The Use of the Understanding, in endeavouring to find out the Meaning of any Proposition whatsoever, in considering the nature and Evidence for or against it, and in judging of it according to the seeming...

Real evidence is usually vague and unsatisfactory. It has to be examined—sifted. But here the whole thing is cut and dried. No, my friend, this evidence has been very cleverly manufactured—so cleverly that it has...

I believe in evidence. I believe in observation, measurement, and reasoning, confirmed by independent observers. I’ll believe anything, no matter how wild and ridiculous, if there is evidence for it. The wilder and more ridiculous...

Evidence doesn’t always convince people of the truth, […] especially when the lie is what they prefer.

It is the desire for explanations that are at once systematic and controllable by factual evidence that generates science; and it is the organization and classification of knowledge on the basis of explanatory principles that...

Some readers may find it a curious or even unscientific endeavour to craft a criminological model of organised abuse based on the testimony of survivors. One of the standard objections to qualitative research is that...

The denial of Christ has less to do with facts and more to do with the bent of what a person is prejudiced to conclude.

We’re surrounded by people who don’t make that distinction. If you say to them ‘there’s a monster living in my closet, you can’t see him, but you gotta have faith that he’s there’ people would...

Reasoning with senselessness will never build faith. Faith is strengthened when you stop collecting fragmented signs and questionable hunches, in order to build an acceptable reason for your wrong decisions and less than desirable circumstances.

All my instincts are one way, and all the facts are the other, and I much fear that British juries have not yet attained that pitch of intelligence when they will give the preference to...

The fact that an opinion has been widely held is no evidence whatever that it is not utterly absurd; indeed in view of the silliness of the majority of mankind, a widely spread belief is...

For God to prove himself on demand, physically, would be a grave disappointment, and the strongest Christians should be considerably grateful that he chooses not to do so. The skeptic endlessly demands proof, yet God...

To man has been given the grief, often, of seeing his gods overthrown and his altars crumbling; but to the wolf and the wild dog that have come in to crouch at man’s feet, this...

…and when is enough proof enough?

We cannot see how the evidence afforded by the unquestioned progressive development of organised existence—crowned as it has been by the recent creation of the earth’s greatest wonder, MAN, can be set aside, or its...

ground rule” of science today which requires scientists to seek explanations in the world around us based upon what we can observe, test, replicate, and verify

Well it’s fairly straightforward: there isn’t one [a god]. And there’s no evidence for one, no reason to believe that there is one, and so I don’t believe that there is one. And I think...

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...