Sooner or later, false thinking brings wrong conduct.
Interpretation
False beliefs and misconceptions inevitably lead to harmful actions.
Julian Huxley's quote highlights the detrimental effects of misguided thinking on behavior. It emphasizes that when individuals hold onto false beliefs, their actions will likely be misaligned with reality, ultimately resulting in negative consequences. The quote serves as a reminder of the importance of critical thinking and striving for truth, as our thoughts influence our actions and the world around us.
In practice
In a speech about critical thinking, one could illustrate the dangers of false thinking using this quote.
...any belief in supernatural creators, rulers, or influencers of natural or human process introduces an irreparable split into the universe, and prevents us from grasping its real unity. Any belief in Absolutes, whether the absolute validity of moral commandments, of authority of revelation, of inner certitudes, or of divine inspiration, erects a formidable barrier against progress and the responsibility of improvement, moral, rational, and religious.
To speculate without facts is to attempt to enter a house of which one has not the key, by wandering aimlessly round and round, searching the walls and now and then peeping through the windows. Facts are the key.
Today the god hypothesis has ceased to be scientifically tenable, has lost its explanatory value and is becoming an intellectual and moral burden to our thought. It no longer convinces or comforts, and its abandonment often brings a deep sense of relief.
Will our Philosophy to later Life_x000D_ _x000D_ Seem but a crudeness of the planet's youth,_x000D_ _x000D_ Our Wisdom but a parasite of Truth?
The scientific doctrine of progress is destined to replace not only the myth of progress, but all other myths of human earthly destiny. It will inevitably become one of the cornerstones of man's theology, or whatever may be the future substitute for theology, and the most important external support for human ethics.
Seeking is a necessary preliminary to finding, and one who cannot endure the hardship of inquiry cannot expect to harvest the fruit of knowledge.
Listen to your heart. It knows all things, because it came from the Soul of the World and it will one day return there.
O powerful goodness! Bountiful Father! Merciful Guide! Increase in me that wisdom which discovers my truest interest. Strengthen my resolution to perform what that wisdom dictates. Accept my kind offices to thy other children as the only return in my power for thy continual favours to me.
The evangelical Christian faith I'd grown up with sustained me. It demanded that I refuse the drugs and alcohol on offer in our southwestern Ohio town, that I treat my friends and family kindly, and that I work hard in school. Most of all, when times were toughest, it gave me reason to hope.
While the pressures of life are inevitable, if at the end of the day you are unable to completely let go of the day and return to a calm, centered inner state, you are overstressed.
I used to desire many, many things, but now I have just one desire, and that's to get rid of all my other desires.
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