"The cure for a fallacious argument is a better argument, not the suppression of ideas."

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"Our species needs and deserves a citizenry with minds wide awake and a basic understanding of how the world works."

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Steve Robert

Steve Robert

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And yet we have failed to teach our children how to think critically, allowing false religions to supercede rationality for superstition.

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"The nitrogen in our DNA, the calcium in our teeth, the iron in our blood, the carbon in our apple pies were made in the interiors of collapsing stars. We are made of starstuff."

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LizzieBoredom

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1 year ago

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"We are stardust. We are golden. We are caught in the Devil's bargain. And we've got to get ourselves back to the garden". Joni Mitchell.

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"The brain is like a muscle. When it is in use we feel very good. Understanding is joyous."

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"It is far better to grasp the universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring."

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"The universe is not required to be in perfect harmony with human ambition."

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"Our passion for learning... is our tool for survival."

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Steve Robert

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1 year ago

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And yet we allow certain groups to ban the books that contain that learning.

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"The universe seems neither benign nor hostile, merely indifferent."

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Steve Robert

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The Universe doesn't give a c**p whether the human species survives or destroys itself.

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"I am often amazed at how much more capability and enthusiasm for science there is among elementary school youngsters than among college students."

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Zephyr

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1 year ago

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That's because most of them realize they would never need to find x in their chosen future careers

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"The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena."

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"We're in very bad trouble if we don't understand the planet we're trying to save."

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Zephyr

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We are already in trouble because not everyone accepts that the planet needs saving

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"We've arranged a civilization in which most crucial elements profoundly depend on science and technology."

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Steve Robert

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And then came the far right lunacy of the republican party.

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"Personally, I would be delighted if there were a life after death, especially if it permitted me to continue to learn about this world and others and if it gave me a chance to discover how history turns out."

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"'You mustn’t think of the Universe as a wilderness. It hasn’t been that for billions of years,' he said. 'Think of it more as... cultivated.'"

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"Advances in medicine and agriculture have saved vastly more lives than have been lost in all the wars in history."

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"The significance of a finding that there are other beings who share this universe with us would be absolutely phenomenal. It would be an epochal event in human history."

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"If the dinosaurs had had a space program, they would not be extinct."

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"In our obscurity - in all this vastness - there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves. It is up to us."

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"We are the representatives of the cosmos; we are an example of what hydrogen atoms can do, given 15 billion years of cosmic evolution."

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"Imagination will often carry us to worlds that never were. But without it, we go nowhere."

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"When you make the finding yourself - even if you're the last person on Earth to see the light - you'll never forget it."

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Zephyr

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I concur

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"If we long to believe that the stars rise and set for us, that we are the reason there is a Universe, does science do us a disservice in deflating our conceits?"

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"It is of interest to note that while some dolphins are reported to have learned English – up to fifty words used in correct context – no human being has been reported to have learned dolphins."

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"The universe is a pretty big place. If it’s just us, seems like an awful waste of space."

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"Any faith that admires truth, that strives to know God, must be brave enough to accommodate the universe."

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"It is the tension between creativity and skepticism that has produced the stunning and unexpected findings of science."

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"I can find in my undergraduate classes, bright students who do not know that the stars rise and set at night, or even that the Sun is a star."

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"Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence."

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"No other planet in the solar system is a suitable home for human beings; it's this world or nothing. That's a very powerful perception."

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"All of the books in the world contain no more information than is broadcast as video in a single large American city in a single year. Not all bits have equal value."

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"We start out a million years ago in a small community on some grassy plain; we hunt animals, have children, and develop a rich social, sexual, and intellectual life, but we know almost nothing about our surroundings."

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"Extinction is the rule. Survival is the exception."

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"The immense distances to the stars and the galaxies mean that we see everything in space in the past--some as they were before the Earth came to be. Telescopes are time machines."

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"For any human being in existence to think that there is nothing in the whole world superior to himself would be an insane piece of arrogance."

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"Ants occupy the same landscape that we do. They have plenty to do, things to occupy themselves. On some level, they’re very well aware of their environment. But we don’t try to communicate with them. So I don’t think they have the foggiest notion that we exist."

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"Anything you don’t understand, you attribute to God. God for you is where you sweep away all the mysteries of the world, all the challenges to our intelligence. You simply turn your mind off and say God did it."

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"Every kid starts out as a natural-born scientist, and then we beat it out of them. A few trickle through the system with their wonder and enthusiasm for science intact."

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"For myself, I like a universe that includes much that is unknown and, at the same time, much that is knowable. A universe in which everything is known would be static and dull, as boring as the heaven of some weak-minded theologians. A universe that is unknowable is no fit place for a thinking being. The ideal universe for us is one very much like the universe we inhabit. And I would guess that this is not really much of a coincidence."

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"It is sometimes said that scientists are unromantic, that their passion to figure out robs the world of beauty and mystery. But is it not stirring to understand how the world actually works — that white light is made of colors, that color is the way we perceive the wavelengths of light, that transparent air reflects light, that in so doing it discriminates among the waves, and that the sky is blue for the same reason that the sunset is red? It does no harm to the romance of the sunset to know a little bit about it."

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"The fact that some geniuses were laughed at does not imply that all who are laughed at are geniuses. They laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Fulton, and they laughed at the Wright brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown."

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"The job is by no means done. We will look for the boundary between the solar system and the interstellar medium, and then we'll voyage on forever in the dark between the stars."

