Explanation Quotes - Page 13

• Not only is science corrosive to religion, but religion is corrosive to science. It teaches people to be satisfied with trivial non-explanations and blinds them to the wonderful real explanations that we have within our grasp.

  Richard Dawkins

  Real, People, Religion

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• Thanks to the telescope and the microscope, religion no longer offers an explanation for anything important.

  Christopher Hitchens

  Religion, Atheism, Important

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• I do not want to presuppose anything as known. I see in my explanation in section 1 the definition of the concepts point, straight line and plane, if one adds to these all the axioms of groups i-v as characteristics. If one is looking for other definitions of point, perhaps by means of paraphrase in terms of extensionless, etc., then, of course, I would most decidedly have to oppose such an enterprise. One is then looking for something that can never be found, for there is nothing there, and everything gets lost, becomes confused and vague, and degenerates into a game of hide and seek.

  David Hilbert

  Confused, Mean, Games

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• I believe that there is an explanation for everything, so, yes, I believe in miracles.

  Robert Breault

  Inspirational, Life, Positive

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• I don't think God is an explanation at all. It's simply redescribing the problem.

  Richard Dawkins

  Thinking, Atheism, Problem

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• Naturally, since [the Sumerians] didn't know what caused the flood anymore than we do, they blamed the gods. (That's the advantage of religion. You're never short an explanation for anything.)

  Isaac Asimov

  Fear, Atheism, Rage

  Isaac Asimov (1989). “The Tyrannosaurus Prescription and 100 Other Essays”

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• The aim of those who try to control thought is always the same. They find one single explanation of the world, one system of thought and action that will (they believe) cover everything; and then they try to impose that on all thinking people.

  Gilbert Highet

  Fear, Believe, Thinking

  Gilbert Highet (1954). “Man's Unconquerable Mind”, p.57, Columbia University Press

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• I only drink to steady my nerves... sometimes I'm so steady I don't move for months.

  W. C. Fields

  Drinking, Moving, Nerves

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• There are only two possible explanations as to how life arose: Spontaneous generation arising to evolution or a supernatural creative act of God.... There is no other possibility. Spontaneous generation was scientifically disproved 120 years ago by Louis Pasteur and others, but that just leaves us with only one other possibility... that life came as a supernatural act of creation by God, but I can't accept that philosophy because I do not want to believe in God. Therefore I choose to believe in that which I know is scientifically impossible, spontaneous generation leading to evolution.

  George Wald

  Philosophy, Believe, Years

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• Set aside the many competing explanations of the big bang; something made an entire cosmos out of nothing. It is this realization - that something transcendent started it all - which has hard-science types... using terms like "miracle."

  Gregg Easterbrook

  Miracle, Bangs, Cosmos

  "The New Convergence". www.wired.com. December 1, 2002.

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• Evolutionary biologists have been able to pretend to know how complex biological systems originated only because they treated them as black boxes. Now that biochemists have opened the black boxes and seen what is inside, they know the Darwinian theory is just a story, not a scientific explanation.

  Phillip E. Johnson

  Black, Stories, Able

  Phillip E. Johnson (1997). “Defeating Darwinism by Opening Minds”, p.77, InterVarsity Press

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• I really didn't say everything I said.

  Yogi Berra

  Silly, Mlb, Dumb

  Quoted in Sports Illustrated, 17 Mar. 1986

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• All men who have ideals . . . live by some kind of faith, by committing themselves to some kind of loyalty which is not universally recognized as the common property of all thinking men. They must have something-something outside themselves, to make them feel life is worth living, that good rather than evil is the explanation of the world.

  Ronald Knox

  Loyalty, Thinking, Men

  Ronald Knox (2010). “In Soft Garments: Classic Catholic Apologetics”, p.105, Ignatius Press

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• My movies were the kind they show in prisons and airplanes, because nobody can leave.

