Craig Evans

“I condemn false prophets, I condemn the effort to take away the power of rational decision, to drain people of their free will -- and a hell of a lot of money in the bargain. Religions vary in their degree of idiocy, but I reject them all. For most people, religion is nothing more than a substitute for a malfunctioning brain.
Gene Roddenberry”
― Gene Roddenberry

“Life may be chemistry, but it's a special circumstance of chemistry. Organisms exist not because of reactions that are possible, but because of reactions that are barely possible. Too much reactivity and we would spontaneously combust. Too little, and we would turn cold and die. Proteins enable these barely possible reactions, allowing us to live on the edges of chemical entropy-skating perilously, but never falling in.”
― Siddhartha Mukherjee, The Gene: An Intimate History

“Pope Gregory I (in 601) laid the church’s strategy out quite plainly. As he wrote to Mellitus, his missionary in England, “[Do] not…stop such ancient pagan festivities…adapt them to the rites of the Church, only changing the reason of them from a heathen to a Christian impulse.”
― David Kyle Johnson, The Myths That Stole Christmas: Seven Misconceptions That hijacked the Holiday

“Prejudice is by definition unreasonable and illogical. A reasoned dislike or a logical objection is not a prejudice, although false reasoning and pseudo logic are often found in the service of prejudice. Prejudice is invariably a symptom of a character defect, but tragically it is one that is shared in some degree by us all. Race, national and cultural prejudice is being recognized by thinking men as the great evil which as brought us to the brink of destruction. Prejudice which finds its focus in the accents,manners and styles of others is passed off as comparatively innocuous, but even this brand of prejudice does more to divide men than does any real differences in ideals and aspirations.”
― Euell Gibbons, Stalking the Wild Asparagus