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Quote by Richard P. Feynman

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Perfectly Reasonable Deviations from the Beaten Track: The Letters of Richard P. Feynman

This book compiles a selection of letters written by the Nobel laureate Richard P. Feynman, offering insights into his personal life, scientific pursuits, and philosophical musings. more

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Richard P. Feynman
Richard P. Feynman

Richard P. Feynman was a renowned theoretical physicist known for his contributions to quantum mechanics and quantum electrodynamics. He was also an exceptional physicist in the field of physics education, with popular science books like 'Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!' that have won the hearts of readers. more

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“In those days, in Far Rockaway, there was a youth center for Jewish kids at the temple.... Somebody nominated me for president of the youth center. The elders began getting nervous, because I was an avowed atheist by that time.... I thought nature itself was so interesting that I didn't want it distorted like that. And so I gradually came to disbelieve the whole religion.”

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Author:Richard P. Feynman
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“No! Not for a second! I immediately began to think how this could have happened. And I realized that the clock was old and was always breaking. That the clock probably stopped some time before and the nurse coming in to the room to record the time of death would have looked at the clock and jotted down the time from that. I never made any supernatural connection, not even for a second. I just wanted to figure out how it happened.”

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“If it is to be established that there is a God, then we have to have good grounds for believing that this is indeed so. Until and unless some such grounds are produced we have literally no reason at all for believing; and in that situation the only reasonable posture must be that of either the negative atheist or the agnostic. So the onus of proof has to rest on the proposition of theism.”

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Book:Philosophical Essays
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“Pascal makes no attempt in this most famous argument to show that his Roman Catholicism is true or probably true. The reasons which he suggests for making the recommended bet on his particular faith are reasons in the sense of motives rather than reasons in the sense of grounds. Conceding, if only for the sake of the present argument, that we can have no knowledge here, Pascal tries to justify as prudent a policy of systematic self-persuasion, rather than to provide grounds for thinking that the beliefs recommended are actually true.”

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Author:Antony Flew
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“In the ordinary, everyday understandings of the words involved, to say that someone survived death is to contradict yourself; while to assert that all of us live forever is to assert a manifest falsehood, the flat contrary of a universally known truth: namely, the truth that all human beings are mortal. For when, after some disaster, the 'dead' and the 'survivors' have both been listed, what logical space remains for a third category?”

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Book:Merely Mortal?: Can You Survive Your Own Death?
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“However far back we may be able to trace the - so to speak - internal history of the Universe, there can be no question of arguing that this or that external origin is either probable or improbable. We do not have, and we necessarily could not have, experience of other Universes to tell us that Universes, or Universes with these particular features, are the work of Gods, or of Gods of this or that particular sort.”

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Book:God, freedom, and immortality: a critical analysis
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