weekly quote #29: PZ Myers May 27, 2008
Posted by ocmpoma in : supernaturalism , trackbackO! happy rat!
PZ Myers’ Pharyngula is the origin of this week’s quote, which is taken from a dissection of the argument from warn-and-fuzzy. The post is here, the quote is taken from the first paragraph after the first quote block, responding to the idea that the emotional rewards of religious belief possess some sort of beneficial power:
“Put rats on a variable reinforcement schedule in a cage with a button that dispenses electric shocks to the pleasure centers of their brain, and they will push that button with passion and energy and even, as near as we can interpret it, joy … but that is a rat that has thrown away its rattiness and has dedicated its life to a shallow, empty abstraction. It is a rat that has found its god.”
Tags for this article: atheism , qupotation , rationality , supernaturalism
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