang, föreställer sig mina skapelsetroende häxmästare att de kan sopa undan evolutionen med följande oemotsägliga invändning: 'Jaså', utbrister de, 'du påstår alltså att människan utvecklades från aporna, eller hur?' 'Alldeles riktigt', svarar jag. 'I så fall, alltså, om människan utvecklades från aporna, hur kommer det sig då att det fortfarande finnas apor? Svara på det du, om du kan!' Om evolutionen framskred enligt denna karikatyr - som en utvecklingsstege där varje stegpinne försvinner när den kroppsligen förvandlas till nästa steg - antar jag att man skulle behöva ägna viss uppmärksamhet åt detta argument. Men evolutionen är en buske och varje förfadersgrupp överlever vanligen efter att avkomlingarna har grenats av. Apor finns i många former och storlekar; det var bara en linje som ledde till den moderna människan.", "Stephen J. Gould"); break; case 190: writeQuote("Att få säga: 'Vi har upptäckt det; vi förstår det; vi har skapat ordning och reda i naturens förvirring.' Kan belöningen bli större?", "Stephen J. Gould"); break; case 191: writeQuote("Jag kan inte tänka mig någon större kontrast mellan denna moderna pseudovetenskap [kreationismen] och den sant vetenskapliga andan än Adam Sedgwicks avsvärjelse inför Geological Society i London 1831. Som Bucklands främste anhängare hade han lett kampen för översvämningsteorin, men vid det här laget visste han att han hade haft fel. Han kunde dessutom erkänna att han på en viktig punkt hade haft en dålig argumentation; han hade inte korrelerat grottavlagringarna och grusskikten med det empiriska bevismaterialet, utan med sin förutfattade bibliska tro på att syndafloden verkligen hade inträffat. Då den empiriska vittnesbörden visade att hans teori var felaktig, insåg han denna logiska svaghet och underkastade sig en rigorös självkritik. Jag känner inte till något finare uttalande i vetenskapens annaler är Sedgwicks rättframma avsvärjelse (...). När jag vittnade under Arkansaskreationisternas rättegång i december 1981, läste jag det här avsnittet i rättsalen därför att jag tyckte att det utgjorde en god illustration till skillnaden mellan dogmatism, som inte kan förändras, och verklig vetenskap, i det här fallet utövad av människor som råkade vara kreationister. Den slutliga ironin och det det djupa budskapet lyder alltså: Syndaflodsteorin, kärnpunkten i den modern kreationismen, avvisades för 150 år sedan, främst av yrkesteologer som dessutom var geologer, exemplariska vetenskapsmän och kreationister. Det är förnuftsvidrigheten, inte religionen, som är kunskapens och vetenskapens fiende. [Sedgwicks avsvärjelse lyder] 'Då jag själv har varit troende och efter bästa förmåga förespråkat det jag nu betraktar som en filosofisk irrlära, och då jag mer än en gång citerats som förespråkande åsikter jag numera inte omfattar, anser jag det riktigt att jag som en av de sista handlingarna innan jag avgår från denna post offentligt tillkännager min avsvärjelse. (...) Enligt min uppfattning finns det numera en stor och negativ slutsats som är ofrånkomlig och väl etablerad - att den väldiga massa av översvämningsgrus som finns spridd över nästan hela jordytan inte härstammar från en enda våldsam och kortvarig period. (...) Vi borde sannerligen ha hejdat oss innan vi antog att översvämningsteorin och hänförde alla våra gamla ytliga gruslager till den bibliska syndafloden. (...) Genom att klassificera avlägsna okända formationer med ett och samma namn, genom att ge dem ett gemensamt ursprung och genom att datera dem inte efter de organiska lämningar vi har påträffat utan efter det vi hypotetiskt väntade oss att senare träffa på i dem, har vi givit ytterligare ett exempel på den lidelse med vilken tanken tar fasta på allmänna slutsatser och på den beredskap med vilken den avstår från att ta ställning till osammanhängande sanningar.'", "Stephen J. Gould"); break; case 192: writeQuote("Vår värld är inte optimal eller fininställd genom urvalets allsmäktiga krafter. Den är en besynnerlig anhopning av ofullkomligheter som fungerar tillräckligt bra (ibland beundransvärt bra); en nödriggning av anpassningar som byggts ihop av egendomliga delar som det förflutna i olika sammanhang har ställt till förfogande. Darwin, som var mycket historiskt intresserad, uppfattade denna princip som det främsta beviset för själva evolutionen.", "Stephen J. Gould"); break; case 193: writeQuote("As a historical science, evolution is confirmed by the fact that so many independent lines of evidence converge to its single conclusion. Independent sets of data from geology, paleontology, botany, zoology, herpetology, entomology, biogeography, comparative anatomy and physiology, genetics and population genetics, and many other sciences each point to the conclusion that life evolved. This is a convergence of evidence. Creationists can demand 'just one fossil transitional form' that shows evolution. But evolution is not proved through a single fossil. It is proved through a convergence of fossils, along with a convergence of genetic comparisions between species, and a convergence of anatomical and physiological comparisons between species, and many other lines of inquiry. For creationists to disprove evolution, they need to unravel all these independent lines of evidence, as well as construct a rival theory that can explain them better than the theory of evolution. They have yet to do so.", "Michael Shermer"); break; case 194: writeQuote("If the world is complex and looks intricately designed, and therefore the best inference is that there must be an intelligent designer, should we not then infer that an intelligent designer must itself have been designed? That is, if the earmarks of design imply that there is an intelligent designer, then the existence of an intelligent designer denotes that it must have a designer - a super intelligent designer. And by the same course of reasoning, any designer that can create a super intelligent designer must itself be a superior super intelligent designer. Ad infinitum. Which brings ur right back to the natural world, and the search for natural explanations for natural phenomena.", "Michael Shermer"); break; case 195: writeQuote("The problem with all of these attempts at blending science and religion may be found in a single principle: A is A. Or: Reality is real. To attempt to use nature to prove the supernatural is a violation of A is A. It is an attempt to make reality unreal. A cannot also be non-A. Nature cannot also be non-nature. Naturalism cannot also be supernaturalism.", "Michael Shermer"); break; case 196: writeQuote("Darwin matters because evolution matters. Evolution matters because science matters. Science matters because it is the preeminent story of our age, an epic saga about who we are, where we came from, and where we are going.", "Michael Shermer"); break; case 197: writeQuote("If you will devote a little time to studying the staggering photographs taken by the Hubble telescope, you will be scrutinizing things that are far more awesome and mysterious and beautiful - and more chaotic and overwhelming and forbidding - than any creation or 'end of days' story.", "Christopher Hitchens"); break; case 198: writeQuote("As I write these words, and as you read them, people of faith are in their different ways planning your and my destruction, and the destruction of all the hardwon human attainments that I have touched upon. Religion poisions everything.", "Christopher Hitchens"); break; case 199: writeQuote("They [catholics] (...) harbor the belief that the AIDS plague is in some sense a verdict from heaven upon sexual deviance - in particular upon homosexuality. A single stroke of Ockham's potent razor eviscerates this half-baked savagery: female homosexuals do not contract AIDS (except if they are unlucky with a transfusion or a needle), they are also much freer of all veneral infection than even heterosexuals. Yet clerical authorities persistently refuse to be honest about even the existence of the lesbian. In doing so, the further demonstrate that religions continue to prose an urgent threat to public health.", "Christopher Hitchens"); break; case 200: writeQuote("Violent, irrational, intolerant, allied to racism and tribalism and bigotry, invested in ignorance and hostile to free inquiry, contemptuous of women and coercive against children: organized religion ougth to have a great deal on its conscience.", "Christopher Hitchens"); break; case 201: writeQuote("One must state it plainly. Religion comes from the period of humam prehistory where nobody - not event the mighty Democritus who concluded that all matter was made from atoms - had the smallest idea what was going on. It comes from the bawling and fearful instancy of our species, and is a babyish attempt to meet our inescapable demand for knowledge (as well as for comfort, reassurance, and other infantile needs). Today the least educated of my children knows much more about the natural order than any of the founders or religion, and one would like to think - though the connection is not a fully demonstrable one - that this is why they seem so uninterested in sending fellow humans to hell.", "Christopher Hitchens"); break; case 202: writeQuote("(...) monotheistic religion is a plagiarism of a plagiarism of a hearsay of a hearsay, of an illusion of an illusion, extending all the way back to a fabrication of a few nonevents.", "Christopher Hitchens"); break; case 203: writeQuote("The late Stephen Jay Gould generously wrote that science and religion belong to 'non-overlappin magisteria'. They most certainly do not overlap, but this does not mean that they are not antagonistic.", "Christopher Hitchens"); break; case 204: writeQuote("It is my firm conviction that man has nothing to gain, emotionally or otherwise, by adhering to a falsehood, regardless of how comfortable or sacred that falsehood may appear. Anyone who claims, on the one hand, that he is concerned with human welfare, and who demands, on the other hand, that man must suspend or renounce the use of his reason, is contradicting himself. There can be no knowlede of what is good for man appart from knowledge of reality and human nature - and there is no manner in wich this knowledge can be acquired except through reason. To advocate irrationality is to advocate that which is destructive to human life.", "George H. Smith"); break; case 205: writeQuote("Atheism, in its basic form, is not a belief: it is the absence of belief. An atheist is not primarily a person who believes that a god does not exist; rather, he does not believe in the existence of a god.", "George H. Smith"); break; case 206: writeQuote("Unlike the philosopher, the theologian adopts a position, a dogma, and then commits himself to a defense of that position come what may. While he may display a willingness to defend this dogma, closer examination reveals this to be a farce. His defense consists of distorting and rationalizing all contrary evidence to meet his desired specification. In the case of divine benevolence, the theologian will grasp onto any explanation, no matter how implausible, before he will abandon his dogma. And when finally pushed into a corner, he will argue that man cannot understand the true meaning of his dogma.", "George H. Smith"); break; case 207: writeQuote("It is logically impossible for god - a concept replete with absurdities and contradictions - to have a referent in reality, just as it is logically impossible for a square circle to exist. Given the attempts to define god, we may now state - with certainity - that god does not exist. Thus our atheism has evolved to a more sophisticated level, from the absence of theistic belief to the outright denial of its truth.", "George H. Smith"); break; case 208: writeQuote("The conflict between Christian theism and atheism is fundamentally a conflict between fait and reason. This, in epistemological terms, is the essence of the controversy. Reason and faith are opposites, two mutually exclusive terms: there is no reconcilliation or common ground. Faith is belief without, or in spite of, reason.", "George H. Smith"); break; case 209: writeQuote("Universal skepticism is usually stated in one of two ways. In its positive form it consists of the doctrine that man can know nothing. This belief can be easily dismissed, because anyone who defends it finds himself immersed in hopeless absurdities. In asserting that there is no knowledge, the skeptic is asserting a knowledge claim - which according to his own theory is impossible. The universal skeptic whishes to claim truth for a theory that denies man's ability to arrive at truth, and this puts the skeptic in the unenviable position of uttering nonsense. Indeed, he cannot even begin to argue for his position, because the 'possibility of knowledge is presupposed in the very possiblity of argument, in the very possibility of having recourse to reasons.'", "George H. Smith"); break; case 210: writeQuote("To say that the skeptic commits the Fallacy of the Stolen Concept is to say that the skeptic 'steals' concepts to which he has no epistemological right. The skeptic presents an argument which, if valid, would undercut the logical foundations that the skeptic himself must use in presenting the argument. Most skeptical arguments cannot be maintained without presupposing the truth of that which they are attempting to invalidate, which forces the skeptic into the mire of self contradiction.", "George H. Smith"); break; case 211: writeQuote("The Bible is a paradigm of misology - the hatred of reason. This attitude permeates the Bible, beginning with the book of Genesis, Adam and Eve, we are told, were evicted