The emergence of consciousness, like the unfolding of a leaf, relies upon restraint.
Science reveals where religion conceals. Where religion purports to explain, it actually resorts to tautology. To assert that “God did it” is no more than an admission of ignorance dressed deceitfully as an explanation...
Any argument that asserts that ‘God did it’ is a sign of a lazy mind.
Science is almost totally incompatible with religion.
Truth is not arrived at by majority vote.
The challenge of elucidating living processes – including consciousness and all its baggage which we bundle together as ‘the human spirit’ – is only one example of a challenge where hard work is paying off and science does not need to accept the false explanations peddled by religions.
My aim is to argue that the universe can come into existence without intervention, and that there is no need to invoke the idea of a Supreme Being in one of its numerous manifestations.
I regard teaching religion as purveying lies.
Chemistry begins in the stars. The stars are the source of the chemical elements, which are the building blocks of matter and the core of our subject.
Life, at root, is molecular bumbling.
Focusing on what matters means saying no to things that don’t matter. Otherwise, your life becomes cluttered with distractions.
This matters. Real friends – people you trust, respect, laugh with, and can rely on – are a vitally important part of life. No matter how much wealth or fame you accumulate, if you don’t have true friends it’s unlikely you’ll be happy. Sadly I know too many people who have achieved their material goals, but have no friends. As the expression goes: greed is a hole you can never fill.
The lesson to me is that you can focus on something going well, or something beautiful, or something interesting – even amidst terrible times.
Proceeding when there are obvious issues is a dumb thing to do. Even if it’s inconvenient or painful, I’ve learned, I’m better off doing nothing when the only available choice has glaring issues.
The trick is people who are most productive tend to say no to things that are unimportant to them and focus on what they believe matters.
History does not repeat itself, but it does rhyme. In other words, just because something happened once doesn’t necessarily mean it will happen again in the same way.
Although what makes you passionate generally doesn’t change over time, what you want to do sometimes does.
To allow yourself time to think, there are many non- technological tricks to managing information. All of them require you to make choices to focus your energy. I like to set aside blocks of time for specific activities – even to read or chat.
How many movies have you seen where the hero or heroine quits a job they hate to pursue their life dreams? These movies wouldn’t be made, and they wouldn’t resonate with so many people, if they didn’t contain an important desire that most people deny themselves.
As Winston Churchill said: Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.