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"For small creatures such as we the vastness is bearable only through love."

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"Even these stars, which seem so numerous, are as sand, as dust - or less than dust - in the enormity of the space in which there is nothing."

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"A celibate clergy is an especially good idea because it tends to suppress any hereditary propensity toward fanaticism."

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"We are not without empathetic terror when we open Pascal's 'Pensees' and read, 'I am the great silent spaces between worlds.'"

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"Love ends their long loneliness. Perhaps the depth of love can be calibrated by the number of different selves that are actively involved in a given relationship."

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"There are huge advertising budgets only when there’s no difference between the products. If the products really were different, people would buy the one that’s better. Advertising teaches people not to trust their judgment. Advertising teaches people to be stupid."

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"At the heart of science is an essential balance between two seemingly contradictory attitudes — an openness to new ideas, no matter how bizarre or counterintuitive they may be, and the most ruthless skeptical scrutiny of all ideas, old and new. This is how deep truths are winnowed from deep nonsense."

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"In a lot of scientists, the ratio of wonder to skepticism declines in time. That may be connected with the fact that in some fields — mathematics, physics, some others — the great discoveries are almost entirely made by youngsters."

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"It is the responsibility of scientists never to suppress knowledge, no matter how awkward that knowledge is, no matter how it may bother those in power; we are not smart enough to decide which pieces of knowledge are permissible and which are not."

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"Who are we? We find that we live on an insignificant planet of a humdrum star lost in a galaxy tucked away in some forgotten corner of a universe in which there are far more galaxies than people."

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"Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark."

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"We hunger to understand, so we invent myths about how we imagine the world is constructed - and they're, of course, based upon what we know, which is ourselves and other animals. So we make up stories about how the world was hatched from a cosmic egg or created after the mating of cosmic deities or by some fiat of a powerful being."

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"You know the opinion of Cervantes? He said that reading a translation is like examining the back of a piece of tapestry."

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"In the last few decades, a major fraction of the human population has abandoned a rustic way of life. As technology developed and the cities were polluted, the nights became starless."

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"If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe."

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"The dangers of not thinking clearly are much greater now than ever before. It's not that there's something new in our way of thinking - it's that credulous and confused thinking can be much more lethal in ways it was never before."

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"Today, we're still loaded down - and, to some extent, embarrassed - by ancient myths, but we respect them as part of the same impulse that has led to the modern, scientific kind of myth. But we now have the opportunity to discover, for the first time, the way the universe is in fact constructed as opposed to how we would wish it to be constructed."

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"There is a wide, yawning black infinity. In every direction, the extension is endless; the sensation of depth is overwhelming. And the darkness is immortal. Where light exists, it is pure, blazing, fierce; but light exists almost nowhere, and the blackness itself is also pure and blazing and fierce."

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"We have also arranged things so that almost no one understands science and technology. This is a prescription for disaster. We might get away with it for a while, but sooner or later this combustible mixture of ignorance and power is going to blow up in our faces."

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"I've written a number of books that have to do with the evolution of humans, human intelligence, human emotions."

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"The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every ‘superstar,’ every ‘supreme leader,’ every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there-on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam."

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"Look again at that dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives."

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"Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot."

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"There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we’ve ever known."

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"The truth may be puzzling. It may take some work to grapple with. It may be counterintuitive. It may contradict deeply held prejudices. It may not be consonant with what we desperately want to be true. But our preferences do not determine what’s true."

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"A blade of grass is commonplace on Earth; it would be a miracle on Mars. Our descendants on Mars will know the value of a patch of green. And if a blade of grass is priceless, what is the value of a human being?"

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"What do we really want from philosophy and religion? Palliatives? Therapy? Comfort? Do we want reassuring fables or an understanding of our actual circumstances? Dismay that the Universe does not conform to our preferences seems childish. You might think that grown-ups would be ashamed to put such thoughts into print. The fashionable way of doing this is not to blame the Universe -- which seems truly pointless -- but rather to blame the means by which we know the Universe, namely science."

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"You’re an interesting species. An interesting mix. You’re capable of such beautiful dreams, and such horrible nightmares. You feel so lost, so cut off, so alone, only you’re not. See, in all our searching, the only thing we’ve found that makes the emptiness bearable is each other."

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"Who is more humble? The scientist who looks at the universe with an open mind and accepts whatever the universe has to teach us, or somebody who says everything in this book must be considered the literal truth and never mind the fallibility of all the human beings involved?"

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"Exploration is in our nature. We began as wanderers, and we are wanderers still. We have lingered long enough on the shores of the cosmic ocean. We are ready at last to set sail for the stars."

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"Spaceflight, therefore, is subversive. If they are fortunate enough to find themselves in orbit, most people, after a little meditation, have similar thoughts."

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"If the one-year-old, the five-year-old, the twelve-year-old, and the twenty-year-old all find compatible personalities in the beloved, there is a real chance to keep all of these sub-personas happy."

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"At the very moment that humans discovered the scale of the universe and found that their most unconstrained fancies were in fact dwarfed by the true dimensions of even the Milky Way Galaxy, they took steps that ensured that their descendants would be unable to see the stars at all."

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"New generations grew to maturity wholly ignorant of the sky that had transfixed their ancestors and that had stimulated the modern age of science and technology. Without even noticing, just as astronomy entered a golden age most people cut themselves off from the sky, a cosmic isolationism that ended only with the dawn of space exploration."

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"It's been said that astronomy is a humbling and, I might add, a character-building experience."

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