from their blissful state of ignorance as a result of eating from the tree of knowledge. When the serpent was tempting Eve, he told her that 'God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowin good from evil.' The serpent was correct: man did acquire knowledge, and Christianity views this defiant act as the source of man's inherent evil.", "George H. Smith"); break; case 212: writeQuote("We must keep in mind that revelation, since it entails a communication from God to man, presupposes the existence of the Christian God - so one must first accept the existence of the Christian God before one can believe in Christian reveleation.", "George H. Smith"); break; case 213: writeQuote("(...) the Bible shows no traces whatsoever of supernatural influence. Quite the contrary, it is obviously the product of superstitous men who, at times, were willing to decieve if it would further their doctrines.", "George H. Smith"); break; case 214: writeQuote("If a scientist observes something that he cannot explain in terms of presently known physical laws, he will investigate the matter thoroughly to determine if his interpretation is correct and if he is aware of all relevant factors. If he concludes that the phenomenon cannot be explained with reference to presently known scientific principles, he will search for a principles, he will search for a principle that will explain it. And, if he is unsuccessfull in this attempt, he will simply admit that there is something that he cannot explain within his present context of knowledge, something that requires further investigation. Underlying this entire process is the knowledge that, since contradictions cannot exists in reality, the presence of a contradiction in one's thinking constitutes proof of an error. The scientist is also aware that this contradiction will no disappear by attributing the occurence ton an act of god; he realizes that such an inference is not only unjustified, but that it explains nothing, that it is an evasion rather than an explanation.", "George H. Smith"); break; case 215: writeQuote("Just as 'magic' is not an explanation, so the 'supernatural' is not an explanation, but is a concession that no explanation is possible. Because the concept of god has absolutely no explanatory power, in can never be inferred from nature as an explanation for natural phenomena. If, as the theist claims, the existence of the universe (or some aspect of it) requires an explanation, the positing of a supernatural being does not provide it.", "George H. Smith"); break; case 216: writeQuote("How can [the theist] demonstrate that the natural universe was in some way manufactured by an intelligent being? Only one way is open to the theist: he must first demonstrate the existence the existence of an intelligent designer, and then - and only then - he can assert that the universe is the product of design. In other words, one must first know that a god exist before one can say that nature exhibits design. And this renders the design argument useless for proving the existence of god.", "George H. Smith"); break; case 217: writeQuote("Just as Christianity must destroy reason before it can introduce faith, so it must destroy happiness before it can introduce salvation.", "George H. Smith"); break; case 218: writeQuote("Just as the failure to believe in magic elves does not entail a code of living or a set of principles, so the failure to believe in a god does not imply any specific philosophical system.", "George H. Smith"); break; case 219: writeQuote("From a scientific point of view, we can make no distinction between the man who eats little and sees heaven and the man who drinks much and sees snakes. Each is an abnormal physical condition and therefore has abnormal perceptions.", "Bertrand Russell"); break; case 220: writeQuote("Some theist have asked me whether I am afraid of death. They reason that, if there is no god, death is the end of ones existence. It would be terrible if that were so, and thus we must believe that god exist. But they may just as well have asked me whether I am afraid of cockroaches. In either case the existence of god is irrelevant. Either god exist or he does not, but whether I would be afraid of death or not, or whether I would like or dislike the situation if god did not exist, has nothing to do with the truth of the matter. Is it true that god exist? This is an entirely different question from whether I would like for god to exist. God will no more begin to exist if I fear death that a can insecticide will appear in my cupboard if I am afraid of cockroaches.", "Douglas E. Krueger"); break; case 221: writeQuote("Even if the cosmological argument did show, in one of its versions, that a necessary being had to exist, or that there had to be a first causer or mover, that first thing or necessary being could have simply been the universe itself. This explanation is simpler than the explanation that god and the universe exist. The simpler view is more likely to be true that its rival, since the 'universe only' model assumes than the other model. For any two rival theories, all other things being equal, the theory with fewer assumptions has the greater probability of being true. This is a principle accepted in science and philosophy, and with good reason.", "Douglas E. Krueger"); break; case 222: writeQuote("Upon hearing that I am an atheist, theist sometimes extend a palm and exclaim: 'Really? Yoy're an atheist? Well, I want to shake your hand! If you know that god does not exist you must be the smartest person in the world!' To which I respond: 'Oh, so you think a god exists? Do you believe that Odin exists?' The theist invariably (so far) respond, 'No.' Do you believe that Zeus exists?' Again a negative answer. 'How about the Roman god Jupiter? No?' At this point the theist usually informs me of his or her theological preference. 'Well, do you mean to tell me that of the tens of thousands of gods that people have believed in throughout history, you are an atheist about all but one of them? Atheism about only one god separates you and me? Well, even if I am the smartest person in the world, you should not be so impressed. You must rate a close second!'", "Douglas E. Krueger"); break; case 223: writeQuote("Christians hold that their faith does good, but other faiths do harm. (...) What I wish to maintain is that all faiths do harm. We may define 'faith' as a firm belief in something for wich there is no evidence. When there is evidence, no one speaks of 'faith'. We do not speak of faith that two and two are four or that the earth is round. We only speak of faith when we wish to substitute emotion for evidence.", "Bertrand Russell"); break; case 224: writeQuote("A casual stroll through the lunatic asylum shows that faith does not prove anything.", "Friedrich Nietzsche"); break; case 225: writeQuote("Atheists have no obligation to prove or disprove anything. Otherwise - if you demand belief in all Beings for which there is no absolute disproof - then you are forced by your own twisted 'logic' to believe in mile-long pink elephants on Pluto, since, at present, we haven't explored Pluto and show them to be nonexistent.", "David Mills"); break; case 226: writeQuote("(...) the Christian Church fought bitterly throughout its history - and is still fighting today - to impede scientific progress. Galileo, remember, was nearly put to death by the Church for constructing his telescope and discovering the moons of Jupiter. For centuries, moreover, the Church forbade the dissection of a human cadaver, calling it 'a desecration of the temple of the Holy Ghost.' Medical research was thereby stalled for almost a thousand years. It is no coincidence, therefore, that Christianity's longest period of sustained growth and influence occured during the what historians refer to as the Dark Ages.", "David Mills"); break; case 227: writeQuote("The Church angrily denounced the introduction of medicines, antibiotics, anesthesia, surgery, blood transfusions, birth controll, transplants, in vitro fertilization and most forms of pain killers. Supposedly, these scientific tools interfered with nature and where therefore against God's will. Today, the Church is fighting stem-cell research, cloning technology and genetic engineering. But when cloning laboratories provide an unlimited supply of transplant tissue for dying children, and when genetic engineering cures all forms of cancer, Church leades will once again forget their initial opposition and hail these achievements as evidence of God's love for mankind. Today, science is prevailing, but throughout most of recorded history, religion strangled scientific inquiry and often tortured and executed those who advocated the scientific method.", "David Mills"); break; case 228: writeQuote("The religious individual tends to hold his beliefs rigidly, fanatically and with a closed mind - never seriously questioning the accuracy of his Church's teachings. The scientist, however, is eagerly and open-mindendly searching for new theories and for evidence to topple old theories.", "David Mills"); break; case 229: writeQuote("ID's defenders yap unceasingly about how perfectly fine-tuned our planet is for human survival. Yet these same ID spokesmen live in homes that are heated in the winter - to avoid freezing to death - and cooled in the summer - to avoid heat stroke and dehydration. If you arbitrarily placed and ID advocate at a random spot on Earth, he would probably die within moments, because 75 percent of Earth's surface is covered by water and is therefore inhospitable to human life. Force Lee Strobel to spend a night outdoors, naked, on the Siberian Plain, then asked him how perfectly fine-tuned his surroundings are to human survival.", "David Mills"); break; case 230: writeQuote("If only one person truly believed in a magical Being, governing the universer from a magical city where our 'souls' will fly after death, then this one person would be viewed correctly as indisputably insane. But because a majority believe this tale, the absurdity of the fantasy is undeservedly dissipated.", "David Mills"); break; case 231: writeQuote("Begreppet 'Gud' uppfunnet som motsatsbegrepp till livet - i vilket allt skadligt, förgiftande, förtalande, hela dödsfiendeskapen mot livet sammanförts till en förfärande enhet! Begreppet 'hinsides', 'sann värld' uppfunnet för att nedvärdera den enda värld som finns - för att inte låta något mål, något förnuft, någon uppgift kvarstå för vår jordiska verklighet! Begreppet 'själ', 'ande' och till sist rentav 'odödlig själ', uppfunnet för att förakta kroppen, för att göra den sjuk - 'helig' - för att allt i livet som förtjänar att tas på allvar - frågor om näring, bostad, andlig diet, sjukvård, hygien, klimat - skall behandlas med förfärande lättsinne! I stället för hälsa 'själens räddning' - det vill säga en folie circulaire mellan botgöringskramp och frälsningshysteri! Begreppet 'synd' uppfunnet tillsammans med det tillhörande tortyrinstrumentet, begreppet 'fri vilja', för att förvirra instinkterna, för att göra misstron mot instinkterna till en andra natur!", "Michel Onfray"); break; case 232: writeQuote("Skapandet av översinnliga världar vore inte så allvarligt, om inte det pris man betalar var så högt: glömskan av verkligheten, alltså det brottsliga försummandet av den enda värld som finns. Medan tron får oss att missakta det världsliga livet, och därmed oss själva, försonas vi genom ateismen med jorden - att annat namn för livet.", "Michel Onfray"); break; case 233: writeQuote("Ateismen är inte en terapi, utan återvunnen mental hälsa.", "Michel Onfray"); break; case 234: writeQuote("En bok [Koranen] som härrör från början av 630-talet, och påstås vara dikterad för en illitterat kamelskötare, bestämmer i detalj vardagslivet för miljarder människor i en tid av överljudsfart, kärnkraft och erövring av rymden, ett globalt informationssamhälle sammanlänkat av elektronisk datakommunikation i realtid, när det mänskliga genomet avkodats och man skönjer början på det postmänskliga... Motsvarande kan sägas om de ortodoxa judar som klamrar sig fast vid Tora och Talmud, till synes lika okunniga om tidens gång.", "Michel Onfray"); break; case 235: writeQuote("(...) på punkt efter punkt motsäger den [Koranen] allt som upplysningsfilosofin uppnått i Europa sedan 1700-talet, och som innebär att man fördömer vidskepelse, avvisar intolerans, avskaffar censur, förkastar tyranniet, motsätter sig politisk absolutism, upphör med alla statsreligion, dömer ut magiskt tänkande, utvidgar tanke- och yttrandefriheten, förespråkar lika rättigheter för alla, betraktar den förhandlingsbara världslighetens sfär som ursprunget till all lag, bejakar den samhälleliga lyckan här och nu och eftersträvar förnuftets universella herravälde. All detta är sådant som tydligt förkastas i den ena suran efter den andra...", "Michel Onfray"); break; case 236: writeQuote("I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish church, by the Roman church, by the Greek church, by the Turkish church, by the Protestant church, nor by any church that I know of. My own mind is my own church.", "Thomas Paine"); break; case 237: writeQuote("All national institutions of churches, whether Jewish, Christian, or Turkish, appear to me no other than human inventions set up to terrify and enslave mankind, and monopolize power and profit.", "Thomas Paine"); break; case 238: writeQuote("The Jews say, that their Word of God was given by God to Moses, face to face; the Christians say, that their Word of God came by divine inspiration; and the Turks say, that their Word of God (the Koran) was brought