Two of RB's favourite's today:

"Consistency requires you to be as ignorant today as you were a year ago."

- Bernard Berenson


"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."

- George Bernard Shaw

"The very man who has argued you down, will sometimes be found, years later, to have been influenced by what you said."

- C.S. Lewis

What you are is God's gift to you;
what you do with yourself is your gift to God.
Danish proverb

"To believe is to know you believe, and to know you believe is not to believe."

- Jean-Paul Sartre

Hey, Sartey-Paul, can you bring us by that again?

I read it thus: that real belief is really faith, and that the moment we (think we) know something beyond a shadow of a doubt, we're headed for a fall.

But he's French, and the French, they are a funny people - but a wonderful people.

He said raptly, "See what I mean? About one in thirty eats something different. And that's all we need. I tell you, Purser, wherever you look, if you look long enough, you can find a way to make most of a group turn on the rest."

- "Mr. Costello, Hero"
by Theodore Sturgeon

Doug
Spaulding:
But J.P. Sartre was an atheist. So his belief was in...basically...nothing. For everything that existed, according to JP... was what he saw...and that didn't take any belief.

So shouldn't that be:
"To believe is not possible, if you know what I mean, and to know what I mean, is hard to believe."
-Jean Paul Sartre

The problem here is that what we can "see" is only a tiny part of the electromagnetic spectrum. There is so much more information available to us that we can't "see". We can "know" about it through instrumentation, that extends the senses into those other frequencies, and provides information that can be assessed and utilized to characterize our universe. Faith has no instrumentation, it is just belief in something that cannot, or has not yet, been proven through facts and data. Faith won't get us to the Moon or to Mars. Instrumentation gathering facts and data will. What provides Mankind with the curiousity to want to go where He has not previously been, now that requires some kind of faith.

quote:

Originally posted by Nard Kordell:
...J.P. Sartre was an atheist. So his belief was in...basically...nothing...

It's not that atheists believe in NOTHING, it's that they believe there is no God.

"One never knows, do one?"

-Thomas "Fats" Waller

"Happiness is the Millionaire of Life.
Adventure is the Millionaire of Life
But Death is the Billionaire."

~Andy Wellman

"If you have never said "Excuse me" to a parking meter or bashed your shins on a fireplug, you are probably wasting too much valuable reading time."
- Sherri Chasin Calvo

A Fireplug story! So, mom had called, for the second time, for us to come in and get cleaned up and settled down for the night. It was long after sundown because the street light between my aunt and uncle's two huge American Elm trees was on, and the rare car that passed down our quiet neighborhood street would have its head lights on.

Anyway...it was a tie game of street football, two hand tag anywhere. One of the guys we hung around with, a red haired youth, who had a look-alike brother two years his junior - both with initials RR, had called for a pass deep down the street just beyond the storm drain that marked the end zone. The catch would seal a victory, and we could conclude the day's play knowing tomorrow another game of rough and ready competition would be held and that one team would have bragging rights for 24 hours.

In scuffed up sneakers and torn blue jeans, we unhuddled, all sweaty as only twelve year old boys can be. I was the quarterback and RR, the intended receiver, had gone running as fast as he could down the side of our not so well paved side street.

He made his cut across the middle of the "field" just as I threw the ball into the night sky. It spiraled upward and then disappeared for a moment as it passed through the bright glare of the street light. Then, reappearing, it began its descent, poetically, into the outstretched, waiting arms of aforementioned RR. So many years later, the images remain clearly etched.

The kids playing against us (probably a 5 on 5 gathering) immediately knew the game would be over, and they would be the losers. The young red-headed runner was as sure handed an athlete as we had in our neighborhood of dozens of brothers and cousins and best friends.

Catch the ball he did. Right at the storm drain as called for moments earlier. At a full sprint his path took him just out of the well-lit area we had been playing in and just off the street onto the fringe of a neighbor's lawn. There stood the fireplug.

It never moved when he hit it. It never made even a meager attempt. It stood its ground as if it were rooted there by a thousand years of growth deep into the earth.

There was a rather sickening, though somewhat melodious, ring when RR ran right into the well-rooted fire hydrant. He did a complete somersault, head over heels. We all ran over to find RR lying in the shadows of an early fall night, writhing and groaning loudly, with the ball still cradled in his arms.

I sometime go home to visit, and whenever I pass that very site, I remember that catch and the sound the red-head's knee made when it took on that fireplug. Ouch.

True story.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: fjp451,

Well-written and memory-provoking!