09 AUG 2014 by ideonexus
Robert Ray Secular Invocation
Thank you Mayor and council members for this opportunity to provide an inspirational start to your meeting.Normally you would bow your heads for an invocation in this chamber, but I am going to ask that you raise your eyes and think about a few things today. When this body comes together to govern, they do so with the consent of the citizens of Oak Harbor. Oak Harbor is a very diverse community with many different views and opinions. My Secular Humanism, which is to say, reason and science ...Folksonomies: secularism
Folksonomies: secularism
Robert Ray, president of The Humanists of the North Puget Sound and humanist celebrant, gave the first ever Humanist opening invocation at the Oak Harbor city council meeting on February 4, 2014.
05 JAN 2012 by ideonexus
Bertrand Russell's Message to the Future
I should like to say two things, one intellectual and one moral. The intellectual thing I should want to say is this: When you are studying any matter, or considering any philosophy, ask yourself only what are the facts and what is the truth that the facts bear out. Never let yourself be diverted either by what you wish to believe, or by what you think would have beneficent social effects if it were believed. But look only, and solely, at what are the facts. That is the intellectual thing th...Love is wise, hatred is foolish. In a world becoming more interconnected, we must learn charity and tolerance.
01 SEP 2011 by ideonexus
Myth VS Science
The difference between myth and science is the difference between divine inspiration of 'unaided reason' (as Bertrand Russell put it) on the one hand and theories developed in observational contact with the real world on the other. It is the difference between the belief in prophets and critical thinking, between Credo quia absurdum (I believe because it is absurd–Tertullian) and De omnibus est dubitandum (Everything should be questioned–Descartes). To try to write a grand cosmical drama ...A great quote by Hannes Alfvén on the lines between empiricism and intuitive reasoning.
19 MAY 2011 by ideonexus
What is Sufficient Evidence for Something to Become a Fact
A scientific theorum has not been - cannot be - proved in the way a mathematical theorem is proved. But common sense treats it as a fact in the same sense as the 'theory' that the Earth is round and not flat is a fact, and the theory that green plants obtain energy from the sun is a fact. All are scientific theorums: supported by massive quantities of evidence, accepted by all informed observers, undisputed facts in the ordinary sense of the word. As with all facts, if we are going to be peda...How much evidence is necessary to make evolution a fact?