Science is a way to not fool ourselves.
Carl SaganRead
Religions are tough. Either they make no contentions which are subject to disproof or they quickly redesign doctrine after disproof. ... near the core of the religious experience is something remarkably resistant to rational inquiry.
Interpretation
This quote reflects on the nature of religious beliefs and their resilience against rational scrutiny.
Carl Sagan's insight reveals the tension between religious doctrines and rationality, suggesting that faith often stands firm against empirical challenge. He argues that religions either avoid falsifiable claims or adapt swiftly when proven wrong, highlighting an intrinsic aspect of spirituality that resists logical examination.
In practice
In a philosophical debate about the validity of religious beliefs.
Science is a way to not fool ourselves.
In more than one respect, the exploring of the Solar System and homesteading other worlds constitutes the beginning, much more than the end, of history.
How smart does a chimpanzee have to be before killing him constitutes murder?
The hole in the ozone layer is a kind of skywriting. At first it seemed to spell out our continuing complacency before a witch's brew of deadly perils. But perhaps it really tells of a newfound talent to work together to protect the global environment.
There is a reward structure in science that is very interesting: Our highest honors go to those who disprove the findings of the most revered among us. So Einstein is revered not just because he made so many fundamental contributions to science, but because he found an imperfection in the fundamental contribution of Isaac Newton.
The simplest thought, like the concept of the number one, has an elaborate logical underpinning.
This is what a city is, bits and pieces that supplement each other and support each other.
It seems to me a fundamental dishonesty, and a fundamental treachery to intellectual integrity to hold a belief because you think it's useful and not because you think it's true.
People who study the way religions develop have shown that if you have a charismatic teacher, and you don't have an institution develop around that teacher within about a generation to transmit succession within the group, the movement just dies.
All things are created twice. There's a mental or first creation, and a physical or second creation to all things
There are times when sorrow seems to me to be the only truth.
Since the death instinct exists in the heart of everything that lives, since we suffer from trying to repress it, since everything that lives longs for rest, let us unfasten the ties that bind us to life, let us cultivate our death wish, let us develop it, water it like a plant, let it grow unhindered. Suffering and fear are born from the repression of the death wish.
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