by an angel from heaven. Each of those churches accuses the other of unbelief; and, for my own part, I disbelieve them all.", "Thomas Paine"); break; case 239: writeQuote("Whenever we read the obscene stories, the voluptuous debaucheries, the cruel and torturous executions, the unrelenting vindictiveness, with which more than half the Bible is filled, it would be more consistent that we called it the word of a demon, than the Word of God. It is a history of wickedness, that has served to corrupt and brutalize mankind; and, for my own part, I sincerely detest it, as I detest everything that is cruel.", "Thomas Paine"); break; case 240: writeQuote("In fine, do we want to know what God is? Search not the book called the Scripture, which any human hand might make, but the Scripture called the creation.", "Thomas Paine"); break; case 241: writeQuote("That which is now called natural philosophy, embracing the whole circle of science, of which astronomy occupies the chief place, is the study of the works of God, and of the power and wisdom of God in His works, and is the true theology.", "Thomas Paine"); break; case 242: writeQuote("Koranen var folkets enda bok under flera århundraden, de andra brände man, antingen därför att de var överflödiga, om där bara fanns sådant som stod i Koranen, eller därför att de var skadliga, om de innehöll annat än vad som stod i Koranen.", "Denis Diderot"); break; case 243: writeQuote("[ID] is not just an attack on naturalism, it is a religious war against all of science.", "Michael Shermer"); break; case 244: writeQuote("Just as the Holocaust was thousands of events that occured in thousands of places and is proven (reconstructed) through thousands of historical facts, evolution is a process and historical sequence that is proven through thousands of bits of data from numerous fields of science that together give us a rich portrait of the history of life.", "Michael Shermer"); break; case 245: writeQuote("What I want to suggest is that all the strong evidence tells in favour of atheism, and only weak evidence tells against it. In any ordinary case, this would be enough to establish that atheism is true. The situation is comparable to that of water freezing at zero degrees centigrade: all the strong evidence suggests it does. Only the weak evidence of anecdote, myth, hearsay, and illusionists tells against it.", "Julian Baggini"); break; case 246: writeQuote("[The atheist worldview] is simple in that it requires us to posit only the existence of the natural world. Alternatives also require us to posit the existence of an unobserved supernatural world. That extra dimension is not only metaphysically extravagant, it also makes the claims for the supernatural less testable that those for naturalism, since the supernatural world is by definition unobservable. (...) The naturalistic world view of the atheist is also more coherent, because it has everything in the universe fitting into one scheme of being. Those who posit a supernatural realm have to explain how this realm and the natural one interact and co-exist. Such a view is by its nature more fragmented than the unified one of the atheist.", "Julian Baggini"); break; case 247: writeQuote("Gud är så elak att hans enda ursäkt är att han inte existerar.", "George Klein"); break; case 248: writeQuote("In all I can say that the Old Testament disgusted me, while the New Testament disappointed me.", "Richard Carrier"); break; case 249: writeQuote("So great is the threat of this superstition [Christianity] against individuals, against society, against knowledge, against general human happiness, that it would be immoral not to fight it.", "Richard Carrier"); break; case 250: writeQuote("(...) blind faith is inherently self-defeating. The number of false beliefs always vastly outnumbers the true. It follows that any arbitrary method of selection will be maximally successful at selecting false beliefs. So the probability is always very high that a belief based on mere faith will be false.", "Richard Carrier"); break; case 251: writeQuote("Most of this universe - by far - serves the function of producing and sustaining countless numbers of black holes. We are, by comparison, like a lone flea stuck in a fleeting bubble of air at the bottom of the ocean, lucky even to be alive, soon to expire (unless we take matters into our own hands), gazing in awe at the millions of Big Fish who swim the vast and deadly sea with natural ease. Which would make more sense? That Neptune created the sea for the flea? Or for the Big Fish? After all, a flea may have adapted itself to the dog, yet the fact remains: the master only intends to feed the dog.", "Richard Carrier"); break; case 252: writeQuote("(...) theologians have been wrong every time so far. Why keep betting on them?", "Richard Carrier"); break; case 253: writeQuote("(...) in order for creationism to be true, God must have deliberately and maliciously planted all the evidence for evolution, which would entail that God is not a nice guy. He would have to be the most magnificient Father of Lies, reducing Creationism to a form of Satanism.", "Richard Carrier"); break; case 254: writeQuote("The grandest paranormal claim, made by the most people, most vehemently - so vehemently they routinely kill each other over it - is 'Our God Exists'. But he doesn't. This I have concluded after years of study and investigation, considering all the evidence and every argument ever presented in its defense.", "Richard Carrier"); break; case 255: writeQuote("(...) Metaphysical Naturalism is the only worldview that is supported by all the evidence of all the sciences, the only one consistent with all human experience, the established truths of history, and reason itself. No other worldview, including theism generally or Evangelical Christianity in particular, is supported by any evidence of any of the sciences.", "Richard Carrier"); break; case 256: writeQuote("Accept a life of reason, a life of love for science, truth and humanity. Find spirituality in simply being and knowing. Seek to live your life by the true humanistic ideals of compassion and integrity, unpolluted and uncorrupted by the 'exceptions' and distortions heaped upon these virtues by various religious or political dogmas. Base your beliefs on the evidence, and humbly admit what you don't know or hold less certain.", "Richard Carrier"); break; case 257: writeQuote("Science is not only compatible with spirituality; it is a profound source of spirituality. When we recognize our place in the immensity of light years and in the passage of ages, when we grasp the intricacy, beauty, and subtelty of life, then that soaring feeling, that sense of elation and humility combined, is surely spiritual.", "Carl Sagan"); break; case 258: writeQuote("Skepticism is the agent of reason against organized irrationalism - and is therefore one of the keys to human social and civic decency.", "Stephen Jay Gould"); break; case 259: writeQuote("(...) skepticism is not a position; skepticism is an approach to claims (...)", "Michael Shermer"); break; case 260: writeQuote("To try to turn a myth into a science, or a science into a myth, is an insult to myths, and insult to religion, and an insult to science. In attempting to do this, creationists have missed the significance, meaning, and sublime nature of myths. They took a beautiful story of creation and re-creation and ruined it.", "Michael Shermer"); break; case 261: writeQuote("Of all the claims we have investigated at Skeptic, I have found only one that I could compare to creationism for the ease and certainty with which is asks us to ignore or dismiss so much existins knowledge. That is Holocaust denial.", "Michael Shermer"); break; case 262: writeQuote("Evolution no more breaks the Second Law of Thermodynamics than one breaks the law of gravity by jumping up.", "Michael Shermer"); break; case 263: writeQuote("From the time of Copernicus, our perspective on the cosmos has been expanding: solar system, galaxy, universe, multiverse. The bubble universe is the next logical step, and it is the best explanation yet for the apparent design of the laws of physics.", "Michael Shermer"); break; case 264: writeQuote("Den skada teologin har vållat består icke i att den skapat grymhet, utan att den sanktionerat denna med vad som påstås vara en upphöjd etik och förlänat en skenbart helig karaktär åt bruk, som nedärvts från okunnigare och mera barbariska tidsåldrar.", "Bertrand Russell"); break; case 265: writeQuote("Ingen anser det längre ogudaktigt att undvida epidemier och farsoter genom sanitära och hygieniska åtgärder, och ehuru vissa människor fortfarande anse, att sjukdomar sändas av Gud, påstå de därför inte, att det är syndigt att försöka undvika dem. Det därav följande förbättrade hälsotillståndet och den ökade livslängden tillhöra de mest märkbara och beundransvärda kännetecknen på vår tid. Även om vetenskapen inte åstadkommit någonting annat för den mänskliga lyckan, skulle den på denna grund förtjäna vår tacksamhet. De som tror på nyttan av teologiska trossatser skulle få mycket svårt att visa på någon liknande fördel, som dessa skänkt människosläktet.", "Bertrand Russell"); break; case 266: writeQuote("Det första påståendet, att solen är centrum och inte rör sig runt jorden är dåraktigt, orimligt, teologiskt felaktigt och kätterskt, eftersom det står i direkt motsats till den heliga skrift. (...) Det andra påståendet, att jorden icke är centrum utan rör sig runt centrum är orimligt, filosofiskt felaktigt och från teologisk synpunkt stridande mot den sanna tron.", "Romersk katolska inkvisitionen"); break; case 267: writeQuote("Another point to note is that the atheist believes in the existence of the universe and does not believe in anything which is more fundamental. The theist believes in the existence of the universe and – in addition – he believes in the existence of God. The theist, therefore, believes in one more thing than the atheist. If all beliefs should be justified, then surely the more one believes, the more justification one must produce. Clearly, the theist must justify this extra belief to the atheist. If, on the other hand, beliefs need not be justified, then we might as well give in to pure anarchy and admit that rational discussion is impossible.", "B. C. Johnson"); break; case 268: writeQuote("If science had been content to explain every puzzling phenomenon by saying that God caused it, there would have been no scientific progress whatsoever. Just imagine the knowledge science would have accumulated by now if it had taken that route. All scientific knowledge would consits of one thing: God. No electrons, atoms or molecules would be invoked as explanations. What causes fire to burn? God. What causes lightning? God. What causes rain? God. The success of science in developing correct explanations has been based solely on its refusal to take the easy way out and proclaim God as the explanation. And the success of science in developing correct explanations is reason enough to believe that such a refusal is justified.", "B. C. Johnson"); break; case 269: writeQuote("It is sometimes argued that God is the standard of what is 'good'. 'Goodness' has no meaning apart from its existence in God. But we would have to know independently of God what 'goodness' is before we could use him as its standard. This is because we must be able to pick out from among God's other qualities his quality of goodness. If we did not already know what 'goodness' is, how could we differentiate it from among God's other qualities.", "B. C. Johnson"); break; case 270: writeQuote("Koranen, denna avskyvärda bok, som räckte till för att skapa en världsreligion och tillfredsställa de metafysiska behoven hos miljoner i tolv hundra år, blev en bas för deras moral och märkliga dödsförakt, och inspirerade dem också till blodiga krig och omfattande erövringar. I den boken finner den sorligaste och ynkligaste formen av gudstro. Mycket kanske går förlorat i översättningen men jag har inte kunnat upptäcka en enda idé av värde i den.", "Arthur Schopenhauer"); break; case 271: writeQuote("Intelligent design, ID, är en del av skapelsetrorörelsen som menar att Bibelns skapelseberättelse är en riktigt beskrivning av jordens och organismernas tillkomst.", "Per Kornhall"); break; case 272: writeQuote("Intelligent design är nämligen inte en gullig allmänreligiös inställning av typen 'vi skall vara snällare mot varandra'. Nej, det är en ambitiös och medveten kampanj för att försöka skapa ett på fundamentalistisk religion baserat samhälle, som skall ersätta det någorlunda förnuftsbaserade samhälle vi har i västerlandet och som bygger på idéer från upplysningstiden.", "Per Kornhall"); break; case 273: writeQuote("ID-rörelsen vill vrida klockan tillbaka och föra det västerländska samhället till tiden före upplysningen, till tiden innan förnuftet fick börja råda över bibliska doktriner. Rörelsens uttryckliga mål är ett samhälle byggt på religion och religiösa principer, speciellt då evangeliskt kristna.", "Per Kornhall"); break; case 274: writeQuote("Religiösa människor har alltid genom historien velat förbjuda vetenskap som på något sätt går emot deras religion.", "Per Kornhall"); break; case 275: writeQuote("De som inte tror att evolution har skett, trots att det finns en sådan oerhörd mängd bevis, sällar sig till samma intellektuella kategori som den som hävdar att jorden är platt och att månen är en ost.", "Per Kornhall"); break; case 276: writeQuote("ID är inte en ofarlig, inåtvänd, religiös verksamhet utan en teoribildning som vill hota det moderna samhället.", "Per Kornhall"); break; case 