In other words Luke's story is historically impossible and internally inconsistent. He lied to fudge the fulfillment of Micah's prophesy and to provide a villain to play off Jesus in his fictitious drama._x000D_ _x000D_ Matter flows from place to place and momentarily comes together to be you. Some people find that thought disturbing. I find the reality thrilling.
Interpretation
The quote reflects on the nature of existence and individuality, suggesting that our being is a transient assembly of matter.
Richard Dawkins presents a perspective on the nature of existence, implying that what we perceive as our individual selves is merely a temporary configuration of matter that has come together over time. While some may view this concept as unsettling, he embraces it as an exhilarating truth, emphasizing the fluidity of identity and the interconnectedness of all matter in the universe.
In practice
In a discussion about consciousness and personal identity, one might quote Dawkins to illustrate the transient nature of the self.
No educated person believes the Adam and Eve myth nowadays, but it's surprising how many parents think that it's somehow fun to pass on this falsehood to their children...I would want to argue that the truth of evolution is more interesting and more poetic
If the history-deniers who doubt the fact of evolution are ignorant of biology, those who think the world began less than ten thousand years ago are worst than ignorant, they are the deluded to the point of perversity.
The population of the U.S. is nearly 300 million, including many of the best educated, most talented, most resourceful, humane people on earth. By almost any measure of civilised attainment, from Nobel prize-counts on down, the U.S. leads the world by miles.
When you make machines that are capable of obeying instructions slavishly, and among those instructions are 'duplicate me' instructions, then of course the system is wide open to exploitation by parasites.
Even if not a single fossil has ever been found, the evidence from surviving animals would still overwhelmingly force the conclusion that Darwin was right.
The bitter hatreds that now poison Middle Eastern politics are rooted in the real or perceived wrong of the setting up of a Jewish State in an Islamic region. In view of all that the Jews had been through, it must have seemed a fair and humane solution. Probably deep familiarity with the Old Testament had given the European and American decision-makers some sort of idea that this really was the historic homeland of the Jews.
The current operating system [culture] is flawed. It actually has bugs in it that generate contradictions. We're cutting the earth from beneath our own feet. We're poisoning the atmosphere that we breathe. This is not intelligent behaviour. This is a culture with a bug in its operating system that's making it produce erratic, dysfunctional, malfunctional behaviour. Time to call a tech! And who are the techs? The shamans are the techs.
Attach yourself to what is spiritually superior, regardless of what other people think or do. Hold to your true aspirations no matter what is going on around you.
the masses are everywhere they know how to do things: they have sane and deadly angers for sane and deadly things.
Each of us creates his or her own life largely by our attitude.
Let's face a historical truth: we have never had a "free market", we have always had government intervention in the economy, and indeed that intervention has been welcomed by the captains of finance and industry. They had no quarrel with "big government" when it served their needs.
Without restoring an ethos of social responsibility, there can be no meaningful and sustained economic recovery.
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