Quotes are great - years of intense thinking concentrated into easily-digestible sound bites. Brainy geezers have thus saved me a lot of work by summing up stuff in the following nuggets of wisdom on rational thinking, science and religion: 

On rational thinking

Keep an open mind - but not so open your brain falls out. - Robert Low

Being open-minded does not mean that one has an obligation to examine every crackpot idea or claim made. - Robert Carroll

Alas, to wear the mantle of Galileo it is not enough that you be persecuted by an unkind establishment, you must also be right - Robert L. Park (full quote in 'On Science')

You cannot reason a person out of a position he did not reason himself into in the first place. - Jonathan Swift

It is morally as bad not to care whether a thing is true or not, so long as it makes you feel good, as it is not to care how you got your money as long as you have got it. - Edmund Way Teale, "Circle of the Seasons", 1950

"You must use the stars as your management guide."
"Does that work?"
"If you believe it works, then you're not bright enough to make your own decisions anyway. So randomness is probably an improvement." - Scott Adams, "Dilbert"

A habit of basing convictions upon evidence, and of giving to them only that degree or certainty which the evidence warrants, would, if it became general, cure most of the ills from which the world suffers. - Bertrand Russell

Trust a witness in all matters in which neither his self-interest, his passions, his prejudices, nor the love of the marvellous is strongly concerned. When they are involved, require corroborative evidence in exact proportion to the contravention of probability by the thing testified. - Thomas Henry Huxley

You are told, by astrologers, psychics and other such "experts", that you are not the capable, responsible and rather remarkable person that you really are. We belong to a species that has reached out a quarter of a million miles to set foot on the moon, and if that is not miracle enough for us all, I despair for our sense of wonder. The modern soothsayers suggest that you stop thinking for yourselves. They ask you to retreat to the caves from which our ancestors are said to have come, while you have the choice of going to the stars. I have opted for the stars, and I invite you to join me. - James Randi, "The Mask of Nostradamus"

What skeptical thinking boils down to is the means to construct, and to understand, a reasoned argument and - especially important - to recognize a fallacious or fraudulent argument. The question is not whether we like the conclusion that emerges out of a train of reasoning, but whether the conclusion follows from the premise or starting point and whether that premise is true. - Carl Sagan, "The Demon-Haunted World"

Insight, untested and unsupported, is an insufficient guarantee of truth. - Bertrand Russell, "Mysticism and Logic" (1929)

All colours will agree in the dark. -- Francis Bacon

It is as useless to argue with those that have renounced the use and authority of reason as to argue with the dead. -- Thomas Paine

Imagination is more important than knowledge. -- Albert Einstein

Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than are lies. -- F. Nietzsche 

The fact that a believer is happier than a skeptic is no more to the point than the fact that a drunken man is happier than a sober one. The happiness of credulity is a cheap and dangerous quality. -- George Bernard Shaw

You wouldn't let someone take a dump in your packed lunch with no good reason - so why let them do it in your head? - Clive Beale 

On Science

All our science, measured against reality, is primitive and childlike - and yet it is the most precious thing we have. - Albert Einstein

Convinced that powerful vested interests, including the scientific establishment, are conspiring to hold back a scientific revolution, speakers complained that "new" science is denied funding, rejected by journal editors and even subjected to ridicule, just because it doesn't fit some outdated paradigm. Alas, to wear the mantle of Galileo it is not enough that you be persecuted by an unkind establishment, you must also be right - Robert L. Park, discussing attendees of the Annual Meeting of the Society for Scientific Exploration, a group that accepts psuedoscience as serious science. 

There is no other species on Earth that does science. It is, so far, entirely a human invention, evolved by natural selection in the cerebral cortex for one simple reason: it works. It is not perfect. It can be misused. It is only a tool. But it is by far the best tool we have, self-correcting, ongoing, applicable to everything. - Carl Sagan 

In science, "fact" can only mean "confirmed to such a degree that it would be perverse to withhold provisional assent." I suppose that apples might start to rise tomorrow, but the possibility does not merit equal time in physics classrooms. - Stephen Jay Gould 

[Science] has two rules. First: there are no sacred truths; all assumptions must be critically examined; arguments from authority are worthless. Second: whatever is inconsistent with the facts must be discarded or revised. We must understand the Cosmos as it is and not confuse how it is with how we wish it to be. - Carl Sagan 

To be sure, the vast majority of people who are untrained can accept the results of science only on authority. But there is obviously an important difference between an establishment that is open and invites every one to come, study its methods, and suggest improvement, and one that regards the questioning of its credentials as due to wickedness of heart, such as [Cardinal] Newman attributed to those who questioned the infallibility of the Bible. - Morris Cohen, "Reason and Nature" (1931) 

I believe that science is best defined as a careful, disciplined, logical search for knowledge about any and all aspects of the universe, obtained by examination of the best available evidence and always subject to correction and improvement upon the discovery of better evidence. What's left is magic, and it doesn't work. - James Randi, "The Mask of Nostradamus" 

The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not "Eureka!" (I found it!) but "That's funny ..." -- Isaac Asimov 

"It is a test of true theories not only to account for, but to predict phenomena." -- William Whewell  

On religion

Those afraid of the universe as it really is, those who pretend to non-existent knowledge and envision a Cosmos centered on human beings will prefer the fleeting comforts of superstition. They avoid rather than confront the world. But those with the courage to explore the weave and structure of the Cosmos, even where it differs profoundly from their wishes and prejudices, will penetrate its deepest mysteries. - Carl Sagan 

It can therefore be said that, from the viewpoint of the doctrine of the faith, there are no difficulties in explaining the origin of man, in regard to the body, by means of the theory of evolution. - Pope John Paul II, "Man the Image of God is a Spiritual and Corporal Being" 

I cannot conceive of a god who rewards and punishes his creatures or has a will of the kind that we experience in ourselves. Neither can I - nor would I want to - conceive of an individual that survives his physical death. Let feeble souls, from fear or absurd egotism, cherish such thoughts. I am satisfied with the mystery of the eternity of life and a glimpse of the marvellous structure of the existing world, together with the devoted striving to comprehend a portion, be it ever so tiny, of the Reason that manifests itself in nature. - Albert Einstein 

Geology shows that fossils are of different ages. Paleontology shows a fossil sequence, the list of species representing changes through time. Taxonomy shows biological relationships among species. Evolution is the explanation that threads it all together. Creationism is the practice of squeezing one's eyes shut and wailing "does not!" Dr.Pepper@f241.n103.z1.fidonet.org  

"I have always admired the insular closed-mindedness which fundamentalists possess, a quality which allows them to filter the chaff from the wheat. And eat the chaff." -- Jim Acker  

What it means in practice is that one of greatest scientific theories of all time will be watered down to cater to the whims of ignorant and intolerant religious zealots. The quality of every students education will be degraded because some believe their mythology supersedes the rights of others to be educated. -- Chris Colby  [In response to a report of Minneapolis teachers being told to be "sensitive" to the religious views of their pupils regarding evolution:]

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