"I want to know how God created this world.  I am not interested in this or that phenomenon, in the spectrum of this or that element.  I want to know His thoughts.  The rest are details." - Albert Einstein

(The Expanded Quotable Einstein, Princeton University Press, page 202).

"We know nothing about God and the world at all. All our knowledge is but the knowledge of school children. Possibly we shall know a little more than we do now. But the real nature of things, that we shall never know, never". - Albert Einstein.

(The Expanded Quotable Einstein, Princeton University Press, page 207).

"Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind." - Albert Einstein

Albert Einstein said,

"Everyone who is seriously interested in the pursuit of science becomes convinced that a spirit is manifest in the laws of the universe—a spirit vastly superior to man, and one in the face of which our modest powers must feel humble."

Where dem? 

Where dem?

where dem wetin? as in u have proved that einstein was a christian or what?
whats all these? like i said , einstein was agnostic, and agnosticism and atheism are birds of the same feather.
for ur info, i never said einstein was an atheist, thats not the point here, the quote i laid out was his quote including the ones u laid out too.
but what does that matter, einstein lived many years and he said diffferent thing at different times,
ok lets take it that einstein believed in a god, does that make god to exist?
i created this thread for quotes so that we can learn from them cos i believe that quotes are more comprehenible, and not to debate whether einstein was an atheist, an agnostic or a christian.
that is a topic for another thread

Point conceded. Let's move on to the next victim.

Charles Darwin said,

"To suppose that the eye could have been formed by natural selection, seems I freely confess, absurd in the highest degree."

OLAADEGBU i can see that you are trying so hard to make yourself believe that Albert Einstein, Issac Newton and Charles Darwin were christains. . your fellow man davidylan likes saying that Issac Newton was an ardent christian your dishonesty and lies no know bounds. . . .i dont know when deism has become ardent christianity, you call the pope and catholics lairs and misguided people that will rot in hell but you embrace a deist as an ardent christian because you want to prove nonexistent points? you guys are much more deluded than i thought. just when you thought you have seen it all you guys just come up with another one. . .

OLAADEGBU:

Point conceded. Let's move on to the next victim.

Charles Darwin said,

"To suppose that the eye could have been formed by natural selection, seems I freely confess, absurd in the highest degree."

"To suppose that the eye with all its inimitable contrivances for adjusting the focus to different distances, for admitting different amounts of light, and for the correction of Spherical and chromatic aberration, could have been formed by natural selection, seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest degree. When it was first said that the sun stood still and the world turned round, the common sense of mankind declared the doctrine false; but the old saying of Vox populi, vox Dei ["the voice of the people = the voice of God "], as every philosopher knows, cannot be trusted in science. Reason tells me, that if numerous gradations from a simple and imperfect eye to one complex and perfect can be shown to exist, each grade being useful to its possessor, as is certain the case; if further, the eye ever varies and the variations be inherited, as is likewise certainly the case; and if such variations should be useful to any animal under changing conditions of life, then the difficulty of believing that a perfect and complex eye could be formed by natural selection, should not be considered as subversive of the theory."
- Charles "don't call me Chuck" Darwin

Thanks for playing.

Thanks for filling in the missing link but on a second note did you know that the eye has 40,000,000 nerve endings, the focusing muscles move an estimated 100,000 times a day, and the retina contains 137,000,000 light sensitive cells?

If man cannot begin to make a human eye, how could anyone in his or her right mind think that eyes formed by mere chance? In fact, man cannot make anything from nothing. We don't know how to do it. We can re-create, reform and develop but we cannot create even one grain of sand from nothing. Yet, the eye is only a small part of the most sophisticated part of creation of the human body.

The ball is now in your court

OLAADEGBU:

Thanks for filling in the missing link

You're welcome.

but on a second note did you know that the eye has 40,000,000 nerve endings, the focusing muscles move an estimated 100,000 times a day, and the retina contains 137,000,000 light sensitive cells?

If man cannot begin to make a human eye, how could anyone in his or her right mind think that eyes formed by mere chance? In fact, man cannot make anything from nothing. We don't know how to do it. We can re-create, reform and develop but we cannot create even one grain of sand from nothing. Yet, the eye is only a small part of the most sophisticated part of creation of the human body.