277: writeQuote("Att kalla världen 'Gud' är inte att förklara den, det är blott att berika vårt språk med en överflödig synonym för ordet 'värld'.", "Arthur Schopenhauer"); break; case 278: writeQuote("Och även om den knarrigaste skeptiker medger att religiösa utsagor inte kan vederläggas av förnuftet, varför skulle jag då inte tro på dem när de har så mycket som talar för dem - traditionen, mänsklighetens samstämmighet, och all den tröst de skänker? Ja, varför inte? Precis som ingen kan tvingas till att tro kan heller ingen tvingas till att inte tro. Men förled inte dig själv till att tro att du med sådana argument följer det korrekta resonemangets väg. Om det någonsin har funnits ett fall av lättvindigt argumenterande så är det det här. Okunnighet är okunnighet; ur den härrör ingen rätt att tro på någonting.", "Sigmund Freud"); break; case 279: writeQuote("[J]ag är inte religiös, och jag betraktar omfattandet av en religiös tro som oförenligt med öppenhet för sanningen.", "Bryan Magee"); break; case 280: writeQuote("När skälen är så svaga, kan förnuftet inte nöja sig med att bara avstå från att tro, att den påstådda avvikelsen har ägt rum. Förnuftet måste gå ett steg till och tro, att avvikelsen inte har ägt rum. Grunden härför är förnuftets välgrundade åsikt, att en väletablerad naturlags riktighet är mycket sannolikare än en naiv iakttagelses pålitlighet och enormt mycket sannolikare än en naiv iakttagelse, som jag inte ens kan vara fullt säker på om den verkligen har förekommit.", "Ingemar Hedenius"); break; case 281: writeQuote("Den förnuftiga människan måste med andra ord vara så gott som alldeles säker på att historierna om Kristi uppståndelse inte är sanna.", "Ingemar Hedenius"); break; case 282: writeQuote("Atheism is the plausible and probably correct belief that God does not exist. Opposed to atheism, there is theism, the implausible and probably incorrect view that God does exists.", "Daniel Harbour"); break; case 283: writeQuote("If anyone knows that science has not explained everything, it is the working scientist: our jobs depend on the incompleteness of science.", "Daniel Harbour"); break; case 284: writeQuote("I can only concur with King David: 'The fool hath said in his heart there is no God'. The intelligent person, with a wealth of reasons, would have said it out loud.", "Daniel Harbour"); break; case 285: writeQuote("This principle [onus probandi] states that the burden of proof falls on the person who affirms the truth of a proposition, such as 'God exists'. It the theist claims to know that God exists, the we have the cognitive right - indeed, the responsibility - to ask this person how he acquired this knowledge and why we should take him seriously. If the theist fails to meet his burden of proof, atheism is left standing by default and the only rational alternative.", "George H. Smith"); break; case 286: writeQuote("Naturalism is at once a necessary and sufficient mode of explanation, so we have no need to invoke the existence of supernatural causes.", "George H. Smith"); break; case 287: writeQuote("According to some atheists, if it is reasonable to assert that Santa does not exist, evenly if we cannot positively disprove the possibility that he exists, then it is equally reasonable to say the same thing about God. And if the latter is unreasonable, then why don't theologians abandon their dogmatic anti-Santa sentiments and candidly admit that they simply don't know whether Santa exists or not, that they have suspended judgement on this matter and so have no opinion one way or the other?", "George H. Smith"); break; case 288: writeQuote("To argue with a person who has renounced the use of reason is like adminstering medicine to the dead", "Thomas Paine"); break; case 289: writeQuote("As a rule, when there arises a thinker as great in theology as Kepler in science, the whole mass of his conclusions ripens into dogma. His disciples labor not to test it, but to establish it; and while, in the Catholic Church, it becomes a dogma to be believed or disbelieved under the penalty of damnation, in becomes in the Protestant Church the basis for one more sect.", "A. D. White"); break; case 290: writeQuote("[If] a stone falls from a roof on to someone's head, and kills him, [theologians] will demonstrate by their new method, that the stone fell in order to kill the man; for, if it had not by God's will fallen with that object, how could so many circumstances (and there are often many concurrent circumstances) have all happened together by chance? Perhaps you will answer that the event is due to the facts that the wind was blowing, and the man was walking that way. 'But why,' they will insist, 'was the wind blowing, and why was the man at that very time walking that way?' If you again answer, that the wind had then sprung up because the sea had begun to be agitated the day before, the weather being previously calm, and that the man had been invited by a friend, the will again insist: 'But why was the sea agitated, and why was the man invited at that time?' So they will pursue their questions from cause to cause, till at last you take refuge in the will of God - in other words, the sanctuary of ignorance.", "Baruch Spinoza"); break; case 291: writeQuote("If one assumes that God is both omnipotent and omniscient, and obvious contradiction arises. Being omniscient, God knows everything that will happen; He can predict the future trajectory of every snowflake, the sprouting of every blade of grass, and deeds of every human being, as well as all of His own actions. But being omnipotent, He can act in any way and do anything He wants, including behaving in ways different from those He'd predicted, making His expectations uncertain and fallible. He thus can't be both omnipotent and omniscient.", "John Allen Paulos"); break; case 292: writeQuote("It's become somewhat fashionable to say that religion and science are growing together and are no longer incompatible. This convergence is, in my opinion, illusory. In fact, I don't believe that any attempt to combine these very disparate bodies of ideas can succeed intellectually.", "John Allen Paulos"); break; case 293: writeQuote("Contrary to Dostoyevsky's warning that 'if God doesn't exist, everything is allowed,' we have the fanatical believer's threat that 'if God does exist, everything is allowed.' Killing thousands or even millions of people might be justified in some devout believers' eyes if in doing so they violate only mundane human laws and incur only mundane humane penalties while upholding higher divine laws and earning higher approbation.", "John Allen Paulos"); break; case 294: writeQuote("An atheist or agnostic who acts morally simply because it is the right thing to do is, in a sense, more moral than someone who is trying to avoid everlasting torment or, as is the case with martyrs, to achieve eternal bliss. He or she is making the moral choice without benefit of Pascal's divine bribe. This choice is all the more impressive when an atheist or agnostic sacrifies his or her life, for example, to rescue a drowning child, aware that there'll be no heavenly reward for this lifesaving valor. The contrasts with acts motivated by calculated expected value or uncalculated unexpected fear (or, worse, fearlessness) is stark.", "John Allen Paulos"); break; case 295: writeQuote("Om någon hävdar att partikelfysik är en social konstruktion, att astrologi fungerar, eller att världen skapades för 6000 år sedan, ämnar jag slå tillbaka med all den kraft vetenskapen kan förse mig med.", "Ulf Danielsson"); break; case 296: writeQuote("I USA tror när detta skrivs nästa hälften av medborgarna att människan skapades fix och färdiga av Gud och att hela naturhistorien därför är en lögn. För att ge dessa primitiva sagor ett sken av vetenskaplighet har begreppet intelligent design lanserats och också fått ett allt större genomslag. Argumentet går i korthet ut på att det skall finnas goda och vetenskapliga skäl till att förmoda existensen av en intelligent skapare bakom universum vilken inrättat allt till det bästa. Helt i linje med William Paley och hans jämförelse med en klocka och dess urmakare. Det framhålls som ett alternativ eller kanske komplement till den etablerade och med naturvetenskapliga metoder framtagna synen på världen och livets utveckling. Resonemangen kan till en början förefalla oskyldigt, och rentav ödmjukt, men är i själva verket djupt förrädiskt. Vad man i praktiken vill göra är att jämställa en empiriskt fullständigt ogrundad och i praktiken religiös föreställning med evolutionsläran och se den på samma nivå som en naturvetenskaplig teori vilken som helst.", "Ulf Danielsson"); break; case 297: writeQuote("William Paley gick från fysiken till biologin för att där hitta starkare argument för den intelligenta och välvilliga skaparen. Darwin visade att argumentet inte höll. Nästa steg måste rimligen vara att ta Darwins insikt och föra den tillbaka till fysiken och finna att inte heller de fysikaliska lagarna förutsätter en intelligent och välvillig, eller möjligen matematiskt intresserad, skapare.", "Ulf Danielsson"); break; case 298: writeQuote("Det finns inget tvivel om att Darwins förklaring är den korrekta när det gäller livets utveckling här på jorden. Ingen vetenskapsman kan med bibehållen trovärdighet ifrågasätta evolutionen och dess betydelse för att det ser ut som det gör.", "Ulf Danielsson"); break; case 299: writeQuote("Ett riktigt bra exempel utgörs av det mänskliga ögat som annars brukar lyftas fram av kreationister som ett organ omöjligt att förklara med hjälp av evolutionen. Detta är förstås inte riktigt. Man vet mycket väl hur ett ljuskänsligt hudparti gradvis, under några hundratusen generationer, kan utvecklas till ett funktionellt öga av den typ som vi har. Men det mest intressanta med vårt öga är inte hur välkonstruerat det är utan snarare de avgörande brister som det lider av. Och vem som helst kan med ett enkelt experiment med egna ögon se, eller snarare inte se, hur detta tar sitt uttryck: den blinda fläcken.", "Ulf Danielsson"); break; case 300: writeQuote("It isn't difficult to work out that religious fundamentalists are deluded - those people who think the the entire universe began after the agricurltural revolution; people who belive literally that a snake, presumably in fluent Hebrew, beguiled into sin a man fashioned from clay and a woman grown from him as a cutting: people who find it self-evident that the origin myth that happened to dominate their own childhood trumps the thousands of alternative myths sprung from all the dreamtimes of the world.", "Richard Dawkins"); break; case 301: writeQuote("I lost faith in faith.", "Dan Barker"); break; case 302: writeQuote("The motivation that drove me into the pulpit is the same that drove me out. I was a minister becaues I wanted to know and speak the truth, and I am an atheist for the same reason. I have not changed; my conclusions have changed.", "Dan Barker"); break; case 303: writeQuote("True Christians should not ask if the bible is moral, of if God is moral. If God is the source of morality, then asking if God is moral is like asking if goodness is good. To ask seriously if God or the bible is moral (with a possible negative answer) is to assume that 'moral' means something apart from God, and that we already know what it means independently of the bible. If the word 'moral' has meaning by itself, then right and wrong can be understood apart from God, and judging the morality of God puts him under the jurisdiction of a higher level of criticism. This is true even if the judgment is favorable. To the believer, questioning the morality of God is blasphemy. It implies that the 'supreme judge' can be judged.", "Dan Barker"); break; case 304: writeQuote("Humanists are accountable to real, natural, breathing human beings (and other sentient animals), and to enforceable human laws, not to an unprovable, pie-in-the-sky deity. This makes humanism superior as a guide for moral behavior. Humanism is just not better than the bible - the Bad Book - it is the only way we can be moral.", "Dan Barker"); break; case 305: writeQuote("Theology has given us hell.", "Dan Barker"); break; case 306: writeQuote("What skeptics say is that if a miracle is defined as some kind of violation, suspension, overriding or punctuation of natural law, then miracles cannot be historical. Of all the legitimate sciences, history is the weakest. History, at best, produces only an approximation of truth. In order for history to have any strength at all, it must adhere to a very strict assumption: that natural law is regular over time. Without the assumption of natural regularity, no history can be done. There would be no criteria for discarding fantastic stories. Everything that has ever been recorded would have to be taken as literal truth. Therefore, if a miracle did happen, it would the pull the rug out from history. The very basis of the historical method would have to be discarded. You can have miracles, or you can have history, but you can't have both.", "Dan Barker"); break; case 307: writeQuote("Is it more probable that nature should go out of her course, or that a man should tell a lie? We have never seen, in our time, nature go out of her course; but we have good reason to believe that millions of lies have been told in the same time; it is, therefore, at least millions to one, that the reporter of a miracle tells a lie.", "Thomas Paine"); break; case 308: writeQuote("Modern science is dealing a fatal blow to the Christian faith in several areas. Science has taught us to assume a natural explanation for every event based upon