Chris

“Everything we want to think about human beings has to be compatible with the nature and behavior of the pieces of which we are made, even if those pieces don't tell the whole story. Understanding what those particles and fields are and how they interact with one another is a crucial part of comprehending what it means to be human.”
― Sean Carroll, The Big Picture: On the Origins of Life, Meaning, and the Universe Itself

“The important distinction is not between theists and naturalists; it's about people who care enough about the universe to make a good-faith effort to understand it, and those who fit it into a predetermined box or simply take it for granted. The universe is much bigger than you or me, and the quest to figure it out united people with a spectrum of substantive beliefs. It's us against the mysteries of the universe; if we care about understanding, we're on the same side.”
― Sean Carroll, The Big Picture: On the Origins of Life, Meaning, and the Universe Itself

“Stories and fictions are a wonderful thing, especially if you want to get people to cooperate effectively … the problem begins only when people forget that this is only a convention—this is only something we invented and they start confusing it with kind of this is reality, this is the real thing … now there is nothing wrong with these creations as long as they serve us instead of us serving them.”
― Yuval Noah Harari

“Do not go by oral tradition, by lineage of teaching, by hearsay, by a collection of texts, by logic, by inferential reasoning, by reasoned cogitation, by the acceptance of a view after pondering it, by the seeming competence of a speaker, or because you think, ‘The ascetic is our teacher.’4 But when you know for yourselves, ‘These things are unwholesome; these things are blamable; these things are censured by the wise; these things, if undertaken and practiced, lead to harm and suffering,’ then you should abandon them.”
― Bhikkhu Bodhi, In the Buddha's Words: An Anthology of Discourses from the Pali Canon