When it comes down to it, I don't have much in the way of advice to offer you, but here it is: Read to children. Vote. And never buy anything from a man who's selling fear.
I believe in God the way I believe in quarks. People whose business it is to know about quantum physics or religion tell me they have good reason to believe that quarks and God exist. And they tell me that if I wanted to devote my life to learning what they've learned, I'd find quarks and God just like they did.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote reflects a parallel belief in both science and spirituality, suggesting that both can be understood through study and personal inquiry.
Mary Doria Russell’s quote draws an analogy between belief in God and belief in quarks, highlighting that both realms—science and spirituality—require exploration and understanding. Just as physicists study quarks to validate their existence through empirical evidence, individuals can explore their faith in God through personal experience and knowledge. This perspective encourages an open-minded approach to both scientific and spiritual truths, suggesting that deep understanding can lead to belief.
Themes
In practice
Example use cases
In a discussion about the intersection of science and spirituality at a community forum.
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We ourselves were well conversant with war, murder and everything evil, but all of us throughout the whole wide earth have traded in our weapons of war. We have exchanged our swords for plowshares, our spears for farm tools...now we cultivate the fear of God, justice, kindness, faith, and the expectation of the future given us through the Crucified One....The more we are persecuted and martyred, the more do others in ever increasing numbers become believers.
The world is like a grand staircase, some are going up and some are going down.
History is for human self-knowledge. Knowing yourself means knowing, first, what it is to be a person; secondly, knowing what it is to be the kind of person you are; and thirdly, knowing what it is to be the person you are and nobody else is. Knowing yourself means knowing what you can do; and since nobody knows what they can do until they try, the only clue to what man can do is what man has done. The value of history, then, is that it teaches us what man has done and thus what man is.
If we are not represented, we are slaves.
We can all pretend to be cynical and scheming, but when we’re faced with purity and innocence, the cynical mask drops off.
Mari remembered what she had read in the young girl's eyes the moment she had come into the refectory: fear. Fear. Veronika might feel insecurity, shyness, shame, constraint, but why fear? That was only justifiable when confronted by a real threat: ferocious animals, armed attackers, earthquakes, but not a group of people gathered together in a refectory. But human beings are like that,' she thought. 'We've replaced nearly all our emotions with fear.