Victor J. Stenger book God: The Failed Hypothesis
Source: God: The Failed Hypothesis (2007), Chapter 4: 'Cosmic Evidence', p.117
Victor J. Stenger book God: The Failed Hypothesis
Source: God: The Failed Hypothesis (2007), Chapter 4: 'Cosmic Evidence', p.117
Starhawk (1951) American author, activist and Neopagan
The Spiral Dance: A Rebirth of the Ancient Religion of the Goddess (1979)
Context: The Orderer, whose core issue is control, splits us into Controller and Out-of-Control selves, tells us "Don't Feel", and generates anxiety, rigidity, and addictions. The Orderer seduces us with the belief that order can be imposed from without, that the answer to chaos is more rigid order.
“Take me or leave me; or, as is the usual order of things, both.”
Dorothy Parker (1893–1967) American poet, short story writer, critic and satirist
Pier Paolo Pasolini (1922–1975) Italian film director, poet, writer and intellectual
Interview in Film Culture, no. 42 (1966), p. 101 https://books.google.it/books?hl=it&id=Jq2RAAAAIAAJ&dq=%22If+you+know%22.
Johannes Kepler (1571–1630) German mathematician, astronomer and astrologer
Translation by an unknown person, from De fundamentis astrologiae certioribus, ibid., from the foreword
Ref: en.wikiquote.org - Johannes Kepler / Mysterium Cosmographicum (1596) / De fundamentis astrologiae certioribus (1601)
Eric Voegelin (1901–1985) American philosopher
On Max Weber's omission of medieval Christianity
Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768–1834) German theologian, philosopher, and biblical scholar
[On Religion: Speeches to its Cultured Despisers, 1893, London, Paul, Trench, Trubner, 23, Second Speech: The Nature of Religion]
On Religion: Speeches to its Cultured Despisers (1799)
Cyrano de Bergerac (1619–1655) French novelist, dramatist, scientist and duelist
The Other World (1657)
Context: You will say, 'How can chance assemble in one place all the things necessary to produce an oak tree?' My answer is that it would be no miracle if the matter thus arranged had not formed an oak. But it would have been a very great miracle if, once the matter was thus arranged, an oak had not been formed. A few less of some shapes, and it would have been an elm, a poplar, a willow, an elder, heather or moss. A little more of some other shapes and it might have been a sensitive plant, an oyster in its shell, a worm, a fly, a frog, a sparrow, an ape or a man.
Charles Babbage Passages from the life of a philosopher
That writers do not always mean the same thing when treating of miracles is perfectly clear; because what may appear a miracle to the unlearned is to the better instructed only an effect produced by some unknown law hitherto unobserved. So that the idea of miracle is in some respect dependent upon the opinion of man. Much of this confusion has arisen from the definition of Miracle given in Hume's celebrated Essay, namely, that it is the "violation of a law of nature." Now a miracle is not necessarily a violation of any law of nature, and it involves no physical absurdity. As Brown well observes, "the laws of nature surely are not violated when a new antecedent is followed by a new consequent ; they are violated only when the antecedent, being exactly the same, a different consequent is the result;" so that a miracle has nothing in its nature inconsistent with our belief of the uniformity of nature. All that we see in a miracle is an effect which is new to our observation, and whose cause is concealed. The cause may be beyond the sphere of our observation, and would be thus beyond the familiar sphere of nature; but this does not make the event a violation of any law of nature. The limits of man's observation lie within very narrow boundaries, and it would be arrogance to suppose that the reach of man's power is to form the limits of the natural world. The universe offers daily proof of the existence of power of which we know nothing, but whose mighty agency nevertheless manifestly appears in the most familiar works of creation. And shall we deny the existence of this mighty energy simply because it manifests itself in delegated and feeble subordination to God's omnipotence?
"Passages from the life of a philosopher", Appendix: Miracle. Note (A)
Passages from the Life of a Philosopher (1864)