The ball is now in your court

Now that I have the ball, I can respond by pointing out that the variations in eyes aren't entirely based on chance, but are caused by the mixture of mutations and selection. In addition, humans don't have to be able to create eyes (although "artificial" eyes can and have been created) to understand the modes of evolution of eyes in different species. Interestingly, it has been discovered that several different types of eyes developed separately in different lineages of animals. In any case, this isn't the thread for the evolution of eyes.

Incidentally, no one suggests that eyes evolved from nothing.

OLAADEGBU:

Thanks for filling in the missing link but on a second note did you know that the eye has 40,000,000 nerve endings, the focusing muscles move an estimated 100,000 times a day, and the retina contains 137,000,000 light sensitive cells?

If man cannot begin to make a human eye, how could anyone in his or her right mind think that eyes formed by mere chance? In fact, man cannot make anything from nothing. We don't know how to do it. We can re-create, reform and develop but we cannot create even one grain of sand from nothing. Yet, the eye is only a small part of the most sophisticated part of creation of the human body.

The ball is now in your court

Interesting, you seem to "know" a lot of facts about the eye. How many different diseases of the eye are there?

@KAG,

Where are the missing links of an eye, in the fossil records or in the museums?

@huxley,

Go and answer the questions and challenges I posed to you before you start to ask for diverting questions and where is the fulfilment of your pledge of a £100.00 in the thread of Questions for Atheists and Evolutionists?  Go back there and read my answer to your challenge.

Now back to the quotation of the "Greatest Atheist"

"Information is not knowledge" - Albert Einstein

OLAADEGBU:

@KAG,

Where are the missing link of an eye, in the fossil records or in the museums?

@huxley,

Go and answer the questions and challenges I posed to you before you start to ask for diverting questions and where is the fulfilling of your pledge of a £100.00 in the thread of Questions for Atheists and Evolutionists?  Go back there and read my answer to your challenge.

Now back to the quotation of the "Greatest Atheists"

"Information is not knowledge" - Albert Einstein

Show me where you have answered the questions. If it meets with unanimous approval, you will get the £100.00 .

huxley:

Show me where you have answered the questions. If it meets with unanimous approval, you will get the £100.00 .

C'mon, don't play ignorance here, you know where you posed the challenge, all you need to do is to go back to the post and you will see my response there.  I know that you will pretend not to have seen it.

OLAADEGBU:

@KAG,

Where are the missing link of an eye, in the fossil records or in the museums?

Both and in currently living organisms too. But like I said, wrong thread.

Although Flew is no longer an atheist this was part of his intelligent musings on the whole approach of Christian apologetics:

[b]Once upon a time two explorers came upon a clearing in the jungle. In the clearing were growing many flowers and many weeds. One explorer says, "Some gardener must tend this plot." The other disagrees, "There is no gardener." So, they pitch their tents and set a watch. No gardener…. So they set up a barbed wire fence. They electrify it. They patrol it with bloodhounds… But no shrieks even suggest that some intruder has received a shock. No movements of the wire ever betray an invisible climber. The bloodhounds never give cry. Yet still the Believer is not convinced. "But there is a gardener, invisible, intangible, insensible to electric shocks, a gardener who has no scent and makes no sound, a gardener who comes secretly to look after the garden which he loves." At last the Skeptic despairs, "But what remains of your original assertion? Just how does what you call an invisible, intangible, eternally elusive gardener differ from an imaginary gardener or even no gardener at all?[/b]

[Anthony Flew]

@kag
very nice quote

"There are all sorts of gaps: absence of gradationally intermediate 'transitional' forms between species, but also between larger groups - between, say, families of carnivores, or the orders of mammals.  In fact, the higher up the Linnaean hierarchy you look, the fewer transitional forms there seem to be."  (Eldredge, Niles, The Monkey Business: A Scientist Looks at Creationism, 1982, p. 65)

"All paleontologists know that the fossil record contains precious little in the way of intermediate forms; transitions between major groups are characteristically abrupt.  Gradualists usually extract themselves from this dilemma by invoking the extreme imperfection of the fossil record." (Gould, Stephen J., The Panda's Thumb, 1980, p. 189)

