"Bill Oliver" wrote in message
...
In article pm5Fc.11745$Oq2.3362@attbi_s52, John Watson
wrote:


Of course. Your bigoted claims are baseless, and you cannot back them
up.

Bigoted claims, eh? The poor little Christians are being picked on again,
poor babies.

Is that the best that you can come up with?

Noticed that you did a lot of snipping again, being dishonest again, eh?

An interviewer asked Ann Druyan (Carl Sagan's wife), "Didn't [Sagan] want to
believe?"
She responded,
"He didn't want to believe. He wanted to know."
"Skeptical scrutiny is the means, in both science and religion, by which
deep thoughts can be winnowed from deep nonsense."

"I would love to believe that when I die I will live again, that some
thinking, feeling, remembering part of me will continue. But as much as I
want to believe that, and despite the ancient and worldwide cultural
traditions that assert an afterlife, I know of nothing to suggest that it is
more than wishful thinking."

"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?"

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

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

"The world is so exquisite, with so much love and moral depth, that there is
no reason to deceive ourselves with pretty stories for which there's little
good evidence. Far better, it seems to me, in our vulnerability, is to look
Death in the eye and to be grateful every day for the brief but magnificent
opportunity that life provides." (Billions and Billions p. 215)

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

"There are many hypotheses in science which are wrong. That's perfectly all
right; they're the aperture to finding out what's right. Science is a
self-correcting process. To be accepted, new ideas must survive the most
rigorous standards of evidence and scrutiny." COSMOS 13 part television
series

-- Carl Sagan (most from "The Demon-Haunted World")


John