February 2012
“The lovers wait to lose their balance. They would dive
gratefully into the...”
– Cyril Wong, Accerelando (via grammatolatry)
“Sometimes I’d rather be a tree frog. I don’t think they fall asleep worried that...”
– Stephen Fry (via tigerxxeyes)
“I think it is absolutely the responsibility of an artist to look into darkness...”
– Drew McWeeny (The Bigger Picture: What happens when we find The Line as viewers? - HitFix.com)
“Scientists do not trust what is intuitively obvious, because intuitively obvious...”
– Carl Sagan - Wonder and Skepticism (via scipsy)
Woman: Can I have birth control?
Government: No.
Woman: I got pregnant because I didn't have birth control and I don't want the fetus. Can I have an abortion?
Government: No.
Woman: I gave birth to my child but since I wasn't expecting it, I can't afford daycare. Can I have help paying for it?
Government: No.
Woman: My boyfriend isn't excited about sex anymore, because I lost my figure due to pregnancy. Will you pay for his erectile dysfunction pills?
Government: Yes.
Andrew Sullivan: I have never doubted the existence of God. Never. My acceptance of God’s existence--of a force beyond everything and the source of everything--goes so far back in my consciousness and memory that I can neither recall “finding” this faith nor being taught it. So when I am asked to justify this belief, as you reasonably do, I am at a loss. At this layer of faith, the first critical layer, the layer that includes all religious people and many who call themselves spiritual rather than religious, I can offer no justification as such. I have just never experienced the ordeal of consciousness without it. It is the air I have always breathed. I meet atheists and am as baffled at their lack of faith--at this level--as you are at my attachment to it. When people ask me how I came to choose this faith, I can only say it chose me. I have no ability to stop believing. Crises in my life--death of loved ones, diagnosis with a fatal illness, emotional loss--have never shaken this faith. In fact, they have all strengthened it. I know of no “proof” that could dissuade me of this, since no “proof” ever persuaded me of it.
Sam Harris: You appear to see some strange, epistemological significance in the fact that you cannot remember when or how you acquired your faith. Surely the roots of many of your beliefs are similarly obscure. I don’t happen to remember when or how I came to believe that Pluto is a planet. Should I say that this belief “chose me”? What if, upon hearing that astronomers have changed their opinion about Pluto, I announced that “I have no ability to stop believing?. I know of no ‘proof’ that could dissuade me of [Pluto’s planethood], since no ‘proof’ ever persuaded me of it.”
“Scripture itself remains a perpetual engine of extremism: because, while He may...”
– Sam Harris (via cocknbull)
“If people bring so much courage to this world the world has to kill them to...”
– Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms (via wine-loving-vagabond)
Cardinal Ordered Memo on Priests Destroyed,...
helvetebrann:
A Philadelphia archdiocese official on trial for allegedly covering up the sexual abuse of children has asked a court to throw out charges against him based on a 1994 memo showing Cardinal Anthony Bevilacqua ordered a list of suspected abusive Catholic priests to be destroyed.
As revealed in court papers filed on Friday, Molloy’s handwritten memo dated March 22, 1994,...
Gay Judge Refuses To Marry Straight Couples →
Dallas judge Tonya Parker says she won’t conduct any marriage ceremonies until she and every other gay person in Texas have the same right to marry. When she turns straight couples away, Parker tells them: “I’m sorry. I don’t perform marriage ceremonies because we are in a state that does not have marriage equality, and until it does, I am not going to partially apply the law to one group of...
