"Now, the invention of the scientific method and science is, I'm sure we'll all agree, the most powerful intellectual idea, the most powerful framework for thinking and investigating and understanding and challenging the world around us that there is, and that it rests on the premise that any idea is there to be attacked and if it withstands the attack then it lives to fight another day and if it doesn't withstand the attack then down it goes. Religion doesn't seem to work like that; it has certain ideas at the heart of it which we call sacred or holy or whatever. That's an idea we're so familiar with, whether we subscribe to it or not, that it's kind of odd to think what it actually means, because really what it means is 'Here is an idea or a notion that you're not allowed to say anything bad about; you're just not. Why not? - because you're not!" - Douglas Adams
He wrote long sentences didn't he!
Thanks to the
Pod Delusion special about Douglas Adams for the first half of this, which led me to find the entire quotation. I liked the last part and have heard Richard Dawkins quote it on videos on Youtube but had forgotten where it came from.
1 comment:
Douglas Adams is a personal hero of mine. I starting reading the Hitchhiker's books and Dirk Gently books when I was an early teen. His very particular style of constructing sentences helped reshape my brain. He forced me to think in a different fashion because it was the only way to really digest his words.
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