
Can biology do better than faith?, NewScientist.com, 2 November 2005, 2010-10-26 http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn8254-can-biology-do-better-than-faith.html,
Variant: Mortal danger is an effective antidote for fixed ideas.
Source: The Rommel Papers (1953), Ch. XI : The Initiative Passes, p. 244.
Can biology do better than faith?, NewScientist.com, 2 November 2005, 2010-10-26 http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn8254-can-biology-do-better-than-faith.html,
Daniel T. Gilbert (2007) in: John Brockman. What is your dangerous idea?: today's leading thinkers on the unthinkable. Harper Perennial, 2007, p. 42
Describing his first deliberate ingestion of LSD on the 19th of April 1943, in Ch. 1 : How LSD Originated http://www.psychedelic-library.org/child1.htm
LSD : My Problem Child (1980)
Context: 4/19/43 16:20: 0.5 cc of 1/2 promil aqueous solution of diethylamide tartrate orally = 0.25 mg tartrate. Taken diluted with about 10 cc water. Tasteless.
17:00: Beginning dizziness, feeling of anxiety, visual distortions, symptoms of paralysis, desire to laugh.
Supplement of 4/21: Home by bicycle. From 18:00- ca.20:00 most severe crisis. (See special report.)
Here the notes in my laboratory journal cease. I was able to write the last words only with great effort. By now it was already clear to me that LSD had been the cause of the remarkable experience of the previous Friday, for the altered perceptions were of the same type as before, only much more intense. I had to struggle to speak intelligibly. I asked my laboratory assistant, who was informed of the self-experiment, to escort me home. We went by bicycle, no automobile being available because of wartime restrictions on their use. On the way home, my condition began to assume threatening forms. Everything in my field of vision wavered and was distorted as if seen in a curved mirror. I also had the sensation of being unable to move from the spot. Nevertheless, my assistant later told me that we had traveled very rapidly. Finally, we arrived at home safe and sound, and I was just barely capable of asking my companion to summon our family doctor and request milk from the neighbors.
In spite of my delirious, bewildered condition, I had brief periods of clear and effective thinking — and chose milk as a nonspecific antidote for poisoning.
“Christendom, as an effect, must be accounted for. It is too large for a mortal cause.”
Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 135.
The Loyalty of Free Men (1951) http://www.positiveatheism.org/hist/quotes/quote-b.htm.
2018, Speech at the University of Illinoise Speech (2018)
Progress, Coexistence and Intellectual Freedom (1968), Dangers, The Threat of Nuclear War
Context: The experience of past wars shows that the first use of a new technical or tactical method of attack is usually highly effective even if a simple antidote can soon be developed. But in a thermonuclear war the first blow may be the decisive one and render null and void years of work and billions spent on creation of an anti-missile system.