I am putting together a secular bible. My Genesis is when the apple falls on Newton’s head.
A.C. GRAYLINGI am putting together a secular bible. My Genesis is when the apple falls on Newton’s head.
A.C. GRAYLINGThe wise say that our failure is to form habits: for habit is the mark of a stereotyped world.
A.C. GRAYLINGWhen I was 14 a chaplain at school gave me a reading list. I read everything and I went back to him with a question: how can you really believe in this stuff?
A.C. GRAYLINGTo believe something in the face of evidence and against reason – to believe something by faith – is ignoble, irresponsible and ignorant, and merits the opposite of respect.
A.C. GRAYLINGI do not believe that there are any such things as gods and goddesses, for exactly the same reasons as I do not believe there are fairies, goblins or sprites, and these reasons should be obvious to anyone over the age of ten.
A.C. GRAYLINGMisuse of reason might yet return the world to pre-technological night; plenty of religious zealots hunger for just such a result, and are happy to use the latest technology to effect it.
A.C. GRAYLINGNothing is truly unnatural, because everything that exists, including human intelligence, is a product of nature. If human intelligence can devise ways for the genes from two men to result in a child, their doing so is an entirely natural event.
A.C. GRAYLINGReligion and science have a common ancestor – ignorance.
A.C. GRAYLINGHumanism is the philosophy that you should be a good guest at the dinner table of life.
A.C. GRAYLINGScience is the outcome of being prepared to live without certainty and therefore a mark of maturity. It embraces doubt and loose ends.
A.C. GRAYLINGThe media no longer hesitate to whip up lurid anxieties in order to increase sales, in the process undermining social confidence and multiplying fears.
A.C. GRAYLINGA human lifespan is less than a thousand months long. You need to make some time to think how to live it.
A.C. GRAYLINGTo read is to fly: it is to soar to a point of vantage which gives a view over wide terrains of history, human variety, ideas, shared experience and the fruits of many inquiries.
A.C. GRAYLINGAnd I say, the meaning of life is what you make it. There will be as many different meaningful lives as there are people to live them.
A.C. GRAYLINGInculcating the various competing – competing, note – falsehoods of the major faiths into small children is a form of child abuse, and a scandal.
A.C. GRAYLINGI despise people who depend on these things [heroin and cocaine]. If you really want a mind-altering experience, look at a tree.
A.C. GRAYLING