"One of the most surprising negative results of paleontological research in the last century is that such transitional forms seem to be inordinately scarce. In Darwin's time this could perhaps be ascribed with some justification to the incompleteness of the paleontological record and to lack of knowledge, but with the enormous number of fossil species which have been discovered since then, other causes must be found for the almost complete absence of transitional forms."  (Brouwer, A., "General Paleontology," [1959], Transl. Kaye R.H., Oliver & Boyd: Edinburgh & London, 1967, p. 162-163)

"There is no need to apologize any longer for the poverty of the fossil record. In some ways it has become almost unmanageably rich, and discovery is out-pacing integration.  The fossil record nevertheless continues to be composed mainly of gaps." (Neville, George, T., "Fossils in Evolutionary Perspective," Science Progress, vol. 48 January 1960, p. 1-3)

"The record jumps, and all the evidence shows that the record is real:  the gaps we see reflect real events in life's history not the artifact of a poor fossil record, The fossil record flatly fails to substantiate this expectation of finely graded change." (Eldredge, N. and Tattersall, I., The Myths of Human Evolution Columbia University Press, 1982, p. 59, 163)

"Gaps between families and taxa of even higher rank could not be so easily explained as the mere artifacts of a poor fossil record."  (Eldredge, Niles, Macro-Evolutionary Dynamics: Species, Niches, and Adaptive Peaks, 1989, p. 22)

"The fossil record is much less incomplete than is generally accepted[/color]."   (Paul, C.R.C, "The Adequacy of the Fossil Record," 1982, p. 75)

"[color=#006600]Links are missing just where we most fervently desire them, and it is all too probable that many 'links' will continue to be missing." (Jepsen, L. Glenn; Mayr, Ernst; Simpson George Gaylord. Genetics, Paleontology, and Evolution, New York, Athenaeum, 1963, p. 114)

"For over a hundred years paleontologists have recognized the large number of gaps in the fossil record.  Creationists make it seem like gaps are a deep, dark secret of paleontology, "  (Cracraft, in Awbrey & Thwaites, Evolutionists Confront Creationists", 1984)

"In any case, no real evolutionist, whether gradualist or punctuationist, uses the fossil record as evidence in favour of the theory of evolution as opposed to special creation."  (Ridley, Mark, "Who doubts evolution?" "New Scientist", vol. 90, 25 June 1981, p. 831)

"The absence of fossil evidence for intermediary stages between major transitions in organic design, indeed our inability, even in our imagination, to construct functional intermediates in many cases, has been a persistent and nagging problem for gradualist accounts of evolution."   (Gould, Stephen J., 'Is a new and general theory of evolution emerging?' Paleobiology, vol 6(1), January 1980, p. 127)

"The curious thing is that there is a consistency about the fossil gaps; the fossils are missing in all the important  places." (Hitching, Francis, The Neck of the Giraffe or Where Darwin Went Wrong, Penguin Books, 1982, p.19)

"If life had evolved into its wondrous profusion of creatures little by little, Dr. Eldredge argues, then one would expect to find fossils of transitional creatures which were a bit like what went before them and a bit like what came after.  But no one has yet found any evidence of such transitional creatures.  This oddity has been attributed to gaps in the fossil record which gradualists expected to fill when rock strata of the proper age had been found.  In the last decade, however, geologists have found rock layers of all divisions of the last 500 million years and no transitional forms were contained in them." (The Guardian Weekly, 26 Nov 1978, vol 119, no 22, p. 1)

"Given that evolution, according to Darwin, was in a continual state of motion, it followed logically that the fossil record should be rife with examples of transitional forms leading from the less to more evolved.  , Instead of filling the gaps in the fossil record with so-called missing links, most paleontologists found themselves facing a situation in which there were only gaps in the fossil record, with no evidence of transformational intermediates between documented fossil species." (Schwartz, Jeffrey H., Sudden Origins, 1999, p. 89)

