Michael Shermer's commencement address at Whittier College

Yellow_Number_Five
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Michael Shermer's commencement address at Whittier College

Pretty good. Better than what I got at any of my graduations anyway.

"The Meaning of Life, the Universe, and Everything"

 

http://www.whittier.edu/News/Articles/2008CommencementSpeech.aspx

 

I am against religion because it teaches us to be satisfied with not understanding the world. - Richard Dawkins

When I hear of Shoedinger's Cat, I reach for my gun. - Stephen Hawking

Fear is just another word for ignorance. - Hunter S. Thompson


Kevin R Brown
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I instinctively winced at

I instinctively winced at the conflation of awe and emotion with spirituality and religion, but I thought it was alright aside from that.

Quote:
"Let me say only this much to the moral issue involved: Suppose Germany had developed two bombs before we had any bombs. And suppose Germany had dropped one bomb, say, on Rochester and the other on Buffalo, and then having run out of bombs she would have lost the war. Can anyone doubt that we would then have defined the dropping of atomic bombs on cities as a war crime, and that we would have sentenced the Germans who were guilty of this crime to death at Nuremberg and hanged them?

But, again, don't misunderstand me. The only conclusion we can draw is that governments acting in a crisis are guided by questions of expediency, and moral considerations are given very little weight, and that America is no different from any other nation in this respect."

- Leo Szilard