Robert G. Ingersoll Quotes
There is no harmony between religion and science. When science was a child, religion sought to strangle it in the cradle. Now that science has attained its youth, and superstition is in its dotage, the trembling, palsied wreck says to the athlete: "Let us be friends."
Ingersoll, Robert G. "Orthodoxy." The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, vol. 2, The Dresden Publishing Co., 1902.
In an interview with a Norwegian magazine, the Eco stated that he had based his novel, “Foucault’s Pendulum”, on Chesterton’s epigram: “When men stop believing in God, they don’t believe in nothing, they believe in anything.” See related quote.
One of the reasons that this quotation is so significant is that the Roman Catholic Church had been historically antithetical to science and scientists. It took hundreds of years before the church would admit that Galileo was right and the church wrong about the earth revolving around the sun. But Pope John Paul II, along with his other major accomplishments removed the traditional Catholic hostility in theology and tradition. He even acknowledged the validity of the Theory of Evolution and taught that there was nothing inherent in evolution that denied God or scripture.
Scientists themselves contain religious believers as well as atheists and agnostics, While there are a number of scientists who argue against religion, there are many who do not and are believers. Albert Einstein, for example, was a believer in a universal God. See {631763}.
See {641899} where Stanton concludes that religion as it existed then was a barrier to female emancipation.
Spinoza’s ideas were considered so radical and dangerous that he was the only man in history who was excommunicated by the Catholics, the Jews and the Muslims.
Robert Green "Bob" Ingersoll was an American lawyer, a Civil War veteran, political leader, and orator of the United States during the Golden Age of Free Thought, noted for his broad range of culture and his defense of agnosticism. He was nicknamed "The Great Agnostic". Ingersoll was considered to be the greatest orator and political thinker of his day, but his overt atheistic views curtailed his elected political career.