"Despite the bright promise that paleontology provides a means of "seeing" evolution, it has presented some nasty difficulties for evolutionists the most notorious of which is the presence of "gaps" in the fossil record. Evolution requires intermediate forms between species and paleontology does not provide them.  The gaps must therefore be a contingent feature of the record." (Kitts, David B., "Paleontology and Evolutionary Theory," Evolution, vol. 28, 1974, p. 467)

"A persistent problem in evolutionary biology has been the absence of intermediate forms in the fossil record. Long term gradual transformations of single lineages are rare and generally involve simple size increase or trivial phenotypic effects. Typically, the record consists of successive ancestor-descendant lineages, morphologically invariant through time and unconnected by intermediates." (Williamson, P.G., Palaeontological Documentation of Speciation in Cenozoic Molluscs from Turkana Basin, 1982, p. 163)

"Ignorance created faith in the face of necessity.

And God was born! This God that ignorance found, or formed, looks a great deal like a man. They tell us it has a face, hands, bowels, a foot (maybe two). They tell us it has nostrils and likes to smell the burnt offerings upon the primitive altar "

- kimbely Kent


"This God, that ignorance found or formed, also has remarkably human desires and emotions. It hates, it loves, it feels anger and it feels compassion. It has favorite individuals, and a chosen people. This God is definitely of the male sex, and has definite male tendencies. It is often angry, easily enraged, swears, destroys things, pouts, shouts, deceives, and often rests.

Any wife would recognize God."

- Emmet Fields

"Whenever primitive people needed a God they have always found a God, tailor made. It was their own God, and always resembled them a great deal. The God always had the same enemies and the same morals, as the people who found him, and many of those Gods were authors; They wrote books. Those people, though primitive, possessed skills, and so did the God they found. This God gave instructions for building a boat, he designed clothes for the priests, gave the formula for a perfume, was a tailor and made coats of skins. This God also made many simple, often foolish, laws that are called "Commandments." And God did many other things very human, and very peculiar to the time and people who first discovered God."

- Emmet Fields

"Personally, I believe it is asking too much of us to believe that God would write, or inspire, a book that mankind could not agree upon. A book that has caused endless wars, persecutions, torture, bigotry and hatred. A book that is so unintelligible that not only do "non-believers" reject it, but those who believe it to be the true word of God cannot agree upon its interpretation. There are hundreds of different Christian sects in the United States alone, and that does not include the countless thousands of private individuals who have their own, personal, interpretations of the Bible."

- Emmet Fields

"The Bible says most clearly that the God of the Old Testament (Jehovah) is "THE LORD GOD OF THE HEBREWS," the God of "the children of Israel," the God of Abraham, of Isaac, of Jacob. The Old Testament is the story of a private tribal god, whose first and only concern is for his "chosen people." It is a god created by the priests of that tribe, to justify the atrocities that tribe committed. It is the story of a simple tribal god, and like all the other tribal gods in the world at that time, the god always reflected the people who created him. If the tribe was a warlike tribe, their god was a warlike god.'

- Emmet Fields

The invisible and the non-existant look very much alike

i like that

@mazaje
nice quotes too

"All of us who study the origin of life find that the more we look into it, the more we feel that it is too complex to have evolved anywhere.  We believe as an article of faith that life evolved from dead matter on this planet.  It is just that its complexity is so great, it is hard for us to imagine that it did."  

(Urey, Harold C., quoted in Christian Science Monitor, January 4, 1962, p. 4)



"If living matter is not, then, caused by the interplay of atoms, natural forces and radiation, how has it come into being?  I think, however, that we must go further than this and admit that the only acceptable explanation is creation.  I know that this is anathema to physicists, as indeed it is to me, but we must not reject a theory that we do not like if the experimental evidence supports it."

(H.J. Lipson, F.R.S. Professor of Physics, University of Manchester, UK, "A physicist looks at evolution" Physics Bulletin, 1980, vol 31, p. 138)



"To the unprejudiced, the fossil record of plants is in favor of special creation.  Can you imagine how an orchid, a duck weed, and a palm have come from the same ancestry, and have we any evidence for this assumption?  The evolutionist must be prepared with an answer, but I think that most would break down before an inquisition." 

