User:Skinrider
Skinrider is a n00b Wikipedian.
Quotes
[edit]"For I so loved the world that I sacrificed Myself to Myself to appease My own anger at My own creation."
—God, John 3:16
"And now he began to see for the first time the unbelievable magnitude of what man, when he gained power to understand and rule the world in terms of dialectic truths, had lost. He had built empires of scientific capability to manipulate the phenomena of nature into enormous manifestations of his own dreams of power and wealth --- but for this he had exchanged an empire of understanding of equal magnitude: an understanding of what it is to be a part of the world, and not an enemy of it."
— Robert M. Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
"We know that this life is real. We don’t know anything about life after death. So we should develop our world view to conform with the realities of this life. We should cooperate with our fellow human beings in order to make this world a better place. We should uphold equality of liberty and equality of justice for everyone. We should develop our ethics with human beings at the center – not fictitious gods. It’s time to let go of antiquated commandments that lead to misery, injustice, oppression and war. Jesus said he didn’t come to bring peace, but a sword (Matthew 10:34-36). He was right. Most wars and terrorist acts are caused by religion. I say it’s time to put away the swords and make peace on earth. Let’s put superstition and intolerance behind us. Let’s elevate reason, logic, philosophy and science to their rightful place. If we can stop bickering over religion, and start thinking straight, we can concentrate our efforts on cleaning up our corrupt governments. As long as there is freedom of thought, some people will opt to be religious. That’s alright. But as individuals start thinking correctly, we may become a majority. And when a majority turns to reason, the human race may have a chance at survival. Let every man, woman and child help make this world a better place. Let’s do it. Now."
— Kyle Williams, "I Don't Have Enough Faith to Be a Christian"
Q: "What is the burning question on the mind of every dyslexic existentialist?"
A: "Is there a dog?"
A: To be or not to be.
Q: What is the square root of 4b^2?
"Geisler spends so much time "grounding" his metaphysical theism that he spends literally *no* time defending the Bible itself, one of the most recalcitrant and schizophrenic texts mankind has ever inflicted upon itself. If God truly conforms to Geisler's architectonic theism, why wouldn't He justify himself as such in His autobiography, the holy scriptures (which Geisler concludes are true and unassailable, the product of a perfect mind), rather than as the shaggy, gruesome, anthropomorphic, arbitrarily indecisive, blustery, jealous, woman-hating, perpetually ticked-off, genocidal maniac of the Old Testament (and Jesus, for all his Buddhist civility, has plenty of his dad's hellfire-rhetoric burning in his veins), one of the most mentally unstable characters in ancient world literature?"
— From a review of "Christian Apologetics"
Q: What's tiny and yellow and very, very, dangerous?
A: A canary with the super-user password.
"The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully."
— Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion
"True, there are religious scientists and Darwinian churchgoers. But this does not mean that faith and science are compatible, except in the trivial sense that both attitudes can be simultaneously embraced by a single human mind. (It is like saying that marriage and adultery are compatible because some married people are adulterers. )"
— Jerry A. Coyne, "Seeing and Believing"
"Erleichda!"
— Tom Robbins, Jitterbug Perfume