Auguste Comte Quotes

If the ignorance of nature gave birth to gods, the knowledge of nature is calculated to destroy them.

The relation of evolution to man has so far been a very much more complex and disturbing matter than the relation of gravitation to man. Its significance in relation to the very existence of man is pregnant with opportunities for trouble. Emotions, traditions, old beliefs, religion, and especially formal theology, are involved. Our anthropocentric system of world philosophy, outgrowth of centuries of self-worship, feels itself assailed. The reaction is one of anger and fear. Is man after all not a unique, specially created being, around whom and for whom an all-powerful Creator has produced the rest of life and the world? Evolution comes as the iconoclast to rob man of his sacred isolation.

I am against religion because it teaches us to be satisfied with not understanding the world.

Imagine someone holding forth on biology whose only knowledge of the subject is 'The Book of British Birds,' and you have a rough idea of what it feels like to read Richard Dawkins on theology.

The natural inclination in all humans is to posit a force, a spirit, outside of us. That tendency toward superstitious magical thinking is just built into our nature.

Religion is something left over from the infancy of our intelligence, it will fade away as we adopt reason and science as our guidelines.

In those parts of the world where learning and science have prevailed, miracles have ceased; but in those parts of it as are barbarous and ignorant, miracles are still in vogue.

We know the clerical party; it is an old party. This it is which has found for the truth those two marvelous supporters, ignorance and error. This it is which forbids to science and genius the going beyond the Missal and which wishes to cloister thought in dogmas.

One class of philosophers calls every extraordinary appearance a judgment or a sign; another class views everything as the working of matter and motion. These two sets are at war with each other. The one denounces the other as superstitious or atheistical.

Science must begin with myths and with the criticism of myth.

The line between science and magic becomes blurred so that public judgments on technical issues can be erratic or badly flawed. It frequently appears that some people will believe almost anything. Thus judgments can be manipulated or warped by unscrupulous groups. Distortions or outright falsehoods can come to be accepted as fact.

Religion has ever filled the mind of man with darkness, and kept him in ignorance of his real duties and true interests. It is only by dispelling the clouds and phantoms of Religion, that we shall discover Truth, Reason, and Morality. Religion diverts us from the causes of evils, and from the remedies which nature prescribes; far from curing, it only aggravates, multiplies, and perpetuates them.

Now it must be asked if we can comprehend why comets signify the death of magnates and coming wars, for writers of philosophy say so. The reason is not apparent, since vapor no more rises in a land where a pauper lives than where a rich man resides, whether he be king or someone else. Furthermore, it is evident that a comet has a natural cause not dependent on anything else; so it seems that it has no relation to someone's death or to war.

Gods are fragile things, they may be killed by a whiff of science or a dose of common sense.

We cannot infer that because sciences of things divine and human are full of controversies and quarrels, therefore their whole subject-matter is uncertain ; for there have been many persons so enamoured of contradiction, as to turn into ridicule geometrical axioms.

I think it's misleading to use a word like 'God' in the way Einstein did. I'm sorry that Einstein did. I think he was asking for trouble, and he certainly was misunderstood.

I'm very interested in Darwinism and how that affects us on a day-to-day level. But I also have a deep interest in theology and the spiritual.

Intelligent design is a philosophy of ignorance.

The 'law of wills and causes,' formulated by Comte, . . . is that when men do not know the natural causes of things, they simply attribute them to wills like their own; thus they obtain a theory which provisionally takes the place of science, and this theory forms a basis for theology.

A touch of science, even bogus science, gives an edge to the superstitious tale.

Superstition, in all times and among all nations, is the fear of a spirit whose passions are those of a man, whose acts are the acts of a man; who is present in some places, not in others; who makes no places holy and not others; who is kind to one person, unkind to another; who is pleased or angry according to the degree of attention you pay him, or praise you refuse to him; who is hostile generally to human pleasure, but may be bribed by sacrifice of a part of that pleasure into permitting the rest. This, whatever form of faith it colors, is the essence of superstition.

The conception of gods originated in fear and curiosity. Primitive man, unable to understand the phenomena of nature, and harassed by them, saw in every terrifying manifestation some sinister force expressly directed against him; and as ignorance and fear are the parents of all superstition, the troubled fancy of primitive man wove the God idea.

And in these four things, opinion of ghosts , ignorance of second causes, devotion towards what men fear , and taking of things casual for prognostics , consisteth the natural seed of religion ; which by reason of the different fancies, judgments and passions of several men, has grown up into ceremonies so different, that those which are used by one man, are for the most part ridiculous to another.

If cathedrals had been universities If dungeons of the Inquisition had been laboratories If Christians had believed in character instead of creed If they had taken from the bible only that which is GOOD and thrown away the wicked and absurd If temple domes had been observatories If priests had been philosophers If missionaries had taught useful arts instead of bible lore If astrology had been astronomy If the black arts had been chemistry If superstition had been science If religion had been humanity The world then would be a heaven filled with love, and liberty and joy

Religion and science have always been matters of faith in something. It is the same something.