(E.J.H. Corner "Evolution" in A.M. MacLeod and L.S. Cobley, eds., Evolution in Contemporary Botanical Thought, Chicago, IL:  Quadrangle Books, 1961, at 95, 97 from Bird, I, p. 234)  



"The more one studies paleontology, the more certain one becomes that evolution is based on faith alone; exactly the same sort of faith which it is necessary to have when one encounters the great mysteries of religion." 

(More, Louis T., "The Dogma of Evolution," Princeton University Press: Princeton NJ, 1925, Second Printing, p.160)



"At the present stage of geological research, we have to admit that there is nothing in the geological records that runs contrary to the view of conservative creationists, that God created each species separately, presumably from the dust of the earth."

(Dr. Edmund J. Ambrose, The Nature and Origin of the Biological World, John Wiley & Sons, 1982, p. 164)

"Is there one ray of light from any supernatural source?The ancient Hebrews believed that this earth was the center of the universe, and that the sun, moon and stars were specks in the sky.With this the Bible agrees.They thought the earth was flat, with four corners; that the sky, the firmament, was solid -- the floor of Jehovah's house.The Bible teaches the same.They imagined that the sun journeyed about the earth, and that by stopping the sun the day could be lengthened.The Bible agrees with this.They believed that Adam and Eve were the first man and woman; that they had been created but a few years before, and that they, the Hebrews, were their direct descendants.This the Bible teache the same. If anything is, or can be, certain, the writers of the Bible were mistaken about creation, astronomy, geology; about the causes of phenomena, the origin of evil and the cause of death.Now, it must be admitted that if an infinite Being is the author of the Bible, he knew all sciences, all facts, and could not have made a mistake.If, then, there are mistakes, misconceptions, false theories, ignorant myths and blunders in the Bible, it must have been written by finite beings; that is to say, by ignorant and mistaken men.Nothing can be clearer than this."

-Robert G. Ingersoll

"For centuries the church insisted that the Bible was absolutely true; that it contained no mistakes; that the story of creation was true; that its astronomy and geology were in accord with the facts; that the scientists who differed with the Old Testament were infidels and atheists.Now this has changed. The educated Christians admit that the writers of the Bible were not inspired as to any science. They now say that God, or Jehovah, did not inspire the writers of his book for the purpose of instructing the world about astronomy, geology, or any science. They now admit that the inspired men who wrote the Old Testament knew nothing about any science, and that they wrote about the earth and stars, the sun and moon, in accordance with the general ignorance of the time."

-Robert G. Ingersoll

"Is the Bible any nearer right in its ideas of justice, of mercy, of morality or of religion than in its conception of the sciences? Is it moral?It upholds slavery -- and the desturction of the innocent.Could a devil have done worse?Is it merciful? In war it raised the black flag; it commanded the destruction, the massacre, of all -- of the old, infirm and helpless -- of wives and babies.Were its laws inspired? Hundreds of offenses were punished with death. To pick up sticks on Sabbath, to murder your father on Monday, were equal crimes. There is in the literature of the world no bloodier code. The law of revenge -- of retaliation -- was the law of Jehovah. An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, a limb for a limb.This is savagery -- not philosophy.Is it just and reasonable?The Bible is opposed to religious toleration -- to religious liberty. Whoever differed with the majority was stoned to death. Investigation was a crime. Husbands were ordered to denounce and to assist in killing their unbelieving wives.Is the Bible civilized?It upholds lying, larceny, robbery, murder, the selling of diseased meat to strangers, and even the sacrifice of human beings to Jehovah. Is it philosophical?It teaches that the sins of a people can be transferred to an animal -- to a goat. It makes maternity an offence for which a sin offering had to be made.It was wicked to give birth to a boy, and twice as wicked to give birth to a girl.To make hair-oil like that used by the priests was an offence punishable with death.The blood of a bird killed over running water was regarded as medicine.Would a civilized God daub his altars with the blood of oxen, lambs and doves? Would he make all his priests butchers? Would he delight in the smell of burning flesh?"

