On the basis of available evidence, and these expert assessments of the evidence, the scientific criteria for an influenza pandemic have been met. (June 11, 2009)

Nevertheless, scientific method is not the same as the scientific spirit. The scientific spirit does not rest content with applying that which is already known, but is a restless spirit, ever pressing forward towards the...

Pain is life – the sharper, the more evidence of life.

If in some radical miracle, the Abrahamic God revealed his existence to the world, I’d accept the belief in the deity — but I still wouldn’t worship it. The jealous and angry God that justified...

Another very good test some readers may want to look up, which we do not have space to describe here, is the Casimir effect, where forces between metal plates in empty space are modified by...

When even the brightest mind in our world has been trained up from childhood in a superstition of any kind, it will never be possible for that mind, in its maturity, to examine sincerely, dispassionately,...

Tell a devout Christian that his wife is cheating on him, or that frozen yogurt can make a man invisible, and he is likely to require as much evidence as anyone else, and to be...

The evolution of life, and the evolutionary origin of mankind, are scientifically established as firmly and completely as any historical event not witnessed by human observers. Any concession to anti-evolutionists, suggesting that there are scientific...

the miraculous” is the impossible. He knows that the witnesses were wholly incapable of examining the questions involved, that credulity had possession of their minds, that ‘the miraculous’ was expected, that it was their daily...

In medical science, as in daily life, it was unwise to jump to conclusions

When I wake up I go through an abbreviated process of mourning all over again. Plainly, there’s something within me that’s ready to believe in life after death. And it’s not the least bit interested...

It is not so much that I have confidence in scientists being right, but that I have so much in nonscientists being wrong.

The fundamental core of contemporary Darwinism, the theory of DNA-based reproduction and evolution, is now beyond dispute among scientists. It demonstrates its power every day, contributing crucially to the explanation of planet-sized facts of geology...

Suppose that members of a religious movement, such as Christianity, maintain that the existence of some powerful god and its goals or laws can be known through their scriptures, their prophets, or some special revelation....

This vacillation between assertion and denial in discussions about organised abuse can be understood as functional, in that it serves to contain the traumatic kernel at the heart of allegations of organised abuse. In his...

To establish evolutionary interrelatedness invariably requires exhibiting similarities between organisms. Within Darwinism, there’s only one way to connect such similarities, and that’s through descent with modification driven by the Darwinian mechanism. But within a design-theoretic...

Cultivate an intellectual habit of subordinating one’s opinions and wishes to objective evidence and a reverence for things as they really are.

A bullet leaves evidence that a mortar doesn’t.

There is nothing more deceptive than an obvious fact.

It is not what the man of science believes that distinguishes him, but how and why he believes it. His beliefs are tentative, not dogmatic; they are based on evidence, not on authority or intuition.

The creation of man is evidence for the love of God, the preservation of man is evidence for the patience of God, and Christ is evidence for the forgiveness of God. It is when we...

We must conduct research and then accept the results. If they don’t stand up to experimentation, Buddha’s own words must be rejected.

Poetry is just the evidence of life. If your life is burning well, poetry is just the ash.

Either god exists or it doesn’t exist. If a god does exist, it either interacts with the universe in some detectable way or it doesn’t. If it doesn’t, that god is indistinguishable from a non-existent...

The most preposterous notion that Homo sapiens has ever dreamed up is that the Lord God of Creation, Shaper and Ruler of all the Universes, wants the saccharine adoration of His creatures, can be swayed...

If there is a god maybe it rewards those who don’t believe on the basis of insufficient evidence–and punishes those who do.

Look … first and foremost, I’m a scientist. That means it’s my responsibility to make observations and gather evidence before forming a hypothesis, not vice versa.

Wir glauben nur das, was wir sehen. Darum glauben wir alles, seit es das Fernsehen gibt.

It’s not a religion, it’s a relationship!’Without the religion, without the archaic and flawed holy texts, there wouldn’t be anything for you to manufacture a ‘relationship’ with. Without the wars and forced conversions key to...

Nature is not embarrassed by difficulties of analysis. She avoids complication only in means. Nature seems to be proposed to do much with little: it is a principle that the development of physics constantly supports...

The claim to know that no god exists is just irrational. The non-existence of any god has no evidence, let alone proof. To know something for certain there must be proof. To hold to a...

People who have cut their teeth on philosophical problems of rationality, knowledge, perception, free will and other minds are well placed to think better about problems of evidence, decision making, responsibility and ethics that life...

I have the documents. Documents, proof, evidence, photograph, signature. One day you raise your right hand and you are American. They give you an American Pass port. The United States of America. Somewhere someone has...

witch hunts” in the 1980s. There were big mistakes made in how some cases were handled, particularly in the earliest years. But even in those years there were cases such as those of Frank Fuster...

Faith, n. Belief without evidence in what is told by one who speaks without knowledge, of things without parallel.

But I try not to think with my gut. If I’m serious about understanding the world, thinking with anything besides my brain, as tempting as that might be, is likely to get me into trouble....

We all know that any emotional bias — irrespective of truth or falsity — can be implanted by suggestion in the emotions of the young, hence the inherited traditions of an orthodox community are absolutely...

It takes the trust of God for things that exist, to wait on him for the evidence of things that do not exist. Faith and hope make you to thank God for the invisible things...

Faith is not a leap in the dark; it’s the exact opposite. It’s a commitment based on evidence… It is irrational to reduce all faith to blind faith and then subject it to ridicule. That...

Chapter 4,‘Organised abuse and the pleasures of disbelief’, uses Zizek’s (1991) insights into cite political role of enjoyment to analyse the hyperbole and scorn that has characterised the sceptical account of organised and ritualistic abuse....

Since when has love ever looked for reasons, or evidence? Why would love bow to the reality of things, when it creates a reality of its own, so much more vivid, wherein everything resonates to...

It is wrong always, everywhere, and for everyone, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence.

I am now convinced that we have recently become possessed of experimental evidence of the discrete or grained nature of matter, which the atomic hypothesis sought in vain for hundreds and thousands of years. The...

Circumstantial evidence is a very tricky thing. It may seem to point very straight to one thing, but if you shift your own point of view a little, you may find it pointing in an...

Atheism is a religion of egoism….they hate the name “God” so much that they INSIST that whatever CAUSED BigBang should not be called anything else except Bigbang.

The wrong approaches to faith and to skepticism are equally detrimental to the path. For the former declares its answers too soon and is later found false; the latter rejects sound answers altogether and hashes...

On the philosophical level, both Buddhism and modern science share a deep suspicion of any notion of absolutes, whether conceptualize as a transcendent being, as an eternal, unchanging principle such as soul, or as a...

Mathematics had never had more than a secondary interest for him [her husband, George Boole]; and even logic he cared for chiefly as a means of clearing the ground of doctrines imagined to be proved,...

As economists like to say, the plural of “anecdote” is not “data.

Science replaces private prejudice with public, verifiable evidence.