Theme: “I Never Believed in Things That I Couldn’t See”

🔎 Lexicon containing “I Never Believed in Things That I Couldn’t See”

Definitions and explanations of key terms used throughout the site.

Empiricism

The character of being empirical; reliance on direct experience and observation rather than on theory.

Skepticism

The ancient school of Pyrrho of Elis that stressed the uncertainty of our beliefs in order to oppose dogmatism.

💬 Quote Library — containing “I Never Believed in Things That I Couldn’t See”

It’s Easier to Fool People

It's easier to fool people than to convince them that they have been fooled

from Unknown (Misattributed to Mark Twain)

He Must Have Built It All for Us

If He put us on center stage, He must have built it all for us.

from The Language of God by Francis S. Collins

📖 Excerpts Library

A Pantheist Who Believed God Was Everywhere

In a culture conditioned to think in categories of Cartesian dualism or of a pre-Copernican cosmology that split the heavens and the earth, Spinoza was taken either as an atheist who reduced everything to matter ... or as a pantheist...

Source: Constantine’s Sword by James Carroll

Acceptance of the Copernican Cosmology Was a Religious Act

If there was an infinity of worlds, as Bruno maintained, for whom in particular had Christ died on this earth? If the universe was eternal, what would become of God the Creator? Acceptance of the Copernican cosmology was a religious...

Source: Utopian Thought in the Western World by Frank E. Manuel

Their Misplaced Faith in Gravity

Here they are hurling through space on a molten rock at 67,000 miles an hour and the only thing that keeps them from flying out of their shoes is their misplaced faith in gravity.

Source: 3rd Rock from the Sun

They Merely Refused to Believe That It Was Divine Meddling

This is not to say that the new wave of philosophers necessarily wanted to deny the existence of the gods, rather that they merely refused to believe that it was divine meddling that was responsible for natural phenomena.

Source: Big Bang by Simon Singh

The Secret Teachers of the Western World

No One Has Ever Seen It

Even figures associated with the rise of modern science and the modern world—Copernicus, Johannes Kepler, Isaac Newton—were profoundly influenced by Hermetic ideas. Kepler, who discovered the laws of planetary motion, made a living as an astrologer, and Newton wrote more...

Source: The Secret Teachers of the Western World by Gary Lachman

Did the Earth Really Orbit the Sun?

Another reason why the Greeks rejected Aristarchus’ Solar System was its apparent failure to stand up to scientific scrutiny. Aristarchus had built a model of the universe that was supposed to match reality, but it was not clear that his...

Source: Big Bang by Simon Singh