George H. Smith Quotes

It is my firm conviction that man has nothing to gain, emotionally or otherwise, by adhering to a falsehood, regardless of how comfortable or sacred that falsehood may appear. Anyone who claims, on the one hand, that he is concerned with human welfare, and who demands, on the other hand, that man must suspend or renounce the use of his reason, is contradicting himself. There can be no knowledge of what is good for man apart from knowledge of reality and human nature, and there is no manner in which this knowledge can be acquired except through reason. To advocate irrationality is to advocate that which is destructive to human life.

To advocate irrationality is to advocate that which is destructive to human life.

[A]ny being with the supposed capacity to create the logically impossible must himself be logically impossible.

If a supernatural being is to be exempt from natural law, it cannot possess specific, determinatecharacteristics. These attributes would impose limits and these limits would restrict the capacitiesof this supernatural being. In this case, a supernatural being would be subject to the causalrelationships that mark natural existence, which would disqualify it as a god. Therefore, we mustsomehow conceive of a being without a specific nature, a being that is indeterminate—a being, inother words, that is nothing in particular. But these characteristics (or, more precisely, lack ofcharacteristics) are incompatible with the notion of existence itself.

If a supernatural being is to be exempt from natural law, it cannot possess specific, determinate characteristics. These attributes would impose limits and these limits would restrict the capacities of this supernatural being. In this case, a supernatural being would be subject to the causal relationships that mark natural existence, which would disqualify it as a god. Therefore, we must somehow conceive of a being without a specific nature, a being that is indeterminate—a being, in other words, that is nothing in particular. But these characteristics (or, more precisely, lack of characteristics) are incompatible with the notion of existence itself.

[A]ny being with thesupposed capacity to create the logically impossible must himself be logically impossible.