-Robert G. Ingersoll

"The most recent common ancestor would have lived in the very recent past . . . the MRCA of humans lived just a few thousand years ago . . . "

- Nature (vol 431), 30-9-2004,p.562

"When it comes to believing in God, I really tried. I really, really tried. I tried to believe that there is a God, who created each of us in His own image and likeness, loves us very much, and keeps a close eye on things. I really tried to believe that, but I gotta tell you, the longer you live, the more you look around, the more you realize, something is bleeped up. Something is wrong here. War, disease, death, destruction, hunger, filth, poverty, torture, crime, corruption, and the Ice Capades. Something is definitely wrong. This is not good work. If this is the best God can do, I am not impressed. Results like these do not belong on the résumé of a Supreme Being. This is the kind of shit you'd expect from an office temp with a bad attitude. And just between you and me, in any decently-run universe, this guy would've been out on his all-powerful ass a long time ago."
George Carlin



"A man could theoretically kill hundreds of innocent people, rob fifty banks, poison the drinking water of an entire religion, or even start a world war. But if this man, during his last few seconds of life, sincerely repents of his sins and 'accept Christ into his heart', he will be taken to heaven and rewarded eternally. By contrast, a woman can sacrificially devote her entire life to charitable work and to generously helping disadvantaged children. But if she neglects to recognize the existence of a supernatural power, then she will be barbecued forever in the pits of hell, according to the Christian doctrine."

David mills 'Atheists Universe'





The only thing that can make me believe in God is when any being that calls himself God begins to take the full responsibilites of a God.
Ascony

"Religion is excellent stuff for keeping
common people quiet."
-Napoleon Bonaparte

"If God has spoken, why is the world not convinced."
-Shelley

"Our ignorance is God; what we know is science."
-Ingersoll

"The clergy know that I know that they know that they do not know."
-Ingersoll

The inspiration of the bible depends on
the ignorance of the person who reads it.
-Ingersoll

"As people become more intelligent
they care less for preachers and more for teachers."
-Robert Green Ingersoll

"A man is accepted into a church for what he believes and he is turned out for what he knows. "
-Mark Twain

Religion is an insult to human dignity.
With or without it you would have
good people doing good things
and evil people doing evil things.
But for good people to do evil things,
that takes religion.
-Steven Weinberg

"The word god is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of honourable, but still primitive legends which are nevertheless pretty childish. No interpretation no matter how subtle can (for me) change this."
-Albert Einstein

"For me the Jewish religion like all others is an incarnation of the most childish superstitions. And the Jewish people to whom I gladly belong and with whose mentality I have a deep affinity have no different quality for me than all other people. As far as my experience goes, they are no better than other human groups, although they are protected from the worst cancers by a lack of power. Otherwise I cannot see anything 'chosen' about them."
-Albert Einstein

Religion does three things quite effectively: divides people, controls people, deludes people.
-Carlespie McKinney

Everyone starts out being an atheist.
No one is born with belief in anything.
-Andy Rooney

Prayer has no place in public school, just like facts have no place in organized religion.
-Superintendent Chalmers

Don't pray in my school,
and I won't think in your church.
-Unknown

Religions are all alike founded
upon fables and mythologies.
-Thomas Jefferson

All religions are ancient monuments to superstition, ignorance and ferocity.
-Baron D'Holbach

People who don't like their beliefs being laughed at shouldn't have such funny beliefs.
-Brad Reddekopp

Philosophy is questions that may never be answered. Religion is answers that may never be questioned.
-Unknown

@ Mazaje

Nice quotes

“We still do not know one thousandth of one percent of what nature has revealed to us”.

- Albert Einstein

If God is God, He is not good
If God is good, He is not God
Take the even, take the odd

Archibald McLeish, JB

The existence of truth only becomes an issue when another sort of truth is in question.

In its pure form, undiluted by philosophy, religion is a relation to a non-human person. This relation may be one of adoring obedience, or ecstatic communion, or quiet confidence, or some combination of these. But it is only when religion has become mingled with philosophy that this non-cognitive redemptive relation to a person begins to be mediated by a creed. Only when the God of the philosophers has begun to replace the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob is correct belief thought to be essential to salvation.

Both - Richard Rorty, THE DECLINE OF REDEMPTIVE TRUTH AND THE RISE OF A LITERARY CULTURE

Religions and their gods can be dismissed without examining their holy books. To examine their holy books is to dismiss them thoroughly.

huxley (that is Nairaland huxley)