This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
When evangelical leaders can persuade the president to be concerned about what's happening in Sudan, or sex trafficking around the world, or HIV-AIDS, that's a very good thing. I am completely supportive of that.
Good |
Such, Polly, are your sex - part truth, part fiction; - Some thought, much whim and all a contradiction.
And when we look closely, we find a system of morals which any civilized person today should surely find poisonous.
System |
I think we must beware of a reflex and unthinking antipathy to everything unnatural. Certainly cloning is unnatural. We haven't bred without sex for perhaps a thousand million years. But unnatural isn't a necessary synonym for bad. It's unnatural to read books, or travel faster than we can run, or scuba-dive, or fly. It's unnatural to wear clothes, but we do. Indeed, the people most likely to be scandalized at the prospect of human cloning are the very people most outraged by lack of human clothing.
Over the centuries, we've moved on from Scripture to accumulate precepts of ethical, legal and moral philosophy. We've evolved a liberal consensus of what we regard as underpinnings of decent society, such as the idea that we don't approve of slavery or discrimination on the grounds of race or sex, that we respect free speech and the rights of the individual. All of these things that have become second nature to our morals today owe very little to religion, and mostly have been won in opposition to the teeth of religion.
Free speech | Little | Nature | Opposition | Race | Regard | Respect | Rights | Scripture | Slavery | Speech | Respect |
It would be deeply depressing if the only way children could get moral values was from religion. Either from scripture, and God knows we don't want them to get it from scripture, I mean, just look at scripture. Or, from being afraid of God, being intimidated by God. Anybody who is good for only those two reasons is not really being good at all. Why not teach children things like the Golden Rule, do as you would be done by, how would you like it if other children did that to you, so why do you do it to them... I think it's depressing that anybody should suggest that you actually need God in order to be moral. I would hope that our morals come from a better source than that, and therefore they are genuinely moral rather than based on outmoded scripture, or based on fear.
Better | Children | God | Good | Hope | Need | Order | Teach | God | Afraid | Think |
More generally it is completely unrealistic to claim, as Gould and many others do, that religion keeps itself away from science's turf, restricting itself to morals and values. A universe with a supernatural presence would be a fundamentally and qualitatively different kind of universe from one without. The difference is, inescapably, a scientific difference. Religions make existence claims, and this means scientific claims.
Once again, modern theologians will protest that the story of Abraham sacrificing Isaac should not be taken as literal fact. And, once again, the appropriate response is twofold. First, many many people, even to this day, do take the whole of their scripture to be literal fact, and they have a great deal of political power over the rest of us, especially in the United States and in the Islamic world. Second, if not as literal fact, how should we take the story? As an allegory? Then an allegory for what? Surely morals could one derive from this appalling story? Remember, all I am trying to establish for the moment is that we do not, as a matter of fact, derive our morals from scripture. Or, if we do, we pick and choose among the scriptures for the nice bits and reject the nasty. But then we must have some independent criterion for deciding which are the moral bits: a criterion which, wherever it comes from, cannot come from scripture itself and is presumably available to all of us whether we are religious or not.
So to the book's provocation, the statement that nearly half the people in the United States don't believe in evolution. Not just any people but powerful people, people who should know better, people with too much influence over educational policy. We are not talking about Darwin's particular theory of natural selection. It is still (just) possible for a biologist to doubt its importance, and a few claim to. No, we are here talking about the fact of evolution itself, a fact that is proved utterly beyond reasonable doubt. To claim equal time for creation science in biology classes is about as sensible as to claim equal time for the flat-earth theory in astronomy classes. Or, as someone has pointed out, you might as well claim equal time in sex education classes for the stork theory. It is absolutely safe to say that if you meet somebody who claims not to believe in evolution, that person is ignorant, stupid or insane (or wicked, but I'd rather not consider that).
Doubt | Education | Evolution | Influence | People | Safe | Science | Talking | Time |
Richard Wright, fully Richard Nathaniel Wright
Blues, spirituals, and folk tales recounted from mouth to mouth; the whispered words of a black mother to her black daughter on ways of men, to confidential wisdom of a black father to his son; the swapping of sex experiences on street corners from boy to boy in the deepest vernacular, work songs sung under blazing suns? All these formed the channels through which racial wisdom flowed.
Women who love women are Lesbians. Men, because they can only think of women in sexual terms, define Lesbian as sex between women.
The logical thing to do, when the next war comes, is to recruit an army from all those of whatever age or sex who are unable to pass certain basic intelligence tests. This would be a good way of getting rid of a lot of the stupid people who cumber the earth; probably there would be a high percentage of scientists, Civil Servants, uplifters and minor prophets in an armed force collected in such a way. But if every country adopted this method the country with the biggest population of boobs, yahoos and ninnies would win, and I am not entirely sure that we have overall superiority in this respect, though we seem bound in that direction.
Age | Force | Good | Intelligence | Method | People | Superiority | War |
Robert Benchley, fully Robert Charles Benchley
Consider the number of young people all over the world who are getting married, day in and day out, for no other reason than that someone of the opposite sex looks well in a green jersey or sings baritone, and then tell me that divorce has reached menacing proportions. The surface of divorce has not even been scratched yet.
Robert Bork, fully Robert Heron Bork
If we recognize reward according to race, ethnicity, and sex as aspects or analogues of the blood principle, it is obvious how far the achievement principle has been discarded in America today in the name of equality.
Achievement | Reward |
It is not strange to me that persons of the fair sex should like, in all things about them, the handsomeness for which they find themselves most liked.
Bette Davis, Ruth Elizabeth "Bette" Davis
I sent my flowers across the hall to Mrs Nixon but her husband remembered what a Democrat I am and sent them back.
Think |
Saint Augustine, aka Augustine of Hippo, St. Austin, Bishop of Hippo NULL
Nothing whatever pertaining to godliness and real holiness can be accomplished without grace.
John Chrysostom, fully Saint John Chrysostom
When we once begin to form good resolutions, God gives us every opportunity of carrying them out.
Shame on the men who can court exemption from present trouble and expense at the price of their own posterity's liberty!