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Function Quotes

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Function Quotes

“It goes beyond mere 'acknowledgment' of religion because its sole purpose is to encourage all citizens to engage in prayer, an inherently religious exercise that serves no secular function in this context. In this instance, the government has taken sides on a matter that must be left to individual conscience.”

Matter Government Purpose Individual Left Sides Religious Prayer Taken Atheism Citizens Exercise Conscience Function Mere Positive Atheism Instance Sole Secular Acknowledgment

Author:Barbara Brandriff Crabb

“Orchids manufacture their intricate devices from the common components of ordinary flowers, parts usually fitted for very different functions. If God had designed a beautiful machine to reflect his wisdom and power, surely he would not have used a collection of parts generally fashioned for other purposes. Orchids were not made by an ideal engineer; they are jury-rigged from a limited set of available components. Thus, they must have evolved from ordinary flowers.”

Source: The Panda's Thumb: More Reflections in Natural History

“Ready comprehension is often a knee-jerk response and the most dangerous form of understanding. It blinks an opaque screen over your ability to learn. The judgmental precedents of law function that way, littering your path with dead ends. Be warned. Understand nothing. All comprehension is temporary.”

Source: Chapterhouse: Dune

“The one function that most gods seem to have in common is to give human existence some ultimate purpose - and, while it is not possible to disprove an ultimate purpose, there does not seem to be any evidence for it. This is not to say, of course, that there is no purpose in life at all: we all make our own purposes as we go through life. And life does not lose its value simply because it it not going to last forever.”

Giving Humans Doe Seems Lasts Purpose Values Courses Loses Common Existence Forever Atheism Evidence Ultimate Function Positive Atheism Purpose Of Life Human Existence

Author:Barbara Smoker

“Religions have a strong binding function and a cohesive element. They emphasize the primacy of the community as opposed to the individual, and they also help set one community apart from another that doesn't share their beliefs.”

Helping Individual Belief Strong Community Share Atheism Elements Function Positive Atheism Binding Primacy

Author:Frans de Waal

“[T]he bill exceeds the rightful authority to which governments are limited by the essential distinction between civil and religious functions, and violates in particular the article of the Constitution of the United States which declares that Congress shall make no law respecting a religious establishment.... This particular church, therefore, would so far be a religious establishment by law, a legal force and sanction being given to certain articles in its constitution and administration.”

“Atheism ... in its philosophic aspect refuses allegiance not merely to a definite concept of God, but it refuses all servitude to the God idea, and opposes the theistic principle as such. Gods in their individual function are not half as pernicious as the principle of theism which represents the belief in a supernatural, or even omnipotent, power to rule the earth and man upon it. It is the absolutism of theism, its pernicious influence upon humanity, its paralyzing effect upon thought and action, which Atheism is fighting with all its power.”

Source: Mother Earth Bulletin

“The soul must have its chosen sewers to carry away its ordure. This function is performed by persons, relationships, professions, the fatherland, the world, or finally, for the really arrogant - I mean our modern pessimists - by the Good God himself.”

World Mean Persons Soul Atheism Modern Function Positive Atheism Profession Chosen Arrogant Pessimist Good God Sewers Fatherland

Author:Friedrich Nietzsche

“If on the other hand he went to pay his respects to The Door and it wasn't there . . . what then? The answer, of course, was very simple. He had a whole board of circuits for dealing with exactly this problem, in fact this was the very heart of his function. He would continue to believe in it whatever the facts turned out to be, what else was the meaning of Belief? The Door would still be there, even if the Door was not.”

Ifs Believe Heart Stills Whole Facts Problem Hands Courses Belief Simple Answers Pay Doors Function Positive Atheism Boards Circuits

Book:Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency Box Set: Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency and The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul

Source: Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency Box Set: Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency and The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul