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Quotes from The Immortalization Commission: The Strange Quest to Cheat Death — John Gray

born 1948 England

← All quotes by John Gray

5 quotes

Cheating ageing by a low-calorie diet, uploading one’s mind into a super-computer, migrating into outer space … Longing for everlasting life, humans show that they remain the death-defined animal.

The Immortalization Commission: The Strange Quest to Cheat Death (2011)

Much in the study of the paranormal was what we would now call pseudo-science. But the line between science and pseudo-science is smudged and shifting; where it lies seems clear only in retrospect. There is no pristine science untouched by the vagaries of faith.

The Immortalization Commission: The Strange Quest to Cheat Death (2011)

For a consistent naturalist science can only be a refinement of animal exploration, a practice humans have devised for finding their way in the bit of the universe in which they have so far survived. Instead of thinking of science as a law-seeking activity, we can think of it as a tool humans use to cope with a world they will never understand.

The Immortalization Commission: The Strange Quest to Cheat Death (2011)

Evangelical atheists preach the need for a scientific view of things, but a settled view does not go with scientific method. If we know anything it is that most of the theories that prevail at any one time are false. Scientific theories are not components of a world-view but tools we use to tinker with the world.

The Immortalization Commission: The Strange Quest to Cheat Death (2011)

Though it is often assumed that naturalism must be hostile to religion, the opposite is true. Enemies of religion think of it as an intellectual error, which humanity will eventually grow out of. It is hard to square this view with Darwinian science – why should religion be practically universal, if it has no evolutionary value?

The Immortalization Commission: The Strange Quest to Cheat Death (2011)

Attribution

Quotes and notes from Wikiquote: John Gray (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0.