methodological naturalism. This method is the foundation of modernity that even Christians use every day. Since this method has produces so many significant results, I think it should be equally used to investigate the Bible, its claims of the miraculous, and the origins of the universe itself, and it provides a great deal of evidence against the Christian faith.", "John W. Loftus"); break; case 309: writeQuote("(...) the biblical God is a hateful, racist, and sexist God.", "John W. Loftus"); break; case 310: writeQuote("Are we sure that the Creator of man commissioned these things to be done? And are we sure that the books that tell us so were written by His authority? (...) To believe, therefore, the Bible to be true, we must unbelieve all our belief in the moral justice of God. (...) And to read the Bible without horror, we must undo everything that is tender, sympathizing, and benevolent in the heart of man. Speaking for myself, if I had no other evidence that the Bible is fabulous than the sacrifice I must make to beleive it to be true, that alone would be sufficient to determine my choice.", "Thomas Paine"); break; case 311: writeQuote("Scientific progress could only occur when the theological and philosophical authorities of the past were discarded, and a fresh bold approach to nature was adopted.", "Paul Kurtz"); break; case 312: writeQuote("Christians claim their faith gave rise to modern science even though the Bible literally contains talk of a six day creation, a three-tired universe, a worldwide flood let loose from the firmament above, nine-hundred-year-old men, talking snakes and donkeys, a sun that stood still, and a hell in the deepest parts of the earth, and they still want to claim their faith gave rise to science? That's balderdash (sorry, I can't resist)! Science itself has completely undermined these views, forcing thoughtful Christians to reinterpret their Bibles over and over again.", "John W. Loftus"); break; case 313: writeQuote("We can pray over the cholera victim, or we can give her 500 milligrams of tetracycline every 12 hours (...) the scientific treatments are hundreds or thousands of times more effective than the alternatives (like prayer). Even when the alternatives seem to work, we don't actually know that they played any role.", "Carl Sagan"); break; case 314: writeQuote("What would you do if there were no God? Would you commit robbery, rape, and murder, or would you continue being a good and moral person? Either way the question is a debate stopper. If the answer is that you would soon turns to robbery, raper, or murder, then this is a moral indictment of your character, indicating that you are not to be trusted because if, for any reason, you were to turn away from your belief in God, your true immoral nature would emerge. (...) If the answer is that you would continue being good and moral, then apparently wýou can be good without God. QED.", "Michael Shermer"); break; case 315: writeQuote("The Christian life is ultimately in vain, because it is built on a false hope.", "John W. Loftus"); break; case 316: writeQuote("Some theists like C. S. Lewis, in Mere Christianity, will argue from the start that there can be no evil without absolute goodness (God) to measure it against. 'How do you know that a line is croocked without having some knowledge of what a straight line is?' In other words, I need some sort of objective moral in order to say that something is 'evil'. But the word evil here is used both as a term desrcibing the fact that there is suffering and at the same time as a moral term to describe whether or not such suffering makes the belief in a good God improbable, and that's an equivocation in the word's usage. The fact that there is suffering in undeniable. Wether it's considered an evil that makes the belief in a good God improbable is the subject for debate. I'm talking about pain - the kind that turns our stomachs. Why is there so much of it when there is a good omnipotent God? I'm arguing that the amount of intense suffering in this world makes the belief i a good God improbable from a theistic perspective, and I may be a relativist, a pantheist, or a witchdoctor and still ask about the internal consistency of what a theist believes. The dilemma for the theist is to reconcile senseless suffering in the world with her own beliefs (not mine) that all suffering is for a greater good. It's an internal problem för the theist, so it doesn't matter what the beliefs are for the person making this argument. The person making this argument is merely using the logical tool for assessing arguments called the reductio ad absurdum, which attempts to reduce to absurdity the claims of a person.", "John W. Loftus"); break; case 317: writeQuote("I spent many years of my childhood believing in him. I knew without a single doubt he was real. I would thin about him every day as I sensed his presence. I would pray to him. I didn't just know he was hearing me; I felt him hearing me. The feeling that he was there was unmistakable. I would close my eyes, picturing him, and he was there, talking to me, and, more importantly, listening to me. He was guiding me. He was real. There was no doubt whatsoever in my mind because I could feel him out there somewhere. This wasn't just my imagination. This was real. He was there. That is...until my mother broke the news to me that he wasn't real. She broke the unbelievable news that no, there really was no Santa Claus.", "Jeffrey Marks"); break; case 318: writeQuote("Evolution is a scientific theory. It has been tested, and has survived thousands upon thousands of tests over two centuries. It is verified, and it can and has been used to make scientific predictions of the outcome of future tests. Evolution is a fact and scientists have shown it to be. To say it's 'just a theory' demonstrates ignorance towards the meaning of the word theory.", "Jeffrey Marks"); break; case 319: writeQuote("Today I know there's no Hell, that the Bible is just a collection of myths, and there's no reason to be afraid.", "Jeffrey Marks"); break; case 320: writeQuote("Vad är mitt eget röda blod tillrett på, om inte urgammalt havsvatten? De små sjöarna av geléartad plasma i mina 60 biljoner celler - visst är det Kattegatt och Skagerak! Ögats kammarvatten strax innanför hornhinnan, det som bryter sommarsolens ljus så att jag kan se klart - vad finns därinne, om inte en och annan vattenmolekyl från avlägsna arktiska hav?", "Stefan Edman"); break; case 321: writeQuote("Träd ingriper alltid i vattnets kretslopp. De dämpar häftiga skyfall och vårfloder. De binder vattnet i marken. Deras rötter suger upp det våta elementet ur djupa ådror och grundvattenkällor, så att det blir tillgängligt också för rötter och gräs. De håller matjordsskiktet lagom fuktigt. Genom deras vävnader förs vatten från mark och sjö till atmosfären; i planetens alla trädstammar strömmar faktiskt mera vatten än genom samtliga floder på Jorden...", "Stefan Edman"); break; case 322: writeQuote("Jag kittlar näsan med ett friskt granskott; det doftar obeskrivligt gott av hemlagade kolväten. Jag lutar mig ömsint mot stammens skrovliga hud. Lägger örat intill, låtsas höra de ständiga strömmarna därinne. Flödena av vatten på väg uppåt, av sockersaft på nerfärd mot rötterna.", "Stefan Edman"); break; case 323: writeQuote("Så knyts organismerna samman i väven. Vår stjärna Solen, 150 miljoner km bort, är den yttersta 'motorn' i detta sällsamma växelspel av nedbrytning och uppbyggnad djupt i älvens höstkalla vatten. För det är ju Solens fotoner - 'energipaket' - som matas in i de gröna algernas socker och proteiner, slussas vidare genom knott- och sländlarver för att i det röda laxköttets skepnad byggas in i dig eller mig. Det är ju ytterst med solkraft vårt eget hjärta slår, våra muskler arbetar och vårt nervsystem formar tankar, känslor och drömmar.", "Stefan Edman"); break; case 324: writeQuote("Havet är som blodet', fortsätter jag, 'det håller samman hela naturen, allt levande. Du och jag har i våra kroppar just nu vattendroppar som funnits i fiskar och träd och andra människor före oss. I ögat, i örat, överallt flyter gammalt havsvatten fram och ger oss liv..'", "Stefan Edman"); break; case 325: writeQuote("Innan du läst denna text till punkt, har du och jag och alla andra resenärer på vår gröna rymdfarkost Jorden färdats bortom 2000 mil.", "Stefan Edman"); break; case 326: writeQuote("Alla levande organismer, arter, ordningar och klasser tillhör livets gemensamma ström, ur samma ursprungskälla. Men inte bara det: byggstenarna i vår kropp - kol, väte, svavel, fosfor och alla de andra - är densamma som i gråstenen på marken. Och de är alla formade i stjärnor en gång, för kanske sju, åtta, miljarder år sedan.", "Stefan Edman"); break; case 327: writeQuote("Det finns raka samband mellan hjärtslaget under din bröstkorg - och miljarder jordbakteriers trägna liv under din skosula. Hjärtat drivs av energiråvaror från maten du laddar kroppen med, mat som ytterst har vuxit i jorden tack vare bakteriernas kretsloppsarbete att ständigt förnya mullens näringsinnehåll. De behöver inte dig. Men utan dem funnes du inte till...", "Stefan Edman"); break; case 328: writeQuote("Ur vattnet är vi komna, till vattnet återvänder vi. Har du tänkt på att din egen kropp är en lagun, fylld med havsvatten? Ett enda glas sommarsöt hallonsaft, en enda kopp kaffe efter simturen - och du låter oceanernas vattenmolekyler flyta in i din kropp! Kranvattnet därhemma kommer från kommunens vattentäkt, javisst, Men för en vecka sedan fanns dropparna i kaffevattnet ute i Östersjön. Solen lyfte dem, vindarna drev regnmolnen in över land, till 'din' sjö. Och nu är vattnet på väg in i dina celler, ditt blod, till den skyddande vätskan som spolar runt din hjärna. För en månad sedan tillhörde detta vatten Kattegatt, för ett halvår sedan flöt det runt ute i Atlanten. Droppar i saftglaset har under årmiljonernas lopp 'betjänat' tusen sinom tusen andra levande varelser: havens hagar, kusternas fiskmåsar, kontinenternas jätteödlor och ormbunksskogar.", "Stefan Edman"); break; case 329: writeQuote("Ur havet är vi alla komna, från den första urcellen för kanske fyra miljarder år sedan. Samma vatten som nu sköljer in över Eggeskär blev till i Jordens inre då vår planet ännu var ung och het. Det är vattenmolekyler som genom eoner rusat runt i de globala kretsloppen - från hav till lufthav och åter mot kontinenterna och deras levande vävnader. Det är detta vatten som nu flyter fram i vårt röda blod, i lymfans dräneringsdiken, som saliv över tungan och tårar på kinden. Samma vatten som i torsdags rann genom torskens gälar och gråtrutens vingceller är nu på plats i våra öron som att vi kan höra, i ögat för att bryta ljuset till näthinnan. Vattnet sorlar om vår egen plats i skapelsen, om vårt ursprung, om blodsbandet mellan alla levande på planeten Havet (ja, så borde det kallas, vårt hem i Vintergatan, eftersom ju 70 procent av dess yta täcks av hav).", "Stefan Edman"); break; case 330: writeQuote("Jag smeker den mjuka ängsviveln, Festuca pratensis. Insekter landar på dess strå och blad som på en storflygplats. För att suga sol-juice ur det gröna - och sedan själv bli mat åt lövsångarens ungar i min björk. Allt hör samman i en helig väv av liv och död och liv igen.", "Stefan Edman"); break; case 331: writeQuote("Sommarnatten är fylld av budskap om kärlekens konst och kampen för överlevnad.", "Stefan Edman"); break; case 332: writeQuote("Ni vet väl sedan gammalt att humlan egentligen inte kan flyga? Men eftersom den inte känner till detta i grunden rätt trista faktum, så lyfter den ändå, om än lite vingligt. Skämt åsido: Humlan väger ett gram, en tungviktare i insektsvärlden. Vingytan är bara någon kvadratcentimeter, och dessutom alldeles plan, till skillnad från fåglarnas vingar som är svagt välvda. Aerodynamiken förbjuder alltså humlor att flyga. Vilken är då deras hemlighet? Det har zoologen Charles Ellington i Cambridge nyligen rett ut genom att bygga en mekanisk insekt med datorstyrda vingslag som han sedan studerat med hjälp av höghastighetskameror. För det första slår humlevingen ofattbara 150-200 slag i sekunden. Men det räcker inte som förklaring. Den verkliga finessen är att vingarna rörs framåt-nedåt och bakåt-uppåt och samtidigt vinklas så att kompakta virvelrörelser uppstår utmed vingens framkant. Det hela bildar ett ytterligt komplicerat mönster, där varje virvel ger ett undertryck som lyfter humlekroppen. Men virvlarna varar bara under bråkdelen av en sekund. Därför måste humlorna i varje ögonblick 'vinkla om' så att bärkraften blir den allra bästa.", "Stefan Edman"); break; case 333: writeQuote("'Hur många år dröjer det innan solen slocknar och livet på jorden dör ut', undrade en dam nervöst efter min föreläsning i den småländska byggdegården. 'Sa du sju miljoner?' 'Nej, miljarder', genmälde jag. 