“I am an agnostic as to the question of God.”
Why I Am An Agnostic (1929)
Context: I am an agnostic as to the question of God. I think that it is impossible for the human mind to believe in an object or thing unless it can form a mental picture of such object or thing. Since man ceased to worship openly an anthropomorphic God and talked vaguely and not intelligently about some force in the universe, higher than man, that is responsible for the existence of man and the universe, he cannot be said to believe in God. One cannot believe in a force excepting as a force that pervades matter and is not an individual entity. To believe in a thing, an image of the thing must be stamped on the mind. If one is asked if he believes in such an animal as a camel, there immediately arises in his mind an image of the camel. This image has come from experience or knowledge of the animal gathered in some way or other. No such image comes, or can come, with the idea of a God who is described as a force.
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Clarence Darrow70
American lawyer and leading member of the American Civil Li… 1857–1938Related quotes
Clarence Darrow (1857–1938) American lawyer and leading member of the American Civil Liberties Union
As quoted in a eulogy for Darrow by Emanuel Haldeman-Julius (1938)
Stanislaw Ulam (1909–1984) Polish-American mathematician
as quoted by Olgierd Budrewicz in The melting-pot revisited: twenty well-known Americans of Polish background http://books.google.com/books?ei=jntPUNaTMafZ0QHMloGQBQ&id=pc51AAAAMAAJ&dq=Olgierd+Budrewicz%7C&q=Sometimes+I+muse#search_anchor, publish by Interpress, page 36, 1977.
Robert Jastrow (1925–2008) American astronomer
God and the Astronomers (1978), Ch. 1 : In the Beginning.
Meher Baba (1894–1969) Indian mystic
47 : The Question and its Answer, p. 78.
The Everything and the Nothing (1963)
Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist
"Proof of God" <br class="br">1940s, Am I An Atheist Or An Agnostic? http://www.positiveatheism.org/hist/russell8.htm (1947)
Erich Fromm (1900–1980) German social psychologist and psychoanalyst
Source: Love, Sexuality and Matriarchy: About Gender
David Gerrold book When HARLIE Was One
Section 15 (p. 72; Dr. Auberson, then HARLIE)
When HARLIE Was One (1972)