Peter Williams > Quotes

“Finally, communication seems to work wonders during a trip alone. Some sailors find ways to talk to inanimate objects assign them a personality and make them members of the crew. It is a great way to cope with loneliness and express your emotions.”
― Peter Williams, Sailing: What You Need to Know before Sailing around the World

“properly basic belief’ is any belief that’s rational to hold without its being based on any other beliefs”
― Peter Williams, A Faithful Guide To Philosophy

“Consider the joke about the miserly farmer who fed his longsuffering cow less and less each day; but just when he thought that he had weaned the cow from eating altogether, the unfortunate animal died . . . showing that we do not need as many gods as early man believed does not show that we need no gods at all; that must be argued on its own merits.57”
― Peter Williams, C S Lewis vs the New Atheists

“The exquisite world of imagination opened up by any powerful music is itself problematic, for it tempts listeners to put into words the feelings it arouses in them and so to visualise a composer's priorities and even personality. There must be few people who have played, sung, listened to or written about Bach's music who do not feel they have a special understanding of him, a private connection, unique to themselves, but ultimately coming from their idea of what music is and does.”
― Peter Williams, J.S. Bach: A Life in Music

“Agnostic philosopher Antony O’Hear agrees: ‘there are aspects of our experience and existence more fundamental than science, and on which science depends for its possibility. So science cannot be used, as it often is, to undermine those features of our natures.’35 The idea that the mind is ‘nothing but’ the brain is ultimately a deduction from the assumption of naturalism.”
― Peter Williams, C S Lewis vs the New Atheists