'Gu'skelov, det var det jag hoppades', log hon. Och försvann med lätta steg.", "Stefan Edman"); break; case 334: writeQuote("Själva ordet klimat kommer från grekiskans klima som betyder 'lutning'. Det säger faktiskt mer än man kan tro. För orsakerna till att två orter har olika klimat handlar just om detta: solstålarnas lutning när de träffar jorden.", "Stefan Edman"); break; case 335: writeQuote("Vattnet är naturens blod.", "Stefan Edman"); break; case 336: writeQuote("Klimatfrågan handlar i grunden om etik och människovärde, om rättvisa och solidaritet här och nu och med de ännu ofödda generationerna som så småningom skall ta över vår planet.", "Stefan Edman"); break; case 337: writeQuote("Moder Jord är som en levande kropp. Själv har jag stjärnstoft i min kind och oceanvatten i blodet. Jag är både urgammal och ofattbart ung i universums historia. Allt är sammanknutet i tillvarons åldriga väv, inte kan leva för sig själv.", "Stefan Edman"); break; case 338: writeQuote("Smek din kind - och du rör vid stjärnstoft! Bokstavligt talat. Atomerna i våra kroppar är miljarder år gamla, formade i heta men numera slocknande eller kalla stjärnor. Järnet i blodet, hudens kol, joden i sköldkörteln, tändernas kalcium - alla har de suttit infogade som byggstenar i andra varelser innan de kom in i oss. I blåvalar och kolibris, kokospalmer och dinosaurier. Nu är de våra, som ett korttidslån, innan de virvlar vidare i materiens eviga kretslopp.", "Stefan Edman"); break; case 339: writeQuote("(...) det [är] inte ovanligt att religiösa människor, i mötet med vetenskapens världsbild, försöker placera in Gud där forskarna fortfarande brottas med frågetecken och en eller annan olöst gåta. Detta är dock i längden ohållbart; i takt med att forskarna får svar leder det ju till att Gud, steg för steg, förpassas ut i kylan.", "Stefan Edman"); break; case 340: writeQuote("Jag dricker av den kalla klara vätskan, nyss i makrillens blod långt därute i Nordsjön, nu snart som saliv över min tunga. Om några timmar skall det spola kring min hjärna där tankarna föds, där minnet och känslorna och själen bor. Varje droppe är ett helt litet universum som länkar mig samman med den mycket stora världen - och med den ofattbart lilla.", "Stefan Edman"); break; case 341: writeQuote("Solens energi, fotonerna, har på åtta minuter, rusat från vår gula stjärna genom rymden till planeten Jorden. Landat i vår trädgård. Trängt in i trasten. Gjort honom att redo att älska, sätta ungar till världen, föra sina DNA-koder vidare.", "Stefan Edman"); break; case 342: writeQuote("Jag vandrar utmed stranden av Västerhavet. Hasar ner för bergknallen och vadar över en vik av planeten Havet. Jo, för så borde ju vår himlakropp egentligen heta, denna varma, skimrande vattendroppe i Vintergatans iskalla, svarta rymdocean.", "Stefan Edman"); break; case 343: writeQuote("Darwin was raised as a Christian, trained as a cleric and died an atheist.", "John Gribbin"); break; case 344: writeQuote("That search for, and love of, the truth led him [Darwin] to the theory of evolution, no matter how uncomfortable he must have felt about the inevitable conflict with the religious establishment in general, and with the views of Emma in particular.", "John Gribbin"); break; case 345: writeQuote("In losing his beautiful daughter - the little girl who had meant so much to him with her perfect character, so charming and gentle, a child who never knowingly upset anyone and who was bright and intelligent, funny and affectionate - he had lost any remaining vestige of religious faith he may have had. Fram that momen on, Darwin was a total, uncompromising atheist: his only god was rationality, his only saviour, logic and science; no meaning to existence other than a culmination of biological events. Life was selfish and cruel, headless and heartless. Beyond biology there was nothing.", "John Gribbin"); break; case 346: writeQuote("If I have a wish to live thirty years, it is that I may see the foot of Science on the necks of her enemies.", "Thomas Henry Huxley"); break; case 347: writeQuote("Only the hypotheses that stand the test of repeated observation and experiment become fully fledged theoris that are regarded as revealing some deep truth about nature - the process is, indeed, very much like evolution by natural selection, with survival of the fittest theories.", "John Gribbin"); break; case 348: writeQuote("In a sense, by highlightning the inadequacy of the Victorian understanding of the laws of physics, the geological record of the antiquity of the Earth and the theory of evolution by natural selection were together pointing the way towards a new theory of physics, the theory of relativity. Evolution by natural selection requires E = mc^2, and from one point of view Darwin can be said to have predicted Einstein's great work (...).", "John Gribbin"); break; case 349: writeQuote("There is nothing left which can be thought of as making human beings special; but we therefore have the potential to understand ourselves better than human beings have ever understood themselves, and we have that potential in large measure thanks to Charles Darwin. We are indeed one Mammiferous animal among many, and we live by Darwin's rules.", "John Gribbin"); break; case 350: writeQuote("Nowadays, no biologist could work without Darwin's theory. Evolution is the grammar of their science. It accepts his painfully recognized fact that life, like the English language, works to rules that, even if filled with exceptions, make sense.", "Steve Jones"); break; case 351: writeQuote("No biologist can work without the theory of evolution. Like Galileo's notion of a solar system with the sun at its centre, Darwin's long argument makes sense of their subject. Ideas of origin were once, like Moby Dick, allegories. They helped to comprehend not the structure but the meaning of the Universe. Some still hope to find symbolic significance in Darwinism. They will not: but his work turned the study of life into a science rather than a collection of unrelated anecdotes.", "Steve Jones"); break; case 352: writeQuote("According to a 1991 opinion poll, a hundred million Americans believe that 'God created man pretty much in his present form at one time during the last ten thousand years'. A large majority saw no reason to oppose the teaching of creationism in schools. They followed in a long tradition. A text of 1923, Hell and the High Schools, claimed that: 'The Germans who poisoned the wells and springs of northern France and Belgium and fed little children poisioned candy were angels compared to the text-book writes and publishers who are posioning the book used in our schools (...) Next to the fall of Adam and Eve, Evolution and the teaching of Evolution in tax supported schools is the greatest curse that ever fell upon this earth'.", "Steve Jones"); break; case 353: writeQuote("(...) [evolution of] the eye happened not twice but fifty times, and the problem of how to extract information from light has been solved in a dozen ways. The eye is as intricate as it needs to be, and no more. Its apparent perfection does not destroy but upholds the theory of evolution.", "Steve Jones"); break; case 354: writeQuote("The geological record is the court of the last appeal for all theories of evolution. Although biologists still argue about how the process works, fossils make it impossible for anyone, biologist or not, to deny that it happened.", "Steve Jones"); break; case 355: writeQuote("Genom att läsa populärvetenskapliga böcker kom jag snart till övertygelsen att mycket i de bibliska berättelserna inte kunde vara sant.", "Heinz Pagels"); break; case 356: writeQuote("Jag lärde mig också något som kanske är ännu viktigare, nämligen att man alltid i vetenskapen kan nå ett avgörande om var som är rätt och fel. Det är inte en fråga om tro, eller Weltanschauung, eller hypoteser; ett visst påstående kan helt enkelt vara riktigt och ett annat påstående felaktigt. Denna fråga avgörs varken av ursprung eller ras: den avgörs av naturen, eller av Gud om du så föredrar, men i vilket fall som helst inte av människan.", "Werner Heisenberg"); break; case 357: writeQuote("Partiklar och vågor är var Bohr kallade komplementära begrepp, vilket innebär att de utesluter varandra. I analogin mellan språk och matematik vi använde tidigare är dessa komplementära begrepp olika representationer av samma objekt. Fysiker talar om partikelrepresentationen eller vågrepresentationen . Bohrs komplementaritetsprincip säger att det finns komplementära egenskaper hos samma kunskapsobjekt, och om den ena är känd så är kunskap om den andra utesluten. Vi kan därför, utan logisk motsägelse, beskriva ett föremål som elektronen på sätt som ömsesidigt utesluter varandra, till exempel som våg eller partikel, bara vi inser att de experimentella uppställningar som bestämmer dessa beskrivningar på samma sätt utesluter varandra. Vilket experiment - och alltså vilken beskrivning - man väljer är ett rent mänskligt val.", "Heinz Pagels"); break; case 358: writeQuote("I Iran efter revolutionen höll en matematiklärare en föreläsning om sannolikhetsteori och inledde med att hålla upp en tärning som han skulle använda i en demonstration. Innan han kunde börja skrek en muhammedansk fundamentalist: 'Ett satans påfund!' och syftade givetvis på tärningen. Läraren miste jobbet och närapå livet. Sannolikhetsbegreppet strider mot de tolkningar av islam som hävdar att Gud vet allting - det finns inget utrymme för tillfälligheter enligt många religiösa fundamentalister.", "Heinz Pagels"); break; case 359: writeQuote("Vissa populärvetenskapliga författare har på senaste tiden, då de stött på slutsatserna i Bells arbete, påstått att dessa bekräftar telepati eller den mystiska tanken att alla universums delar står i ögonblicklig kontakt med varandra. Andra försäkrar att Bells slutsatser innebär att kommunikation med högre hastighet än ljusets är möjlig. Det är struntprat - kvantteorin och Bells olikhet innebär inte alls något sådant. Individer som gör sådana påståenden har bytt ut förståelsen mot fantasier som uppfyller deras önskningar.", "Heinz Pagels"); break; case 360: writeQuote("Det finns ingen makroskopisk kvantmystik.", "Heinz Pagels"); break; case 361: writeQuote("För att föra civilisationen framåt krävs en vision. Europas katedraler byggdes av ett folk som förtärdes av en trosvision. Men förnuftet har också sina drömmar. De stora vetenskapliga laboratorierna är verktyg för vår nutida dröm att lösa den kosmiska gåtan. När man någon gång i framtiden ser tillbaka på vår tid delar man kanske inte vår uppfattning om sanning och ändå kommer man, på precis samma sätt som vi blir rörda av den vision som uppförde katedralerna, att röras av vår vision - visionen att kunskap är det yttersta instrumentet för människans överlevnad i universum.", "Heinz Pagels"); break; case 362: writeQuote("De är ju nätta småkryp, dessa svafvelbakterier! De utandas svafvelsyra, den starkaste av alla frätande syrer! Hvad äro våra ettrigaste anarkister mot dessa odjur, som hvarge andedrag begå ett svafvelsyreattentat mot sina kamrater i tillvarelsekampen!", "Bengt Lidforss"); break; case 363: writeQuote("När det gäller ett solsystems bildning kalla vi de skapande krafterna gravitation, när det gäller lifvets uppkomst, kalla vi dem fysiska och kemiska krafter, och när det gäller den organiska skapelsens fullkomning, heta de kärlek och död.", "Bengt Lidforss"); break; case 364: writeQuote("Gäller det att emellertid att förklara det egendomliga samband, som existerar mellan månen och palolons svärmningstid, så måste vi erkänna att vetenskapen på denna punkt tills vidare står svarslös. Tills vidare - ty ingen förnuftig människa kan betvifla, att de krafter, som här äro verksamma, ligga inom räckvidden för vår forskning och att det en gång skall lyckas vetenskapen att klargöra dem. Men antag att denna mystiska palolo ej endast ägt ett vetenskapligt-biologiskt intresse, att att palolo-spörsmålet också på någon punkt hade berört filosofien eller religionen? Helt visst hade vi då fått upplefva, att herrar teologer och deras själsfränder med hänförelse pekat på paloloproblemet som ett nytt och talande vittnesbörd på den modärna naturforskningens bankrutt, och äfven palomasken skulle då fått tjänstgöra som bevis för att världen styres av en allvis, allsmäktig och allgod gud.", "Bengt Lidforss"); break; case 365: writeQuote("Axioms are usually considered to be propositions identifying a fundamental, self-evident truth. But explicit propositions as such are not primaries: they are made of concepts, all axioms, propositions and thought - consists of axiomatic concepts. An axiomatic concept is the identification of a primary fact of reality, which cannot be analyzed, i.e., reduced to other facts or broken into component parts. It is implicit in all facts and all knowledge. It is the fundamentally given and directly perceived or experienced, which requires no proof or explanation, but on which all proofs and explanations rest. The first and primary axiomatic concepts are 'existence', 'identity' (which is a corollary of 'existence') and 'consciousness'. One can study what exists and how consciousness functions; but one cannot analyze (or 'prove') existence as such, or consciousness as such. These are irreducible primaries. (An attempt to 'prove' them is self-contradictory: it is an attempt to 'prove' existence by means of non-existence, and consciousness by means of unconsciousness.)", "Ayn Rand"); break; case 366: writeQuote("Nature, to be commanded, must be obeyed.", "Francis Bacon"); break; case 367: writeQuote("An axiomatic concept is the identification of a primary fact of reality, which is implicit in all facts and in all knowledge. It is perceived or experienced directly, but grasped conceptually. The first and primary axiomatic concepts are 'existence'. 