Word: skepticism
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...mistakes (ostriches, for example, and avocados), taking pleasure in his successes ("That's profound," somebody says when God manifests his wisdom at one point; "Sometimes I get lucky," responds the deity). Called upon to prove his powers by changing the weather, he makes it rain only inside the skeptic's car, there being no point in spoiling everyone else's day. Asked about recent miracles, he lays claim only to the New York Mets' 1969 World Series victory. Mostly he dismisses matters of this kind contemptuously: "Special effects," he sniffs...
...tyranny of the state, the stupidity of the military and the bigoted, sanctimonious zeal of the church. And ever and always, the eternal humbuggery of the English, used and overused by Shaw for comic relief and casual abuse. All of this might qualify him as a complete cynic or skeptic, except that he was a true child of the 19th century, with an ineradicable faith in the evolutionary process. Taking his text from Nietzsche - "Man is a rope stretched between the animal and the Superman" - Shaw found his equivalent for God in what he called the Life Force...
...been issued. But there has been angry criticism of what Gibbon calls a "tedious but important" matter: his treatment of religion. Gibbon himself became a convert to Roman Catholicism while at Oxford, and he returned to Protestantism only at the insistence of his wealthy father. By now a thorough skeptic, he speaks of the early Christians with amused contempt. Their martyrdoms were far fewer than religious enthusiasts now claim, he says. And he maliciously derides the church's "uninterrupted succession of miraculous powers, of healing the sick and raising the dead." Gibbon sees little if any progress when...
...Birch Bayh, Adlai Stevenson, Gary Hart and Joseph Biden, and Republicans Clifford Case, Howard Baker, Mark Hatfield, Strom Thurmond and Goldwater. Though Church might be a natural candidate for chairmanship of the new committee, he ruled himself out. The expected choice is Democrat Daniel Inouye of Hawaii, a tough skeptic, who served on Sam Ervin's Watergate Committee. After Inouye, another possibility for the chairmanship is Democrat Walter Huddleston of Kentucky...
Calling himself "a general skeptic about neclear breeder-reaction facilities," which many physicists see as the energy source of the future, Kistiakowsky described the poor safety measures that have been taken in preventing radiation leaks by the Atomic Energy Administration in the past...