Paul Kurtz Quotes About Belief
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Skepticism is essential to the quest for knowledge, for it is in the seedbed of puzzlement that genuine inquiry takes root. Without skepticism, we may remain mired in unexamined belief systems that are accepted as sacrosanct yet have no factual basis in reality.
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Human life has no meaning independent of itself. There is no cosmic force or deity to give it meaning or significance. There is no ultimate destiny for man. Such a belief is an illusion of humankind's infancy. The meaning of life is what we choose to give it. Meaning grows out of human purposes alone. Nature provides us with an infinite range of opportunities, but it is only our vision and our action that select and realize those that we desire.
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The skeptic has no illusions about life, nor a vain belief in the promise of immortality. Since this life here and now is all we can know, our most reasonable option is to live it fully.
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Secular humanism does not have the essential attributes of a religion: belief in a deity, the wish for some sort of afterlife, sacred dogma or texts, or an absolutist moral creed. Instead, it expresses a philosophical and ethical point of view, and it draws upon the scientific method in formulationg its naturalistic view of the nature.
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Only a fool of a scientist would dismiss the evidence and reports in front of him and substitute his own beliefs in their place.
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We have never denied that it is possible, indeed probable, that other forms of life, even intelligent life, exist in the universe. But this is different from the belief that we are now being visited by extraterrestrial beings in spacecraft, that they are abducting people, and the there is a vast government cover-up.
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Homo religiosus invents religious symbols, which he venerates and worships to save him from facing the finality of his death and dissolution. He devises paradise fictions to provide succor and support... In acts of supreme self-deception, at various times and in various places he has been willing to profess belief in the most incredible myths because of what they have promised him.
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