  Burt Reynolds

  Movie, Airplane, Kind

  Burt Reynolds, Jon Winokur (2015). “But Enough About Me: A Memoir”, p.87, Penguin

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• You cannot explain failure any more than you can argue with success.

  J. Richard Clarke

  Failure, Arguing

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• In the final, the positive, state, the mind has given over the vain search after absolute notions, the origin and destination of the universe, and the causes of phenomena, and applies itself to the study of their laws - that is, their invariable relations of succession and resemblance. Reasoning and observation, duly combined, are the means of this knowledge. What is now understood when we speak of an explanation of facts is simply the establishment of a connection between single phenomena and some general facts.

  Auguste Comte

  Knowledge, Mean, Science

  "Auguste Comte and Positivism: The Essential Writings".

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• The question whether atoms exist or not... belongs rather to metaphysics. In chemistry we have only to decide whether the assumption of atoms is an hypothesis adapted to the explanation of chemical phenomena... whether a further development of the atomic hypothesis promises to advance our knowledge of the mechanism of chemical phenomena... I rather expect that we shall some day find, for what we now call atoms, a mathematico-mechanical explanation, which will render an account of atomic weight, of atomicity, and of numerous other properties of the so-called atoms.

  August Kekule

  Knowledge, Science, Promise

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• For if as scientists we seek simplicity, then obviously we try the simplest surviving theory first, and retreat from it only when it proves false. Not this course, but any other, requires explanation. If you want to go somewhere quickly, and several alternate routes are equally likely to be open, no one asks why you take the shortest. The simplest theory is to be chosen not because it is the most likely to be true but because it is scientifically the most rewarding among equally likely alternatives. We aim at simplicity and hope for truth.

  Nelson Goodman

  Science, Simplicity, Trying

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• [Theory is] an explanation that has been confirmed to such a degree, by observation and experiment, that knowledgeable experts accept it as fact. That's what scientists mean when they talk about a theory: not a dreamy and unreliable speculation, but an explanatory statement that fits the evidence. They embrace such an explanation confidently but provisionally - taking it as their best available view of reality, at least unil some severely conflicting data or some better explanation might come along.

  David Quammen

  Mean, Reality, Views

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• I find it quite improbable that such order came out of chaos. There has to be some organizing principle. God to me is a mystery, but is the explanation for the miracle of existence, why there is something instead of nothing.

  Allan Sandage

  God, Science, Order

  "Sizing up the Cosmos: An Astronomer's Quest" by John Noble Wilford, www.nytimes.com. March 12, 1991.

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• To understand is nothing, but to be understood-that is the problem and the source of anguish. The soul throbs and would have the other know-but can not and feels isolated. Then come gestures, words, awkward explanations and material symbols for imponderable outbursts of feeling-and the soul despairs.

  Andre Gide

  Philosophical, Soul, Awkward

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• Genetically influenced behavior is not necessarily good and not necessarily unchangeable. Explanations of bad behavior that appeal to genes do not absolve a person any more than do explanations that appeal to upbringing.

  Steven Pinker

  Evolution, Behavior, Genes

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• To my mind, the theory of [evolution] does not stand up at all. If living matter is not, then, caused by the interplay of atoms, natural forces, and radiation [i.e., time, chance, and chemistry], how has it come into being? I think, however, that we must go further than this and admit that the only acceptable explanation is creation.

  Henry Lipson

  Thinking, Theory Of Evolution, Mind

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• This doctrine, that of the ghost in the machine, strictly separates the mind or soul from the body. And by doing so it takes the soul outside the sphere of mechanical or scientific explanation. It splits the world of the mind from the world of science. It is often supposed to protect our cherished free will.

  Simon Blackburn

  Soul, Mind, Machines

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• A great deal of the universe does not need any explanation. Elephants, for instance. Once molecules have learnt to compete and to create other molecules in their own image, elephants, and things resembling elephants, will in due course be found roaming around the countryside ... Some of the things resembling elephants will be men.

  Peter Atkins

  Men, Roaming Around, Elephants

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