Steven Pinker Quotes About Belief

Quotes about: Belief

• Reason is non-negotiable. Try to argue against it, or to exclude it from some realm of knowledge, and you've already lost the argument, because you're using reason to make your case. ... We don't "believe" in reason.

  Steven Pinker

  Faith, Believe, People

  "Brilliant Father Teaches His Children to Argue With Him Using Ancient Greek Rhetoric". rebrn.com. May 29, 2009.

• Knowledge is a continuous fabric, in which ideas are connected to other ideas. Reason-free zones, in which people can assert arbitrary beliefs safe from ordinary standards of evaluation, can only corrupt this fabric, just as a contradiction can corrupt a system of logic, allowing falsehoods to proliferate through it.

  Steven Pinker

  Ideas, People, Ordinary

• All over the world, belief in the supernatural has authorised the sacrifice of people to propitiate bloodthirsty gods, and the murder of witches for their malevolent powers.

  Steven Pinker

  Sacrifice, People, Religion

  Steven Pinker (2011). “The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined”, p.717, Penguin

• But the 20th century suffered "two" ideologies that led to genocides. The other one, Marxism, had no use for race, didn't believe in genes and denied that human nature was a meaningful concept. Clearly, it's not an emphasis on genes or evolution that is dangerous. It's the desire to remake humanity by coercive means (eugenics or social engineering) and the belief that humanity advances through a struggle in which superior groups (race or classes) triumph over inferior ones.

  Steven Pinker

  Meaningful, Struggle, Believe

  "Q&A: Steven Pinker of 'Blank Slate'". Interview with Steve Sailer, www.upi.com. October 30, 2002.

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