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Quote by Berlyn Hayes

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Heirs of Secrets

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Berlyn Hayes

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“Life is such unutterable hell, solely because it is sometimes beautiful. If we could only be miserable all the time, if there could be no such things as love or beauty or faith or hope, if I could be absolutely certain that my love would never be returned: how much more simple life would be. One could plod through the Siberian salt mines of existence without being bothered about happiness. Unfortunately the happiness is there. There is always the chance (about eight hundred and fifty to one) that another heart will come to mine. I can't help hoping, and keeping faith, and loving beauty. Quite frequently I am not so miserable as it would be wise to be.”

“If adding two numbers produced a random result each time, we could never rely on math. Fortunately there are definite answers with no variation. Similarly, there is nothing random about the study of science. If each iteration of an experiment yielded a different result from the same variables, we would not be able to conclude anything with certainty. The scientific method is not compatible with randomness. If the universe were truly random, the study of science itself would not be possible. The laws of nature stand in direct opposition to the notion that all is born of chance.”

“While I was at University, and afterward, I behaved in what seemed to me to be a logical manner. But now I realize that what I did was do things irrationally, and then after I would arrange the events in my mind so they seemed to follow some sort of reasonable path. That is not logic -- it is wishful thinking, and involves rewriting one's own history as one goes along. Life is not logical -- it just goes along happening, and the best anyone can do is try to deal with the present as well as they can.”

“Contrary to the standard caricature of philosophers as inveterate skeptics who have no truck with religion, among philosophers the view that the existence of God can be rationally demonstrated “enjoyed wide currency, if not hegemony . . . from classical antiquity until well after the dawn of modernity” (to quote the philosopher David Conway, writing in a book that had a major influence on Flew’s conversion to philosophical theism); and the suggestion that human reason can be accounted for in purely materialistic terms has, historically speaking, been regarded by most philosophers as a logical absurdity, a demonstrable falsehood.”