The scientist who yields anything to theology, however slight, is yielding to ignorance and false pretenses, and as certainly as if he granted that a horse-hair put into a bottle of water will turn into a snake.
Interpretation
This quote emphasizes the importance of scientific integrity and the rejection of unverified beliefs.
H. L. Mencken argues that science must stand firm against religious influence and other forms of superstition. By yielding even a little to theological concepts, scientists compromise their integrity, equating such concessions to accepting illogical beliefs, like the transformation of a horse-hair into a snake. This highlights the need for skepticism and critical thinking in the pursuit of knowledge.
In practice
In a lecture on the importance of scientific inquiry, this quote can reinforce the need to separate science from religious dogma.
I know a good many men of great learning-that is, men born with an extraordinary eagerness and capacity to acquire knowledge. One and all, they tell me that they can't recall learning anything of any value in school. All that schoolmasters managed to accomplish with them was to test and determine the amount of knowledge that they had already acquired independently-and not infrequently the determination was made clumsily and inaccurately.
It takes a long while for a naturally trustful person to reconcile himself to the idea that after all God will not help him
It is the theory of all modern civilized governments that they protect and foster the liberty of the citizen; it is the practice of all of them to limit its exercise, and sometimes very narrowly.
The central belief of every moron is that he is the victim of a mysterious conspiracy against his common rights and true deserts.
The cure for the evils of democracy is more democracy.
It is my conviction that no normal man ever fell in love, within the ordinary meaning of the term, after the age of thirty.
The facts will eventually test all our theories, and they form, after all, the only impartial jury to which we can appeal.
We went to the Moon as technicians; we returned as humanitarians.
I ... began my career as a wireless amateur. After 43 years in radio, I do not mind confessing that I am still an amateur. Despite many great achievements in the science of radio and electronics, what we know today is far less than what we have still to learn.
As a theoretician, I am proud to be part of a counter revolution... discovering that quantum field theory language was not dead and finished but had not really been explored thoroughly enough.
Faced with the evidence, many deniers have started to admit that global warming is real, but argue that humans have little or nothing to do with it.
Data, I think, is one of the most powerful mechanisms for telling stories. I take a huge pile of data and I try to get it to tell stories.
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