James

Essex/ University of Southampton

Posts, Propitiations and Re-Blogs will include, though not exclusively: Rationality, Nature, Science, Literature and Free Speech.

Hitch, deGrasse Tyson, Dawkins, Orwell, Attenborough, Ricky Gervais and Alan Moore are expected to make regular appearances, alongside a multifarious supporting cast.

"If you're looking for wonder and surreality, look no further than the natural world. It is more astonishing and profound than all the theologies and imaginings of man, for we are but a small part of it"

"Take everything seriously but yourself, for you are dust in a cosmos. But consider that dust has formed worlds ... In fact, take NOTHING seriously! It is all so meaningless and fundamental, that it must be laughable, lest any individual be alienated by its magnitude. Invite all, for only a few hold the answers. I hold none!"

Foundations I support:
WWF
Panthera
The Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science
British Humanist Association
Global Secularist Movement
RSPCA
Ask me anything
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“

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“ Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.
The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is the demand for their real happiness. To call on them to give up their illusions about their condition is to call on them to give up a condition that requires illusions. The criticism of religion is, therefore, in embryo, the criticism of that vale of tears of which religion is the halo.
Criticism has plucked the imaginary flowers on the chain not in order that man shall continue to bear that chain without fantasy or consolation, but so that he shall throw off the chain and pluck the living flower ”

Karl Marx (From Marx’s Contribution to Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right, the source of the much misused ‘Religion is the opiate of the people’). 

Dear Human... (SO good)  

“ Who do you think you are? You are an ape. A mammal, a reptile, a fish, a worm, a ball of cells. And finally, a single cell floating in the saline womb of the primordial seas. ”

Ernst Haeckel

“ Independence is my happiness, and I view things as they are, without regard to place or person; my country is the world, and my religion is to do good ”

Thomas Paine

“ A book is made from a tree. It is an assemblage of flat, flexible parts (still called “leaves”) imprinted with dark pigmented squiggles. One glance at it and you hear the voice of another person, perhaps someone dead for thousands of years. Across the millennia, the author is speaking, clearly and silently, inside your head, directly to you. Writing is perhaps the greatest of human inventions, binding together people, citizens of distant epochs, who never knew one another. Books break the shackles of time, proof that humans can work magic. ”

Carl Sagan (via pavorst)

“ The first thing that distinguishes a writer is that he is most alive when alone ”

Martin Amis

“ Science doesn’t concern itself with the non-existence of something. The periodic table of imaginary things would be too big for a classroom- infinitely big in fact, and rather pointless. ”

Ricky Gervais

http://blogs.wsj.com/speakeasy/2010/12/22/does-god-exist-ricky-gervais-takes-your-questions/

(http://blogs.wsj.com/speakeasy/2010/12/19/a-holiday-message-from-ricky-gervais-why-im-an-atheist/)

“ We control life, Winston, at all its levels. You are
imagining that there is something called human nature
which will be outraged by what we do and will turn
against us. But we create human nature. We do not
not destroy the heretic because he resists us: so long
as he resists us we never destroy him. We convert
him, we capture his inner mind, we reshape him. ”

O’Brien, Inner Party member in Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949), by George Orwell (via emptyblueprints)

“Pursue some path, however narrow and crooked, in which you can walk with love and reverence.” - Henry David Thoreau

“Pursue some path, however narrow and crooked, in which you can walk with love and reverence.”

- Henry David Thoreau

(Source: burning-soul)

thescienceofreality:

project-argus:

Carl Sagan on astrology in newspapers.  From his interview with Ted Turner.

Also, photosets are fun.

I will never stop reblogging this set.

“ Republicans always run on that idea that, ‘government doesn’t work’: yeah, the way you do it, but it could work. ”

Bill Maher

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=endscreen&NR=1&v=xPFBmFz70gU

‘To Hitch’ - In Memoriam - (2012 Global Atheist Convention)

“Not only are we a part of the universe, but the universe is in us” - Neil deGrasse Tyson

“Not only are we a part of the universe, but the universe is in us”

- Neil deGrasse Tyson

Statue to modernity (I’m trying to find grounds for justification; I shouldn’t).

Statue to modernity (I’m trying to find grounds for justification; I shouldn’t).

(Source: supremepenis)

“

The isles of Greece, the isles of Greece!

Where burning Sappho loved and sung,

Where grew the arts of war and peace,

Where Delos rose, and Phoebus sprung!

Eternal summer gilds them yet,

But all, except their sun, is set…

And where are they? And where art thou?

My country? On thy voiceless shore

The heroic lay is tuneless now—

The heroic bosom beats no more!

And must thy lyre, so long divine,

Degenerate into hands like mine?

‘Tis something, in the dearth of fame,

Though linked among a fettered race,

To feel at least a patriot’s shame,

Even as I sing, suffuse my face;

For what is left the poet here?

For Greeks a blush–for Greece a tear….

”

Byron

(In homage to the illustrious past of a nation close to my heart, Byron also recognises the country’s inability to enjoy its heritage, as a result of Greece’s position in modern times. I have recently been reminded of this, and the touching threnody above seems perfectly congruous). 

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