Tagged: Five Quotes
Okay, Mikey got me, so I’d better crawl out of my blogging recluse… My five favourite quotes!
‘Enlightenment is man’s emergence from his self-imposed immaturity. Immaturity is the inability to use one’s understanding without guidance from another. This immaturity is self-imposed when its cause lies not in lack of understanding, but in lack of resolve and courage to use it without guidance from another. Sapere Aude! [dare to know] “Have courage to use your own understanding!”–that is the motto of enlightenment.‘ – Immanuel Kant*.
‘I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.‘ – Evelyn Beatrice Hall (often wrongly attributed to Voltaire.)
‘No rational argument will have a rational effect on a man who does not want to adopt a rational attitude.‘ – Karl Popper.
‘Conventional people are roused to fury by departure from convention, largely because they regard such departure as a criticism of themselves.‘ – Bertrand Russell.
‘...no other field of science has to fight a rearguard action against the yapping terriers of ignorance.‘ – Richard Dawkins**.
In turn I tag Romana.
* Sorry Arthur, one of my favourite quotes as well.
** I like it, even though it is wrong; see “smoking lobby versus medicine” and “mining lobby + pseudo-skeptics versus climatology”.
as requested mate, i have done the quotes:)
http://timelady.com/blog/2007/02/22/with-our-thoughts/
I like it, even though it is wrong; see “smoking lobby versus medicine” and “mining lobby + pseudo-skeptics versus climatology”.
That’s a great point, and it’s surprising that Dawkins missed it. Some of the attempts to re-write school science standards in certain states of the US have involved two-pronged attacks on evolution and global warming.
It’s not an exhaustive list. In geology, the work of James Hutton receives similar treatment from creationists as does that of Darwin, even if not with the same flair or propagandising. If you want to see ID for geology, you could start with “polonium halo theory” which basically has the proverbial noodly appendage altering the decay rate of isotopes multiple times in history.
Love no 3
Likewise. I would go as far as to say that repeated spurious incursion of the unreasonable/irrational into reasoned discussion actually constitutes a means of suppression of free discussion; “oh no wait! don’t discuss that pertinent question! you must entertain my red herring!”
Subsequently, while not culling their right to free speech (tempered by things like defamation of course) by way of letting them speak elsewhere, the perpetually irrational (and the sophists) should be shown the door from public debate. Given that in free, reasoned debate, these people use their vapid but volumous speech as a weapon to shut down discussion, their complaints of censorship when removed are analogous to a blackshirt, after being kicked out of a debate for punching someone in the face (to keep them quiet), complaining their their right to free speech by way of sign-language has been silenced.
The same is true of the yapping terriers and their attack on genuine science. Don’t for a minute think that their “exclusion from the science orthodoxy” is a means of shutting down free debate; it’s their unscientific propaganda that shuts down reasoned debate (by way of expecting science to disprove untestable hypothesis etc.)
The simple fact is that while they cry foul over censorship (when nobody has silenced them), free open debate is something that these troggs routinely attempt to sabotage. I believe the phrase is “running interference.”
Society shouldn’t outlaw crap speak, but society needs to be aware that in a democracy, while freedom of speech is important, there is no right to be listened to. Society has two obligations to anti-free-thought nutters; 1) let them speak, 2) ignore them when they speak.
Excluding stupidity is not incompatible with democratic principals.
Caveat; the above “two conditions” has the precondition that the said irrational person has had the opportunity to engage in rational debate and refused to be sensible. I would have posted this caveat earlier, but thinks to telstra, my phone line will be dead for a while (and no, I didn’t fail to pay my bills
)
Normal blogging will continue when I have access to the phone line I have already paid for.
Bruce