'identity' and 'consciousness'. They identify explicitly the omission of psychological time measurements, which is implicit in all concepts - and serve as constants, as cognitive integrators and epistemological guidelines. They embrace the entire field of man's awareness, delimiting it from the void of unreality to which conceptual errors can lead. Axiomatic concepts are not a matter of arbitrary choice; one ascertains whether a given concept is axiomatic or not by observering the fact that an axiomatic concept has to be accepted and used even in the process of any attempt to deny it. Axiomatic concepts are the foundation of objectivity.", "Ayn Rand"); break; case 368: writeQuote("Naturliga orsaker följer lagar och regler. Gudomliga ingrepp och övernaturliga händelser var däremot oberäkneliga, och de som tror att sådana fenomen utgör en väsentlig del av det som sker i naturen eller människokroppen kan aldrig utveckla någon vetenskap. Naturliga förklaringar förutsätter permanenta samband mellan orsaker och verkningar. Bara det som ständigt upprepas på samma sätt kan ges en vetenskaplig förklaring.", "Trond Berg Eriksson"); break; case 369: writeQuote("Religion är sprängstoff. Den kan motivera människan till det mest upphöjda och ädla, men också förleda henne till det rent bestialiska. Religion är ingalunda alltid av godo och den får inte betraktas som immun mot kritik. Därför måste det också finna plats för religionskritik. Religionskritiken är för övrigt knappast tron verkliga dödgrävare. Den rollen tillfaller snarare fanatiska och sekteristiska grupper som missbrukar den religiösa tron för sina egna inhumana och destruktiva syften. Det mänskliga förnuftets förmåga till kritisk reflexion är och förblir den religiösa trons nödvändiga följeslagare.", "Ulf Jonsson"); break; case 370: writeQuote("(...) scientifically, ID fails to hold up, providing neither an opportunity for experimental validation nor a robust foundation for its primary claim of irreducible complexity. More than that, however, ID also fails in a way that should be more of concern to the believer than to the hard-nosed scientist. ID is a 'God of the gaps' theory, inserting a supposition of the need for supernatural intervention in places that its proponents claim science cannot explain. Various cultures have traditionally tried to ascribe to God various natural phenomena that the science of the day had been unable to sort out - whether a solar eclipse or the beauty of a flower. But those theories have a dismal history. Advances in science ultimately fill in those gaps, to the dismay of those who had attached their faith to them. Ultimately 'God of the gaps' religion runs a huge risk of simply discrediting faith. We must not repeat this mistake in the current era. Intelligent Design fits into this discouraging tradition and faces the same ultimate demise. Furthermore, ID portrays the Almighty as a clumsy Creator, having to intervene at regular intervals to fix the inadequacies of His own initial plan for generating the complexity of life. For a believer who stands in awe of the almost unimaginable intelligence and creative genius of God, this is a very unsatisfactory image.", "Francis Collins"); break; case 371: writeQuote("The study of genomes lead inexorably to the conclusion that we humans share a common ancestor with other living things.", "Francis Collins"); break; case 372: writeQuote("(...) there are several problems, with the Divine Command Theory, perphaps the most troubling of which is that the theory seems to entail absurd moral consequences. Suppose, for example, that God commands torture of children. According to this theory this action would be morally obligatory. Yet the torturing of children is a morally outrageous act. On the other hand, if it is denied that God would issue such a command, it would seem that God's commands are determined by some independent standard of morality. In other words, if God's commands are based on his will, they can be morally outrageous. If they are not, then they are independent of God and the Divine Command Theory is false.", "Michael Martin"); break; case 373: writeQuote("(...) are there reasons for supposing that morality is possible without God? If 'possible' refers to logical possibility, there seems to be a very simple reason to suppose morality is possible without God. Something is logically possible when it is not logically impossible. However, the following claim is not logically impossible: 1. There are moral facts and God does not exist. Now there might be argued that (1) is a logically impossible claim since God's existence is itself logically necessary. However, this counterargument presumes the soundness of some version of the Ontological Argument. But this argument is widely discredited. Without the soundness of this argument I see no reason to suppose that (1) is logically impossible.", "Michael Martin"); break; case 374: writeQuote("So it would seem to follow that if we imitated Jesus, we would be punitive, unforgiving, violent, mean-spirited, hypocritical, and inconsisten; and we would tacitly approve of slavery, forsake reason, and have no opinions on the central moral issues of the day.", "Michael Martin"); break; case 375: writeQuote("In 'God: The Failed Hypothesis' I made a unique argument. Scientists and others had written scores of books showing that there is no evidence for the existence of God. They were always countered by the truism *Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.' But I pointed out that absence of evidence that should be there is valid evidence of absence. I demonstrated that the absence of evidence taht should be there is now sufficient to conclude beyond a reasonable doubt that the God worshipped by the Jews, Christians, and Muslims does not exist.", "Victor Stenger"); break; case 376: writeQuote("A good scientist does not approach the analysis of evidence with a mind shut like a trap door against unwelcome conclusions. If and when anyone finds evidence for the existence of God, gods, or the supernatural taht stands up under the same stringent tests that are applied in science to any claimed new phenomenon, with no plausible natural explanation, then honest atheist will have to become at least tentative believers.", "Victor Stenger"); break; case 377: writeQuote("Religion is a disease.", "Heraclitus"); break; case 378: writeQuote("Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings.", "Victor Stenger"); break; case 379: writeQuote("Every time we say that God is the author of some phenomenon, that signifies that we are ignorant of how such a phenomenons was caused by the forces of nature.", "Percy Bysshe Shelley"); break; case 380: writeQuote("In short, there is no scientific basis for the claim that the universe is fine-tuned for life. Indeed, the whole notion makes no sense. Why would an omnipotent god design a universe in which his most precisious creation, humanity, lives on the knife-edge of extinction? This god made a vast universe that is mostly empty space and then confined humankind to a tiny speck of a planet, where it is destined for extinction long before the universe becomes inert. He could have made it possible for us to live anywhere. He also could have made it possible to live in any conceivable universe, whit any values for its paramaters. Instead of being an argument for the existence of god, the apparent fine-tuning of the constants of physics argues against any design in the cosmos.", "Victor Stenger"); break; case 381: writeQuote("Whatever additional factors ma be added to natural selection - and Darwin himself fully admitted that there might be others - the theory of an evolution process in the formation of the universe and of animated nature is established, and the old theory of direct creation is gone forever. In place of it science has given us conceptions far more noble, and opened the way to an argument for design infinitely more beautiful than any ever developed by theology.", "Andrew D. White"); break; case 382: writeQuote("The world is finding taht the scientific revelation of creation is ever more and more in accordance with worthy conceptions of that great Power working in and through the universe. More and more is seen that inspiration has never ceased, and that its prophets and priests are not those who work to fit the letter of its older litterature to the needs of dogmas and sects, but those, above all others, who patiently, fearlessly, and reverently devote themselves to search for the truth as truth, in faith that there is a Power in the universe wise enough to make truth-seeking safe and good enough to make truth-telling useful.", "Andrew D. White"); break; case 383: writeQuote("For the worst enemy of Christianity could not wish nothing more than that its main Leaders should prove that it can not be adopted save by those who accept, as historical, statements which unbiased men throughout the world know to be mythical. The result of such a demonstration would only be more and more to make thinking people inside the Church dissemblers, and thinking people outside, scoffers. Far better is it to welcome the aid of science, and the conviction that all truth is one, and, in the light of this truth, to allow theology and science to work together in the steady evolution of religion and morality.", "Andrew D. White"); break; case 383: writeQuote("Det finns egentligen bara tvenne ting, vetenskap och åsikter. Det enda föder kunskap, det andra okunnighet.", "Hippokrates"); break; case 384: writeQuote("Med samma logik i botten sa man att en patient som glömde att ta sin homeopatmedicin troligen skulle dö av överdosen.", "Simon Singh"); break; case 385: writeQuote("Jag menar att det som krävs är en finstämd balans mellan två sinsemellan oförenliga behov: en den allra mest skeptiska granskningen av de hypoteser vi serveras daglidags, och samtidigt en vidsynt öppenhet för ny idéer. Är man enbart skeptisk kan inga nya idéer tränga fram till en. Man lär sig aldrig något nytt. Man blir en knarrig gammal gubbe som vet att dumheten styr här i världen. (Jodå, det finns gott om belägg för den saken.) Om man då gör tvärtom och är öppen på gränsen till godtrogen och saknar varje tillstymmelse till skeptisk förmåga, då kan man inte skilja de nyttiga och användbara idéerna från de värdelösa. Om alla idéer är lika mycket värda, då är man förlorad. Varför? Jo, för då har ingen idé något riktigt värde, tycks det mig.", "Carl Sagan"); break; case 386: writeQuote("Vi vill bestämt påstå att det är dags att sätta stopp för alla bluffmakare och ge utrymme för de botemedel som gör skäl för namnet. I ärlighetens, utvecklingens och den goda sjukvårdens namn kräver vi att en vetenskaplig måttstock tillämpas inom alla former av medicinsk verksamhet liksom en vetenskaplig grundad utvärdering och reglering av hela fältet, så att patienten kan lita på att han eller hon får en behandling som bevisats göra mer nytta än skada. Om den måttstocken in tillämpas in den alternativmedicinska sektorn kommer homeopater, akupunktörer, kiropraktiker, örtterapeuter och andra att fortsätta leva gott på drabbade och förtvivlade människor, länsa deras plånböcker, inge dem falska förhoppningar och sätta deras hälsa på spel.", "Simon Singh"); break; case 387: writeQuote("(...) no judge would take seriously a plaintiff who sought damages against someone for laying a curse upon his car or a defendant who pleaded innocent on the grounds that the crime had actually been committed by a ghost. A lawyer would be laughed out of court who argued that judges and juries should consider 'alternative theories' that a crime was committed by a supernatural intelligence. The [intelligent design creationists] call for a 'theistic science' is similarly unworkable.", "Rober T. Pennock"); break; case 388: writeQuote("[Kreationism] är en extrem och osannolik teori, som jag inte anser värd en seriös intellektuell diskussion.", "Carl Reinhold Bråkenhielm"); break; case 389: writeQuote("Ur evolutionär synvinkel är vi, liksom andra organismer, ingalunda fulländade utan snarare halvmesyrer och halvfabrikat, fyllda av kompromisser och efterhandskonstruktioner, ibland ad hoc-lösningar. Evolutionen kan ju inte backa och inte heller skapa nya organ från ingenting; i stället utgår evolutionära mekanismer från vad som finns och detta kan sedan moduleras och byggas på.", "Johan Frostegård"); break; case 390: writeQuote("Världen utan Gud förefaller mig tvärtom rikare än den med honom. Gud är skapad av människor. Han är den store byggmästaren, den store samhällsbyggaren, den store diktaren. Han är fadern som får alla jordiska fäder att förblekna. Kort sagt, han är idealmänniskan. Världen framstår som mer storartad om den får vara för sig själv.", "Sven-Eric Liedman"); break; case 391: writeQuote("The evidence and arguments of ID proponents are bad science; they have no scientific cogency whatsoever. Moreover, ID is bad religion. The design of organisms is not intelligent, but imperfect and riddled with dysfunctionalities; ID implies attributes of God that are incompatible with Christianity and other monotheistic religions.", "Fransisco J. Ayala"); break; case 392: writeQuote("Vi lider alla av en dödlig sjukdom. Den kallas livet.", "Peter Gärdenfors"); break; case 393: writeQuote("Evolution is a fact. Beyond reasonable doubt, beyond serious doubt, beyond sane, informed, intelligent doubt, beyond doubt evolution is a fact.", "Richard Dawkins"); break; case 394: writeQuote("If the history-deniers who doubt the fact of evolution are ignorant biology, those who think the world began less than ten thousand years ago are worse than ignorant, the are deluded to the point of diversity. They are denying not only the facts of biology but those of physics, geology, cosmology, archaeology, history and chemistry as well.", "Richard Dawkins"); break; case 395: writeQuote("We are surrounded by endless forms, most beutiful and most wonderful, and it is no accident, but the direct consequence of evolution by non-randon natural selection - the only game in town, the greatest show on Earth.", "Richard Dawkins"); break; case 396: writeQuote("Dessa sex storheter utgör att 'recept' för universum. Vidare är resultatet känsligt för