“Tying morality to religion is a little like transporting a precious cargo on a sinking ship. What happens when the child grows up and starts doubting the factual claims of the religion? The cargo may be lost with the ship.”

— Steve Stewart-Williams

Source: Darwin, God and the Meaning of Life: How Evolutionary Theory Undermines Everything You Think You Know (2010), p. 287

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

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Steve Stewart-Williams 63

1971

Iris Murdoch book The Bell

Source: The Bell

“If it's sent by ship then it's a cargo, if it's sent by road then it's a shipment.”

Dave Allen (1936–2005) Irish comedian and satirist

Compilation by the BBC 11 March, 2005 http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/film/4340205.stm

“I would like evolution to join the roster of other discredited religions, like the Cargo Cult of the South Pacific. Practitioners of Cargo Cult believed that manufactured products were created by ancestral spirits, and if they imitated what they had seen the white man do, they could cause airplanes to appear out of the sky, bringing valuable cargo like radios and TVs. So they constructed “airport towers” out of bamboo and “headphones” out of coconuts and waited for the airplanes to come with the cargo. It may sound silly, but in defense of the Cargo Cult, they did not wait as long for evidence supporting their theory as the Darwinists have waited for evidence supporting theirs.”

Ann Coulter (1961) author, political commentator

2006, Human Events interview (2006)

“Science is a magnificent force, but it is not a teacher of morals. It can perfect machinery, but it adds no moral restraints to protect society from the misuse of the machine. It can also build gigantic intellectual ships, but it constructs no moral rudders for the control of storm tossed human vessel. It not only fails to supply the spiritual element needed but some of its unproven hypotheses rob the ship of its compass and thus endangers its cargo.”

William Jennings Bryan (1860–1925) United States Secretary of State

Undelivered Trial Summation
Scopes Trial (1925), Summations

“The essence of air transport is speed, and speed is unfortunately one of the most expensive commodities in the world, principally because of the disproportionate amount of the power required to achieve high speed and to lift loads thousands of feet into the air. This is strikingly illustrated by the fact that while an average cargo ship, freight train and transport aeroplane are each equipped with engines totalling about 2,500 H. P., the ship can carry a load of about 7,000 tons, the train 800 tons and the plane only two and a half tons.”

J. R. D. Tata (1904–1993) Indian businessman

'On November 2, 1943, J.R.D. Tata spoke to the Bombay Rotary Club.
Keynote: Excerpts from his speeches and chairman's statements to shareholders

“Watch the little things; a small leak will sink a great ship.”

Benjamin Franklin (1706–1790) American author, printer, political theorist, politician, postmaster, scientist, inventor, civic activist, …

“The Negro moved from an especially harsh slavery, which included cannibalism, to a milder form. Much is said about the horrors of the slave ships, many of which were very bad, but it is important to remember that slaves were valuable cargo and hence property normally handled with consideration.”

Rousas John Rushdoony (1916–2001) American theologian

Source: Writings, Politics of Guilt and Pity (1978), p. 25

“Cargo. They were cargo. I think it started the day I first saw the Totenlager in Treblinka. I remember Wirth standing there, next to the pits full of blue-black corpses. It had nothing to do with humanity-it couldn't have; it was a mass-a mass of rotting flesh. Wirth said, 'What shall we do with this garbage?”

Franz Stangl (1908–1971) Austrian-born SS officer, commandant at first Sobibór extermination camp and then Treblinka extermination c…

I think unconsciously that started me thinking of them as cargo.
About the victims. Quoted in "Good and Evil After Auschwitz: Ethical Implications for Today" - Page 96 - by Jack Bemporad, John Pawlikowski, Joseph Sievers - History - 2000.

“The ship of Democracy, which has weathered all storms, may sink through the mutiny of those aboard.”

Grover Cleveland (1837–1908) 22nd and 24th president of the United States

Quoted in The American Mercury (1961), in a letter from Cleveland to his law partner, Wilson S. Bissell, February 15th, 1894. https://books.google.com/books?id=BIsqAAAAMAAJ&q=%22The+present+danger%22+cleveland+bissell&dq=%22The+present+danger%22+cleveland+bissell&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwj68-CIhenSAhXpCMAKHdsXCKQQ6AEIHjAB.

“407. A small Leak will sink a great Ship.”

Thomas Fuller (writer) (1654–1734) British physician, preacher, and intellectual

Compare Poor Richard's Almanack (1745) : Beware of little Expences, a small Leak will sink a great Ship.
Introductio ad prudentiam: Part II (1727), Gnomologia (1732)

“Tying morality to religion is a little like transporting a precious cargo on a sinking ship. What happens when the child grows up and starts doubting the factual claims of the religion? The cargo may be lost with the ship.”

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Steve Stewart-Williams 63

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