Ray Comfort (1949) New Zealand-born Christian minister and evangelist
Cults, Sects and Questions (c. 1979)
Source: Hainish Cycle, City of Illusions (1967), Chapter 7
Ray Comfort (1949) New Zealand-born Christian minister and evangelist
Cults, Sects and Questions (c. 1979)
Lawrence M. Krauss (1954) American physicist
Source: A Universe from Nothing: Why There Is Something Rather Than Nothing
Carl Sagan (1934–1996) American astrophysicist, cosmologist, author and science educator
The Varieties of Scientific Experience: A Personal View of the Search for God (2006)
Charles Sanders Peirce (1839–1914) American philosopher, logician, mathematician, and scientist
I, Ens necessarium is a latin expression which signifies "Necessary being, necessary entity"
A Neglected Argument for the Reality of God (1908)
Jodie Foster (1962) American actor, film director and producer
As quoted in Calgary Sun (10 July 2007)
Carl Sagan (1934–1996) American astrophysicist, cosmologist, author and science educator
Cosmos: A Personal Voyage (1990 Update), "The Edge of Forever" [Episode 10]
Context: But we don't yet know whether the Universe is open or closed. More than that, there are a few astronomers who doubt that the redshift of distant galaxies is due to the doppler effect, who are skeptical of the expanding Universe and the Big Bang. Perhaps our descendants will regard our present ignorance with as much sympathy as we feel to the ancients for not knowing the Earth went around the Sun. If the general picture, however, of a Big Bang followed by an expanding Universe is correct, what happened before that? Was the Universe devoid of all matter and then the matter suddenly somehow created, how did that happen? In many cultures, the customary answer is that a God or Gods created the Universe out of nothing. But if we wish to pursue this question courageously, we must of course ask the next question: where did God come from? If we decide that this is an unanswerable question, why not save a step and conclude that the origin of the Universe is an unanswerable question? Or, if we say that God always existed, why not save a step, and conclude that the Universe always existed? That there's no need for a creation, it was always here. These are not easy questions. Cosmology brings us face to face with the deepest mysteries, questions that were once treated only in religion and myth.
Robert G. Ingersoll (1833–1899) Union United States Army officer
"To the Indianapolis Clergy." The Iconoclast (Indianapolis, IN) (1883)
Umberto Eco (1932–2016) Italian semiotician, essayist, philosopher, literary critic, and novelist
Variant: A sign is anything that can be used to tell a lie.
Source: Trattato di semiotica generale (1975); [A Theory of Semiotics] (1976)