deras värden: om någon av storheterna inte vore 'finjusterad' skulle det inte finnas några stjärnor och inte något liv. Är denna finjustering bara ett naket faktum, ett sammanträffande? Eller är den en välvillig skapares försyn? Jag hyser åsikten att den inte är någondera. Det kan mycket väl finnas en oändlighet av andra universum där dessa storheter har andra värden. De flesta skulle vara dödfödda eller sterila. Vi kan bara uppkomma (och befinner oss därför nu helt naturligt) i ett universum med 'rätt' kombination. Denna insikt ger ett helt nytt perspektiv på vårt universum, på vår plats i det och på de fysikaliska lagarnas natur.", "Martin Rees"); break; case 397: writeQuote("Vårt universum, som sträcker sig ofantligt långt bortom vår nuvarande horisont, kanske bara är ett i en möjligen oändlig uppsättning. Detta 'multiversum'-begrepp är visserligen spekulativt men en naturlig utvidgning av nuvarande kosmologiska teorier som vinner tilltro eftersom de förklarar saker och ting vi faktiskt ser.", "Martin Rees"); break; case 398: writeQuote("I de flesta av dem [multiversa] skulle värdena på de sex storheterna kunna vara annorlunda: bara ett fåtal universum skulle då vara 'finjusterade' för liv. Vi borde inte vara mer förvånad över att storheterna i vårt universum förefaller vara justerade till gynnsamma värden än över att vi befinner oss på en ganska speciell planet vars tyngdkraft kan hålla kvar en atmosfär, där temperaturen gör det möjligt för vatten att existera och som kretsar kring en stabil, långlivad stjärna.", "Martin Rees"); break; case 399: writeQuote("Naturvetenskapens utveckling utmärks av alltmer allmänna teorier som sammanfattar förut orelaterade fakta och utvidgar tillämpligheten av föregående teorier. Fysikern och historikern Julian Barbour använder en bergsbestigningsbild som jag tycker träffar rätt: 'Ju höger vi klättrar, desto mer omfattande blir utsikten. Varje ny utsiktspunkt ger en bättre förståelse av hur tingen hänger samman. Och vidare avbryts det gradvisa ökandet av förståelsen av plötsliga och förbluffande vidgningar av horisonten som när vi når krönet av en kulle och ser ting vi aldrig drömt om under uppstigningen. När vi väl orienterat oss i det nya landskapet avslöjas vår väg till senast uppnådda höjd och intar sin ärofyllda plats i den nya världen'.", "Martin Rees"); break; case 400: writeQuote("Den grundläggande frågan 'Varför finns det något snarare än inget?' förblir en fråga för filosofer. Och även de gör kanske klokast i att svara som Ludwig Wittgenstein, att 'rörande det, om vilket man inte kan tala, måste man tiga'.", "Martin Rees"); break; case 401: writeQuote("Om man inte accepterar 'försynsargumentet', finns det ett annat synsätt, som jag, även om det fortfarande är en förmodan, finner tilltalande på ett övertygande sätt. Det är att vår stora smäll kanske inte var den enda. Andra universum kan ha svalnat på andra sätt, styras av andra lagar och definieras av andra värden på storheterna. Det kan tyckas vara en föga 'ekonomisk' hypotes - i själva verket är kanske inget mer extravagant än att åberopa sig på mångfaldiga universum - men det är en naturlig slutsats av vissa (låt vara spekulativa) teorier och öppnar ett nytt perspektiv av vårt universum som bara en 'atom' utvald ut ett oändligt multiversum.", "Martin Rees"); break; case 402: writeQuote("Evolution is the most important concept in biology. There is not a single Why? question in biology than can be answered adequately without a consideration of evolution.", "Ernst Mayr"); break; case 403: writeQuote("This event [the birth of the theory of evolution] represent perphaps the greatest intellectual revolution experienced by mankind.", "Ernst Mayr"); break; case 404: writeQuote("More or less similar creation stories are found in the folklore of peoples all over the world. They filled a gap in mankind's desire to answer the profound questions about this world that we humans have asked ever since there has been human culture. We still treasure these stories as part of our cultural heritage, but the we turn to science when we want to learn the real truth about the history of the world.", "Ernst Mayr"); break; case 405: writeQuote("Herbert Spencer, when saying that natural selection is nothing but 'the survival of the fittest', was indeed quite right. Natural selection is a process of elimination, and Darwin adopted Spencer's metaphor in his later work. However, his opponents claimed that it was a tautology, a circular statement, by defining 'the fittest' as those who survive, but this is a misleading claim. Actually, survival is not a property of an organism but only an indication of the existence of certain survival-favoring attributes. To be fit means to possess certain properties that increase the probability of survival. This interpretation is equally applicable to the 'nonrandom survival' definition of natural selection. Not all individuals have an equal probability for survival because the individuals that have properties making survival more probable are a restricted nonrandom component of the population.", "Ernst Mayr"); break; case 406: writeQuote("It is very questionable whether the term 'evolutionary theory' should be used any longer. That evolution has occured and takes place all the time is a fact so overwhelmingly established that it has become irrational to call it a theory. To be sure, there are particular evolutionary theories such as those of common descent, origin of life, gradualism, speciation, and natural selection, but scientific arguments about conficlicting theories concerning these topics do not any way affect the basic conclusion that evolution as such is a fact. It has taken place ever since the origin of life.", "Ernst Mayr"); break; case 407: writeQuote("Evolution is not merely an idea, a theory, or a concept, but is a name of a process in nature, the occurrence of which can be documented by mountains of evidence that nobody has been able to refute. It is now actually misleading to refer to evolution as theory, considering the massive evidence that has been discovered over the last 140 years documenting its existence. Evolution is no longer a theory, it is simply a fact.", "Ernst Mayr"); break; case 408: writeQuote("To many religious scientists and other people, the amazing motions of the planets, birth and death of stars and galaxies, and tranformations of life are even more transcendent and awe inspiring than the narrow, literalistic view of the Universe peddled by extremists.", "Donald R. Prothero"); break; case 409: writeQuote("We don't have every possible transitional form between fishes and tetrapods, but we now have so many steps in the sequence that to deny that this transition occured is like the Neo-Nazis denying the Holocaust - it's a self-evident fact, and there are many fossil witnesses to bear testimony.", "Donald R. Prothero"); break; case 410: writeQuote("Charles Darwin är, vid sidan av några få andra - Newton, Einstein, kanske Galilei - den mest berömda vetenskapsman världen känner. Hans teori har haft en omätlig betydelse för hela det moderna samhället. Utan idén om evolutionen skulle vi inte kunna tänka som vi gör och hel värld av tillämpningar inom naturvetenskap, medicin, psykologi, samhällsliv och politik skulle vara okänd för oss. Vad det är att vara människa skulle vara annorlunda.", "Sverker Sörlin"); break; case 411: writeQuote("Hade han [Darwin] levt på Galileis tid hade han fått bestiga bålet.", "Sverker Sörlin"); break; case 412: writeQuote("Vad man än anser om darwinismens föregivna moraliska och politiska implikationer, är den en underbar triumf för den mänskliga tanken och en outtömlig näringskälla för reflexioner om var människan är och kan vara. Den är en berättelse om allt livs sammanhang och om livet som möjlighet, eftersom allt liv förändras. Darwinismen är en insikt som varje människa är värd.", "Sverker Sörlin"); break; case 413: writeQuote("Första mosebok berättar om syndafloden att 'alla höga berg allestädes under himmelen övertäcktes'. Bokstavligt tolkat verkar det betyda att jorden yta täcktes av mellan 3000 och 4000 meter vatten, vilket motsvarar mer än två miljarder kubikkilometer vätska! Eftersom det enligt Bibeln regnade i fyrtio dagar och fyrtio nätter, d.v.s. endast 960 timmar, måste regnet ha störtat ned med minst 3000 millimeter i timmen - tillräckligt stark för att sänka vilket skepp som helst, med säkerhet även en ark med tusentals djur ombord.", "John Allen Paulos"); break; case 414: writeQuote("Fallet med den legendariska apan som av en slump beskriver Shakespears Hamlet på skrivmaskin är ett exempel på en kedja av tillfälligheter som är så osannolik att man inte kan använda samma resonemang som ovan. Sannolikheten att apan ska lyckas är (1/35)^N (där N är antalet tecken i Hamlet, kanske 200000, och 35 är antalet tecken på en skrivmaskinen inklusive bokstäver, skiljetecken och mellanslag). Detta tal är oändligt litet - praktiskt taget noll. Även om några har tagit denna enorm lilla sannolikhet som en plädering för 'kreationism', är det enda den klart antyder att apor sällan skriver stora pjäser. Om de vill göra det, borde de kasta bort sing tid på att hamra planlöst på tangenterna utan i stället utvecklar till något som har en bättre möjlighet att skriva Hamles. Varför ställs för resten aldrig följande fråga: Vilken är sannolikheten för att Shakespear genom att slumpmässig spänna sina muskler av en händelse skulle ha gungat fram genom träden som en apa?", "John Allen Paulos"); break; case 415: writeQuote("Det bästa motgiftet mot astrologi i synnerhet och pseudovetenskap i allmänhet är, som Carl Sagan har skrivit, sann vetenskap vars underverk är lika fantastiska men dessutom har egenskapen att troligen vara verkligen.", "John Allen Paulos"); break; case 416: writeQuote("Leta inte efter 'österländsk mystik', skedböjningar eller något övernaturligt i den här boken [Jakten på Schrödingers katt]. Leta i stället efter den sanna berättelsen om kvantmekaniken, en verklighet mer fantastisk än någon uppdiktad. Vetenskapen är sådan. Den behöver inte kläs upp i några efterlämnade trasor från någon annans filosofi. Den är fylld av sina egna överaskningar, mysterier och glädjeämnen.", "John Gribbin"); break; case 417: writeQuote("Religiöst betingade invändningar till trots är artbildning och makroevolution inte det ringaste mystisk eller svårbegriplig, utan ett närmast ofrånkomligt resultat av mikroevolution om den får pågå länge. Och länge har den uppenbarligen pågått, bortåt fyra miljarder år enligt geologiska åldersbestämnigar av fossilförande bergarter. Att ett så svindlande långt skeende med tiden skapat enorma skillnader bland organismer är knappast förvånande. Makroevolutionen är synnerligen väl belagt. Med långa fossilserier, som exempelvis hästarnas evolution över tiotals miljoner år. Med DNA-analyser, till exempel av oss själva och andra primater. Att evolutionsbiologer debatterar mekanismer, processers hastighet och tolkning av detaljer är ett vetenskapligt sundhetstecken. Det gör dem inte mindre eniga om makroevolution som en utomordentligt väl belagd realitet.", "Lars Johan Erkell"); break; case 418: writeQuote("Betraktar vi vad som händer i den levande cellen ser vi att alla molekyler ständigt är i rörelse, som i en sjudande välling. Molekylerna tumlar oupphörligt om varandra, några molekyler binder kanske till varandra för att sedan åter lossna. Det är omöjligt att veta vad en viss molekyl kommer att ta sig för i ett visst läge, men man har möjligheter att förstå vad som händer om många molekyler är inblandade. Cellulära processer är baserade på sannolikheter och inte på tydliga kedjor av orsaks- och verkanssamband. Det gäller även så kallade molekylära maskiner; exempelvis rör sig enskilda motorproteiner ganska slumpartat och ibland åt 'fel' håll. Nettoeffekten av många motorproteiners rörelse blir dock en rörelse åt 'rätt' håll. Benämningen 'molekylära maskiner' är därför på många sätt vilseledande; människor konstruerar definitivt inte maskiner på det här sättet.", "Lars Johan Erkell"); break; case 419: writeQuote("(...) vetenskapliga teorier och resultat talar aldrig om för oss hur vi bör göra; att någonting är på ett visst sätt i naturen betyder inte att vi måste ta det som vårt ideal. Kunskap om naturen kan däremot ge oss redskap att hantera vår tillvaro; insikter om vår beredskap att använda våld kan kanske ge oss möjligheter att hantera denna problematiska egenskap. Evolutionsbiologisk kunskap leder inte till några värderingar alls. Om vi värderar människor olika gör vi det på grund av våra fördomar.", "Lars Johan Erkell"); break; case 420: writeQuote("Den största obalansen finns förmodligen nu mellan vetenskapen och religionen. Vetenskapen blomstrar, i varje fall kvantitativt, religionen tynar hos oss alla, eller så växer den i rum utan fönster och kallas fundamentalism. Många tycker att det är som sig bör, men det tror jag inte alls.", "Martin Lönnebo"); break; case 421: writeQuote("Jag anser att de [UFO-sekter] gör skada. De förvrider huvudet på lättledda ungdomar, och äldre personer med för den delen. De proppar dem fulla med nonsens - ett nonsens som kusligt nog blir grundläggande för hela deras världsbild. Bilden av världen omkring oss, som ärliga forskare med möda byggt upp under århundraden - den förvrängs och förlöjligas.", "Eugen Semitjov"); break; case 422: writeQuote("Det förefaller som om tefaten hade fötts i människans fantasi och fått sin givna form långt innan de började rapporteras som verkliga, existerande företeelser.", "Eugen Semitjov"); break; } } function writeQuote(quote, sign) { document.write("

"" + quote + ""

/" + sign + "

"); }