My Favorite Quotation

“I could never understand ethnic or national pride. Because to me, pride should be reserved for something you achieve or attain on your own, not something that happens by accident of birth. Being Irish isn’t a skill, it’s a f***ing genetic accident. You wouldn’t say “I’m proud to be 5’11”. I’m proud to have a predisposition for colon cancer.” So why the f*** would you be proud to be Irish, or proud to be Italian, or American or anything?”

— George Carlin

Carlin in the 70's

This is one of my favorite quotes, and one of many that I enjoy from George Carlin. Carlin is definitely one of my heroes, and a person I've always looked up to and wanted to mold myself after. This quote exemplifies the exact reason I love him and his work so much. He has such a sarcastic and truthful humor, that almost everything he says has validity to me, and I have shaped my own identity around some of his ideas in many ways. He was a pioneer of his time, and to me his most admirable quality was the fact that he was so outspoken and didn't care what you thought of what he had to say. He simply stated what he believed, and if you didn't agree it was OK because he would just move on. 

This quote is so comical to me because you hear this sort of thing so much nowadays. You always see a bumper sticker, or shirts with these sayings on them. Although it is very patriotic and nice of you to represent your country, it is simply the wrong choice of word. The logic behind his words just makes too much sense to be ignored in my honest opinion, and it's quite comical that people say these things all the time without realizing that it doesn't make any sense. 

Carlin During His Last Special

I believe that it's good to be patriotic, but a better way of saying it would be, "Happy to be an American." Or even better, "Lucky to be an American." Because we all are very lucky to be living where we are living given all the famine and death in the world today. I think people look past this luck a lot, and focus on trivial problems that are not as important as others.  From now on, when I hear someone say this particular statement, I'm going to make sure I correct them, even if they don't like it. Like George says a few seconds after this quote, "Pride goeth before the fall. Know your proverbs." This was very amusing because Carlin is a very well known critic of religion, and the fact that he knew a bible line that correlated so well with his point just drives his logic home a little more. 

DIJ - The Myths of Science and Creation Reaction

When I started reading The Myths of Science - Creation in Dreams and Inward Journeys, I didn't know which angle the author Marcelo Gleiser was going to come from. Was he more religious? Or more scientific minded? I found out quickly that the answer was neither. He was writing from a perspective which was very neutral. He believes that one aspect could not be without the other.

He goes on to write about past philosophers such as Aristotle, and Copernicus who were both very religious men, who felt that science was simply a way to better understand their God's creations. This sort of view carried on throughout history with men such as Plato, Bruno, Kepler, Galileo, and Issac Newton. They all believed in something other worldly, and often used this as motivation to research different aspects of how our world and astronomy work.

It wasn't until the Einsteinian era that atheist scientists became to be the more popular combination. By this time many scientists and philosophers had time to go over all other works by past scientific minds, and felt it was silly to maintain a faith in something that had little evidence. It seems that Marcelo Gleiser believes that instead of the two sides being separated and black and white, they should be talked about together more because history shows that they weren't mutually exclusive, but instead aided the past scientific mind to work hard to come up with different theories.

I must say I never thought about it this way, and didn't really realize that all those scientists back in early history were so religious. This put some things into perspective for me. I am an atheist by definition, but I don't like to call myself that, because there are so many negative connotations attached to that term. I always thought that without people who didn't believe in a deity, but instead wanted to find things out for themselves that we would never find anything out scientifically, but from this passage I see that without religion, we wouldn't have had many of the theories we have today. I don't feel it is necessary to be religious anymore, but back in those days, it seemed very important as motivation for their great work.