My objection to organized religion is the premature conclusion to ultimate truth that it represents.
Interpretation
The quote criticizes organized religion for claiming to have definitive answers about ultimate truth too soon.
Arthur C. Clarke expresses skepticism towards organized religion, suggesting that it often presents its teachings as final truths without sufficient exploration or evidence. He implies that such beliefs may hinder a more open and investigative approach to understanding the universe and our existence within it.
In practice
During a debate on the role of religion in society, one might reference this quote to emphasize the importance of questioning dogmatic beliefs.
Nowhere in space will we rest our eyes upon the familiar shapes of trees and plants, or any of the animals that share our world. Whatsoever life we meet will be as strange and alien as the nightmare creatures of the ocean abyss, or of the insect empire whose horrors are normally hidden from us by their microscopic scale.
As our own species is in the process of proving, one cannot have superior science and inferior morals. The combination is unstable and self-destroying.
It has yet to be proven that intelligence has any survival value.
The best measure of a man's honesty isn't his income tax return. It's the zero adjust on his bathroom scale.
It was the mark of a barbarian to destroy something one could not understand.
My favorite definition of an intellectual: 'Someone who has been educated beyond his/her intelligence'.
Two races share today the soil of Canada. These people had not always been friends. But I hasten to say it. There is no longer any family here but the human family. It matters not the language people speak, or the altars at which they kneel.
Be human in this most inhuman of ages; guard the image of man for it is the image of God.
Also, when you escape a Communist regime, you treasure liberty and you understand that as government and state expand, liberty must contract.
Nobody could stand an eternity of Heaven.
Keeping books on social aid is capitalistic nonsense. I just use the money for the poor. I can't stop to count it.
Whatever skills I have acquired, whatever gifts I have been given, I place them at Your service.
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