Skeptic Quotes - Page 10

• The Internet has given atheists, agnostics, skeptics, the people who like to destroy everything that you and I believe, the almost equal access to your kids as your youth pastor and you have... whether you like it or not.

  Josh McDowell

  Atheist, Believe, Kids

  "Apologist Josh McDowell: Internet the Greatest Threat to Christians" by Anugrah Kumar, www.christianpost.com. July 16, 2011.

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• There are skeptics who do not come to their view because they have a source of income from carbon polluters.

  Al Gore

  Views, Income, Source

  "What in the Hell Do They Think Is Causing It?". Interview with John Dickerson, www.slate.com. December 8, 2009.

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• If you are committed to the change, you're going to have to sideline the skeptics, or at least keep them under control. There may be a temptation to move them out but skeptics have a value - flagging weaknesses in the plan. Ideally, you will enlist their critical stance by challenging them to find ways to improve the plan as you go forward.

  Gary A. Klein

  Moving, Temptation, Challenges

  Source: bobmorris.biz

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• I have never seen myself as an alarmist but rather as a scientist with a critical viewpoint, and in that sense I have always been a skeptic. I have devoted most of my career to developing models for predicting the weather, and in doing so I have learned the importance of validating forecasts against observed weather. As a result, that's an approach I strongly favor for "climate predictions." It's essential to validate model results, especially when dealing with complex systems such as the climate. It's essential do so properly if such predictions are to be considered credible.

  Lennart Bengtsson

  Scientist, Importance, I Have Learned

  Source: www.spiegel.de

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• Preaching is to much avail, but practice is far more effective. A godly life is the strongest argument you can offer the skeptic.

  Hosea Ballou

  Life, Godly, Practice

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• Scientists are skeptics. It's unfortunate that the word 'skeptic' has taken on other connotations in the culture involving nihilism and cynicism. Really, in its pure and original meaning, it's just thoughtful inquiry.

  Unknown

  Taken, Thoughtful, Nihilism

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• The agnostic, the skeptic, is neurotic, but this does not imply a false philosophy; it implies the discovery of facts to which he does not know how to adapt himself. The intellectual who tries to escape from neurosis by escaping from the facts is merely acting on the principle that “where ignorance is bliss, ‘tis folly to be wise.

  Alan Watts

  Wise, Philosophy, Ignorance

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• Pride consists in a man making his personality the only test, instead of making truth the test. The sceptic feels himself too large to measure life by the largest things; and ends by measuring it by the smallest thing of all.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Pride, Men, Personality

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• It is the decisive people who have become civilised; it is the indecisive, otherwise called the higher sceptics, or the idealistic doubters, who have remained barbarians.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  People, Barbarians, Doubters

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• There is nothing more effectual in showing us the weakness of any habitual fallacy or assumption than to hear it sympathetically through the ears, as it were, of a skeptic.

  Margaret Oliphant

  Weakness, Ears, Assumption

  Margaret Oliphant (1876). “Phoebe, Junior0: A Last Chronicle of Carlingford : in Two Volumes”, p.40

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• I am of course a skeptic about the divinity of Christ and a scorner of the notion that there is a God who cares about how we are or what we do. ... Religious skeptics often become very bitter towards the end, as did Mark Twain. ... I know why I will become bitter. I will finally realize that I have had it right all along: that I will not see God, that there is no heaven or Judgement Day.

  Kurt Vonnegut

  Religious, Heaven, Judgement

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• When confronted with a demand that the universe have a cause, infidels have usually pointed out that God was not much of an explanation. This is true enough, but not really a positive argument. After mechanistic explanation became popular, infidels liked to restrict causality to the chain of causes in an eternal material universe, pointing out that no supernatural cause was then necessary. Plausible, but still rather defensive. Today's skeptic can do better. In all likelihood, the universe is uncaused. It is random. It just is.

  Taner Edis

  Religion, Demand, Causality

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• True literature can exist only where it is created, not by diligent and trustworthy functionaries, but by madmen, hermits, heretics, dreamers, rebels, and skeptics.

  Yevgeny Zamyatin

  Inspirational, Art, Dreamer

  Yevgeny Zamyatin (2007). “We”, p.6, Modern Library

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• Tim Keller's ministry in New York City is leading a generation of seekers and skeptics toward belief in God. I thank God for him.

  Billy Graham

  New York, Cities, Thank God

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• I don't consider myself a cynic. I think of myself as a skeptic and a realist.

  George Carlin

  Thinking, Realist, Cynic

  Source: www.avclub.com

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• I would proclaim that the vast majority of what [say, Scientific American] is true-yet my ability to defend such a claim is weaker than I would like. And most likely the readers, authors, and editors of that magazine would be equally hard pressed to come up with cogent, non-technical arguments convincing a skeptic of this point, especially if pitted against a clever lawyer arguing the contrary. How come Truth is such a slippery beast?

  Douglas Hofstadter

  Clever, Truth, Science

  Douglas Hofstadter (2008). “Metamagical Themas: Questing For The Essence Of Mind And Pattern”, p.85, Hachette UK

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• Religious reasons, which is no reason. I notice Skeptic had a review of Dennett's book, Darwin's Dangerous Idea. Religious reasons amount to what Dennett terms "skyhooks." Do you believe in skyhooks? I don't.

  Garrett Hardin

  Religious, Believe, Book

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• The skeptics who say it can't be done are simply in extremely limited states of mind. They can't even perceive the possibility of anybody doing something that they can't do.

  Frederick Lenz

  Mind, Done, Possibility

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• When I sent out a casual and nonscientific poll of my own to a wide cast of acquaintances, friends and colleagues, I was surprised, but not really, to learn that maybe 60 percent claimed a belief in a God of some sort, including people I would have bet were unregenerate skeptics. Others just shrugged. They don't think about this stuff. It doesn't matter to them. They can't know, they won't beat themselves up trying to know and for that matter they don't care if their kids believe or not.

  Natalie Angier

  Believe, Kids, Thinking

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• Prayer is to the skeptic a delusion, a waste of time. To the believer it represents perhaps the most important use of time.

  Philip Yancey

  Prayer, Important, Use

  Philip Yancey (1995). “The Jesus I Never Knew”, p.296, Harper Collins

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• Congress has always had a soft spot for "experts" who tell members what they want to hear, whether it's supply-side economists declaring that tax cuts increase revenue or climate-change skeptics insisting that global warming is a myth.

  Paul Krugman

  Cutting, Climate, Experts

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• The average businessman began to be agnostic, not so much because he did not know where he was, as because he wanted to forget. Many of the rich took to scepticism exactly as the poor took to drink; because it was a way out.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Average, Way, Agnostic

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• It is ludicrous to suppose that the more sceptical we are the more we see good in everything. It is clear that the more we are certain what good is, the more we shall see good in everything.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Certain, Clear

  Gilbert K. Chesterton (1909). “Heretics”

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• Latter-day scepticism is fond of calling itself progressive; but scepticism is really reactionary. Scepticism goes back; it attempts to unsettle what has already been settled. Instead of trying to break up new fields with its plough, it simply tries to break up the plough.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Trying, Calling, Fields

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• The skeptic has no illusions about life, nor a vain belief in the promise of immortality. Since this life here and now is all we can know, our most reasonable option is to live it fully.

  Paul Kurtz

  Promise, Atheism, Belief

  Paul Kurtz (1986). “The Transcendental Temptation: A Critique of Religion and the Paranormal”

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