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Quote by david wells

“On a plaque attached to the NASA deep space probe we [human beings] are described in symbols for the benefit of any aliens who might meet the spacecraft as “bilaterly symmetrical, sexually differentiated bipeds, located on one of the outer spiral arms of the Milky Way, capable of recognising the prime numbers and moved by one extraordinary quality that lasts longer than all our other urges—curiosity.”

Quote by david wells

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david wells

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“Anna took love very seriously. She loved love. No, worshipped, that's the word. She worshipped love. That was the only thing which had any place in her life. That and hatred. Do you know what neutron stars are?' 'They're planets with such compactness and high surface gravity that if I dropped this cigarette on one of them it would strike with the same force as an atom bomb. It was the same with Anna. Her gravitation to love-and hatred-was so strong that nothing could exist in the space between them. Every tiny detail caused an atomic explosion. Do you understand? It took me time to understand. She was like Jupiter-hidden behind an eternal cloud of sulphur. And humour. And sexuality.”

“The real difference is this: the Christian says that he has knowledge; the Agnostic admits that he has none; and yet the Christian accuses the Agnostic of arrogance, and asks him how he has the impudence to admit the limitations of his mind. To the Agnostic every fact is a torch, and by this light, and this light only, he walks. The Agnostic knows that the testimony of man is not sufficient to establish what is known as the miraculous. We would not believe to-day the testimony of millions to the effect that the dead had been raised. The church itself would be the first to attack such testimony. If we cannot believe those whom we know, why should we believe witnesses who have been dead thousands of years, and about whom we know nothing? The Agnostic takes the ground that human experience is the basis of morality. Consequently, it is of no importance who wrote the gospels, or who vouched or vouches for the genuineness of the miracles. In his scheme of life these things are utterly unimportant. He is satisfied that “the miraculous” is the impossible. He knows that the witnesses were wholly incapable of examining the questions involved, that credulity had possession of their minds, that 'the miraculous' was expected, that it was their daily food.”