The Devil's Delusion Quotes

“Has anyone provided proof of God’s inexistence? Not even close. Has quantum cosmology explained the emergence of the universe or why it is here? Not even close. Have our sciences explained why our universe seems to be fine-tuned to allow for the existence of life? Not even close. Are physicists and biologists willing to believe in anything so long as it is not religious thought? Close enough. Has rationalism and moral thought provided us with an understanding of what is good, what is right, and what is moral? Not close enough. Has secularism in the terrible 20th century been a force for good? Not even close, to being close. Is there a narrow and oppressive orthodoxy in the sciences? Close enough. Does anything in the sciences or their philosophy justify the claim that religious belief is irrational? Not even in the ball park. Is scientific atheism a frivolous exercise in intellectual contempt? Dead on.”
― David Berlinski, The Devil's Delusion: Atheism and Its Scientific Pretensions

“What Hitler did not believe and what Stalin did not believe and what Mao did not believe and what the SS did not believe and what the Gestapo did not believe and what the NKVD did not believe and what the commissars, functionaries, swaggering executioners, Nazi doctors, Communist Party theoreticians, intellectuals, Brown Shirts, Black Shirts, gauleiters, and a thousand party hacks did not believe was that God was watching what they were doing. And as far as we can tell, very few of those carrying out the horrors of the twentieth century worried overmuch that God was watching what they were doing either. That is, after all, the meaning of a secular society.”
― David Berlinski, The Devil's Delusion: Atheism and Its Scientific Pretensions

“If moral statements are about something, then the universe is not quite as science suggests it is, since physical theories, having said nothing about God, say nothing about right or wrong, good or bad. To admit this would force philosophers to confront the possibility that the physical sciences offer a grossly inadequate view of reality. And since philosophers very much wish to think of themselves as scientists, this would offer them an unattractive choice between changing their allegiances or accepting their irrelevance.”
― David Berlinski, The Devil's Delusion: Atheism and its Scientific Pretensions

“Just who has imposed on the suffering human race poison gas, barbed wire, high explosives, experiments in eugenics, the formula for zyklon b, heavy artillery, pseudo-scientific justifications for mass murder, cluster bombs, attack submarines, napalm, intercontinental missiles , military space platforms and nuclear weapons? If memory serves it was not the Vatican.”
― David Berlinski, The Devil's Delusion: Atheism and Its Scientific Pretensions

“The argument that Hawking has offered may be conveyed by question-and-answer, as in the Catholic catechism.   A Catechism of Quantum Cosmology Q: From what did our universe evolve? A: Our universe evolved from a much smaller, much emptier mini-universe. You may think of it as an egg. Q: What was the smaller, emptier universe like? A: It was a four-dimensional sphere with nothing much inside it. You may think of that as weird. Q: How can a sphere have four dimensions? A: A sphere may have four dimensions if it has one more dimension than a three-dimensional sphere. You may think of that as obvious. Q: Does the smaller, emptier universe have a name? A: The smaller, emptier universe is called a de Sitter universe. You may think of that as about time someone paid attention to de Sitter. Q: Is there anything else I should know about the smaller, emptier universe? A: Yes. It represents a solution to Einstein’s field equations. You may think of that as a good thing. Q: Where was that smaller, emptier universe or egg? A: It was in the place where space as we know it did not exist. You may think of it as a sac. Q: When was it there? A: It was there at the time when time as we know it did not exist. You may think of it as a mystery. Q: Where did the egg come from? A: The egg did not actually come from anywhere. You may think of this as astonishing. Q: If the egg did not come from anywhere, how did it get there? A: The egg got there because the wave function of the universe said it was probable. You may think of this as a done deal. Q: How did our universe evolve from the egg? A: It evolved by inflating itself up from its sac to become the universe in which we now find ourselves. You may think of that as just one of those things. This catechism, I should add, is not a parody of quantum cosmology. It is quantum cosmology.”
― David Berlinski, The Devil's Delusion: Atheism and its Scientific Pretensions

“Commentators who today talk of 'The Dark Ages' when faith instead of reason was said to ruthlessly rule, have for their animadversions only the excuse of perfect ignorance. Both Aquinas' intellectual gifts and his religious nature were of a kind that is no longer commonly seen in the Western world.”
― David Berlinski, The Devil's Delusion: Atheism and Its Scientific Pretensions

“No scientific theory touches on the mysteries that the religious tradition addresses. A man asking why his days are short and full of suffering is not disposed to turn to algebraic quantum field theory for the answer. The answers that prominent scientific figures have offered are remarkable in their shallowness.”
― David Berlinski, The Devil's Delusion: Atheism and its Scientific Pretensions

“Did you imagine that science was a disinterested pursuit of the truth? Well, you were wrong.”
― David Berlinski, The Devil's Delusion: Atheism and its Scientific Pretensions

“A defense [of religion] is needed because none has been forthcoming. The discussion has been ceded to men who regard religious belief with frivolous contempt. Their books have in recent years poured from every press, and although differing widely in their style, they are identical in their message: Because scientific theories are true, religious beliefs must be false.”
― David Berlinski, The Devil's Delusion: Atheism and Its Scientific Pretensions

