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Jonathan Miller Quotes

Sir Jonathan Wolfe Miller, CBE is an English theatre and opera director, actor, author, television presenter, humourist, and medical doctor. After training in medicine, and specialising in neurology, in the late 1950s, he came to prominence in the early 1960s in the comedy revue Beyond the Fringe with Peter Cook, Dudley Moore and Alan Bennett.

Miller began directing operas in the 1970s and is one of the world's leading opera directors with several classic productions to his credit. His best-known production is probably his 1982 "Mafia"-styled Rigoletto set in 1950s Little Italy, Manhattan. In its early days he was an associate director at the National Theatre and later ran the Old Vic Theatre. As a writer/presenter of more than a dozen BBC documentaries, he has become a well-known television personality and familiar public intellectual in both Britain and the United States.

✵ 21. July 1934 – 27. November 2019
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Jonathan Miller: 9 quotes0 likes

Famous Jonathan Miller Quotes

“Ever since the Reformation, there's a sense in which the road to atheism was paved not with science, but with religious intentions.”

Jonathan Miller

Episode two: "Noughts and Crosses".
Atheism: A Rough History of Disbelief (2004)

“[In casual conversation] The reason why I feel relatively indifferent to [the Anglican Church of England] is it's lost its power, and it's so desperately keen to solicit support that they're willing to throw God out of the window in order to retain it. God for the many of the Anglicans is nothing more than a sort of awkward geriatric relative, kept upstairs, who might be embarrassingly coming downstairs, incontinently, and cause trouble.”

Jonathan Miller

Episode one: "Shadows of Doubt".
Atheism: A Rough History of Disbelief (2004)

“Perhaps I was too dumb, or just too interested in cricket or in girls, to ask myself any questions about religion. If I had not been, I might have, inevitably, asked myself questions that have troubled skeptics and unbelievers for as long as men and women have been skeptical or have lacked belief. "Is there really no God? And if there really is no supernatural dimension to the universe, why have so many people throughout history and in so many different cultures thought there was?"”

Jonathan Miller

Episode one: "Shadows of Doubt".
Atheism: A Rough History of Disbelief (2004)

“There were academics and theologians who spent hours calculating what they thought was the precise age of the Earth, on the basis of the Biblical account of it. And as early as 1650, James Ussher had come to the startlingly precise conclusion that the Earth was created in 4004 B. C. on October the 22nd – in the evening, apparently. What God had been doing that morning is still open to conjecture.”

Jonathan Miller

Episode three: "The Final Hour".
Atheism: A Rough History of Disbelief (2004)

“Paradoxically, some of the sources of disbelief are to be found amongst the arguments of believers. … Theologians often formulated the most dangerously skeptical arguments in their efforts to test the impregnability of their own faith, and in doing so, they unknowingly furnished atheists with ready-made weapons.”

Jonathan Miller

Episode one: "Shadows of Doubt".
Atheism: A Rough History of Disbelief (2004)

“While the early deists were busy reconstructing Christianity, at the same time being very careful to avoid the accusation of atheism, the world of science had been steadily progressing.”

Jonathan Miller

Episode two: "Noughts and Crosses".
Atheism: A Rough History of Disbelief (2004)

“There is one aspect of our own mentality for which it's difficult as yet to foresee what type of explanation would even be relevant. I'm referring, of course, to consciousness. The point is that although I have no reason to believe that my consciousness is implemented by anything other than my brain, I remain convinced that there's something impenetrably mysterious about the relationship between brains and thoughts. And you can understand, therefore, why it's so hard to imagine, let alone tolerate, the idea that the death of the brain necessarily leads to the end of the personal self – and this, of course, is the "trump card" with which religion has consistently played.”

Jonathan Miller

Episode three: "The Final Hour".
Atheism: A Rough History of Disbelief (2004)

“Although he never admitted himself to be an atheist as such, he was clearly and unarguably the most vividly elegant and eloquent skeptic of them all. I'm referring, of course, to the great Scottish philosopher David Hume.”

Jonathan Miller

Episode two: "Noughts and Crosses".
Atheism: A Rough History of Disbelief (2004)

“Paradoxically, some of the sources of disbelief are to be found amongst the arguments of believers.”

Jonathan Miller

… Theologians often formulated the most dangerously skeptical arguments in their efforts to test the impregnability of their own faith, and in doing so, they unknowingly furnished atheists with ready-made weapons.
Episode one: "Shadows of Doubt".
Atheism: A Rough History of Disbelief (2004)

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