They did indeed use the AM in religious rituals and AM does have deliriant and hallucinatory effects and more. This would mean not only is it linked to religion and religious social structures in the ceremony, but there is a significant link that it ...
I believe, if there is some sort of higher power, the universe is it. Whenever religious people ask me where the universe came from, I tell them that it has always been here, and was never created. The Big Bang theory is based on the fact that the un...
[Religious belief is] outmoded and ridiculous. [Belief in gods was a] worn out but once useful crutch in mankind's journey towards truth. We consider the time has come for that crutch to be abandoned. It is a vacuous answer... To say that 'God made t...
When the spent sun throws up its rays on cloud And goes down burning into the gulf below, No voice in nature is heard to cry aloud At what has happened. Birds, at least must know It is the change to darkness in the sky. Murmuring something quiet in h...
Burnout at its deepest level is not the result of some train wreck of examinations, long call shifts, or poor clinical evaluations. It is the sum total of hundreds and thousands of tiny betrayals of purpose, each one so minute that it hardly attracts...
Don't be fool enough to think you can know a person's character after a few moments of observation. You have no idea where his life began or how his saga has unfolded thus far. Only his present state can you witness. To judge him at a glance is like ...
An evolutionary perspective of our place in the history of the earth reminds us that Homo sapiens sapiens has occupied the planet for the tiniest fraction of that planet's four and a half thousand million years of existence. In many ways we are a bio...
When I took over as chair of the fashion program, I was horrified that only the faculty member was allowed to speak in a critique. I'm talking about perfectly nurturing teachers. But the rule was there would be no call of hands for students to contri...
Feminism is a tremendously underestimated force, viewed in the present context primarily as a woman's concern. The understanding has not yet percolated throughout society that the advancement of women is a program vitally connected to the survival of...
I imagine John Watson thinks love’s a mystery to me, but the chemistry is incredibly simple and very destructive. When we first met, you told me that a disguise is always a self portrait, how true of you, the combination to your safe – your measu...
How people themselves perceive what they are doing is not a question that interests me. I mean, there are very few people who are going to look into the mirror and say, 'That person I see is a savage monster'; instead, they make up some construction ...
Glinting golden through the trees, Apples of Hesperides! Through the moon-pierced warp of night Shoot pale shafts of yellow light, Swaying to the kissing breeze Swings the treasure, golden-gleaming, Apples of Hesperides!. Far and lofty yet they glimm...
nothing knee-jerk about their politics. Two out of three of them say that abortion is “always” or “usually” morally wrong. They are far more likely than voters age thirty and over to identify themselves as politically “strictly independent....
One of the characters in our story, Gavril Ardalionovitch Ivolgin, belonged to the other category; he belonged to the category of "much cleverer" people; though head to toe he was infected with the desire to be original. But this class of person, as ...
All I’ve ever done is dream. That, and only that, has been the meaning of my existence. The only thing I’ve ever really cared about is my inner life. My greatest griefs faded to nothing the moment I opened the window onto my inner self and lost m...
The modern world is not evil; in some ways the modern world is far too good. It is full of wild and wasted virtues. When a religious scheme is shattered...it is not merely the vices that are let loose. The vices are, indeed, let loose, and they wande...
I was asked by a concerned church-goer: "Is your relationship with God okay?" and I answered "My relationship with God is far better than yours. You have to be in a certain place, with a certain group of people, pray at certain days of the week, read...
If you were not cast into the abyss, you would have never groped, reached as far as you could reach, to grasp for anything that you could possibly touch, anything that you could possibly feel brushing against your fingertips! Funny how in the darknes...
Nature … has made it impossible for us to have any communication from this earth with the other great bodies of the universe, in our present state; and it is highly possible that he has likewise cut off all communication betwixt the other plan...
I make up as little as possible. I spend a great deal of time on research, on finding all the available accounts of a scene or incident, finding out all the background details and the biographies of the people involved there, and I try to run up all ...
There are obviously two educations. One should teach us how to make a living and the other how to live. Surely these should never be confused in the mind of any man who has the slightest inkling of what culture is. For most of us it is essential that...