To surrender to ignorance and call it God has always been premature, and it remains premature today.
Interpretation
The quote warns against accepting ignorance as divine truth.
Isaac Asimov's quote emphasizes the importance of knowledge and the dangers of equating ignorance with a higher power. He argues that attributing our lack of understanding to God is an avoidance of responsibility for seeking truth and understanding the world around us. This stance calls for a rejection of complacency in the pursuit of knowledge and a criticism of those who cling to ignorance in the name of faith.
In practice
In a TED Talk about the importance of critical thinking.
Democracy cannot survive overpopulation. Human dignity cannot survive it. Convenience and decency cannot survive it. As you put more and more people into the world, the value of life not only declines, but it disappears. It doesn't matter if someone dies.
Science does not promise absolute truth, nor does it consider that such a thing necessarily exists. Science does not even promise that everything in the Universe is amenable to the scientific process.
Democracy cannot survive overpopulation.
Although the time of death is approaching me, I am not afraid of dying and going to Hell or (what would be considerably worse) going to the popularized version of Heaven. I expect death to be nothingness and, for removing me from all possible fears of death, I am thankful to atheism.
A subtle thought that is in error may yet give rise to fruitful inquiry that can establish truths of great value.
During the century after Newton, it was still possible for a man of unusual attainments to master all fields of scientific knowledge. But by 1800, this had become entirely impracticable.
The satisfaction derived from the fleeting things of life is not lasting; and our wants remain unfulfilled. There is thus a general sense of dissatisfaction accompanied by all kinds of worries.
Is a person's public and private opinion the same? It is thought there have been instances.
A bird maintains itself in the air by imperceptible balancing, when near to the mountains or lofty ocean crags; it does this by means of the curves of the winds which as they strike against these projections, being forced to preserve their first impetus bend their straight course towards the sky with divers revolutions, at the beginning of which the birds come to a stop with their wings open, receiving underneath themselves the continual buffetings of the reflex courses of the winds.
There will be no justice as long as man will stand with a knife or with a gun and destroy those who are weaker than he is.
This personal freedom to think and feel and speak authentically and to be conscious of so doing is the quality that distinguishes us as human.
God is a scientist, not a magician.
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