“Whatever the degree to which Darwin may have “misled science into a dead end,” the biologist Shi V. Liu observed in commenting on Koonin’s paper, “we may still appreciate the role of Darwin in helping scientists [win an] upper hand in fighting against the creationists.”
― David Berlinski, The Devil's Delusion: Atheism and Its Scientific Pretensions

“Just who has imposed on the suffering human race poison gas, barbed wire, high explosives, experiments in eugenics, the formula for Zyklon B, heavy artillery, pseudo-scientific justifications for mass murder, cluster bombs, attack submarines, napalm, intercontinental ballistic missiles, military space platforms, and nuclear weapons? If memory serves, it was not the Vatican.”
― David Berlinski, The Devil's Delusion: Atheism and Its Scientific Pretensions

“Perhaps the best argument in favor of the thesis that the Big Bang supports theism,” the astrophysicist Christopher Isham has observed, “is the obvious unease with which it is greeted by some atheist physicists.”
― David Berlinski, The Devil's Delusion: Atheism and its Scientific Pretensions

“Children of the Enlightenment do not, of course, dwell overly on the dreadful acts undertaken in its name when the Enlightenment first became a living historical force in France: all perished, all—/Friends, enemies, of all parties, ages, ranks, /Head after head, and never heads enough /For those that bade them fall.”
― David Berlinski, The Devil's Delusion: Atheism and Its Scientific Pretensions

“Arguments follow from assumptions, and assumptions follow from beliefs, and very rarely—perhaps never—do beliefs reflect an agenda determined entirely by the facts.”
― David Berlinski, The Devil's Delusion: Atheism and its Scientific Pretensions

“If science has shown that God does not exist, it has not been by appealing to Big Bang cosmology. The hypothesis of God’s existence and the facts of contemporary cosmology are consistent.”
― David Berlinski, The Devil's Delusion: Atheism and its Scientific Pretensions

“Neither the Nazis nor the Communists, he affirms, acted because of their atheism. They were simply keen to kill a great many people. Atheism had nothing to do with it. They might well have been Christian Scientists.”
― David Berlinski, The Devil's Delusion: Atheism and Its Scientific Pretensions

“Just who has imposed on the suffering human race poison gas, barbed wire, high explosives, experiments in eugenics, the formula for Zyklon B, heavy artillery, pseudo-scientific justifications for mass murder, cluster bombs, attack submarines, napalm, intercontinental ballistic missiles, military space platforms, and nuclear weapons?”
― David Berlinski, The Devil's Delusion: Atheism and Its Scientific Pretensions

“The advent of militant atheism marks a reaction—a lurid but natural reaction—to the violence of the Islamic world.”
― David Berlinski, The Devil's Delusion: Atheism and its Scientific Pretensions

“But of all the human emotions, curiosity is the one least subject to the general proscription against gluttony, and once engaged, even if engaged initially in the service of religion, it has a tendency to grow relentlessly, until in the end the scholar becomes curious about the nature of revelation itself.”
― David Berlinski, The Devil's Delusion: Atheism and its Scientific Pretensions

“After comparing more than two thousand DNA samples, an American molecular geneticist, Dean Hamer, concluded that a person’s capacity to believe in God is linked to his brain chemicals. Of all things! Why not his urine? Perhaps it will not be amiss to observe that Dr. Hamer has made the same claim about homosexuality, and if he has refrained from arguing that a person’s capacity to believe in molecular genetics is linked to a brain chemical, it is, no doubt, owing to a prudent sense that once that door is open God knows how and when anyone will ever slam it shut again.”
― David Berlinski, The Devil's Delusion: Atheism and Its Scientific Pretensions

“Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.” The lame and the blind excepted, who could object?”
― David Berlinski, The Devil's Delusion: Atheism and its Scientific Pretensions

“The moral concerns that are prompted by biology? The list is already long: abortion, stem-cell research, euthanasia, infanticide, cloning, animal-human hybrids, sexual deviancy. It will get longer, as scientists with no discernible sense of responsibility to human nature come extravagantly to interfere in human life.”
― David Berlinski, The Devil's Delusion: Atheism and its Scientific Pretensions

“WHETHER GOD exists—that is one question. Whether belief in his existence plays an important role in human life—that is another. “Religion’s power to console,” Richard Dawkins writes in The God Delusion, “doesn’t make it true.” Perhaps this is so, but only a man who has spent a good deal of time snoring on the down of plenty could be quite so indifferent to the consolations of religion, wherever and however they may be found.”
― David Berlinski, The Devil's Delusion: Atheism and its Scientific Pretensions

“A man asking why his days are short and full of suffering is not disposed to turn to algebraic quantum field theory for the answer.”
― David Berlinski, The Devil's Delusion: Atheism and its Scientific Pretensions

“AT THE beginning of his Letter to a Christian Nation, Sam Harris writes that his fiercest and most “disturbed” critics are Christians who are “deeply, even murderously, intolerant of criticism.” It would seem that a good many of those intolerant critics have been sending Harris biblical verses supporting their intolerance. Now, I count myself among Harris’s warmest detractors. When he remarks that he has been dumbstruck by Christian and Moslem intellectual commitments, I believe the word has met the man.”
― David Berlinski, The Devil's Delusion: Atheism and its Scientific Pretensions