Steve Allen
Steve Allen
Stephen Valentine Patrick William "Steve" Allenwas an American television personality, musician, composer, actor, comedian, and writer. Though he got his start in radio, Allen is best known for his television career. He first gained national attention as a guest host on Arthur Godfrey's Talent Scouts. He graduated to become the first host of The Tonight Show, where he was instrumental in innovating the concept of the television talk show. Thereafter, he hosted numerous game and variety shows, including The Steve...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionEntertainer
Date of Birth26 December 1921
CountryUnited States of America
We think that will give the students a big edge over people that are just computer science or engineering.
What we want is a healthy canopy. If we go in there and say, 'Just plant a bunch of trees,' they'll just plant them in a random fashion. That may result in a tree not surviving more than a decade.
One of the nice things about problems is that a good many of them do not exist except in our imaginations.
If the Old Testament were a reliable guide in the matter of capital punishment, half the people in the United States would have to be killed tomorrow.
There is scarcely a page of the Bible on which an open mind does not perceive a contradiction, an unlikely story, an obvious error, an historical impossibility of one sort or another.
Millions of Germans had absolute faith in Hitler. Millions of Russians had faith in Stalin. Millions of Chinese had faith in Mao. Billions have had faith in imaginary gods.
Totalitarianism is patriotism institutionalized.
I cannot see how it can be argued that one should speak in tones of reverence and awe about the alleged divine instruction-in Psalms-to grab the defenseless bodies of innocent infants and dash their brains out against the nearest rocks or walls.
I do not understand those who take little or no interest in the subject of religion. If religion embodies a truth, it is certainly the most important truth of human existence. If it is largely error, then it is one of monumentally tragic proportions—and should be vigorously opposed.
Consider the wave of revulsion that floods the average person when he or she hears of the practice of human sacrifice by the Aztecs and other so-called primitive peoples. How savage and barbaric such practices seem. But when a Christian or Jew comes across human sacrifice in the Bible (see Jephthah's immolation of his daughter in Judges 11:30-40), is he or she repulsed?
...we are entitled to make almost any reasonable assumption, but should resist making conclusions until evidence requires that we do so.
Impartial observers from other planets would consider ours an utterly bizarre enclave if it were populated by birds, defined as flying animals, that nevertheless rarely or never actually flew. They would also be perplexed if they encountered in our seas, lakes, rivers, and ponds, creatures defined as swimmers that never did any swimming. But they would be even more surprised to encounter a species defined as a thinking animal if, in fact, the creature very rarely indulged in actual thinking.
Humor is a social lubricant that helps us get over some of the bad spots.
Religious believers of the world, you are free to continue to debate the simple, narrow question that divides you from atheists, but you have no right, in so doing, to treat the Humanists of the world with contempt. You owe them a deep debt of gratitude, for not only have they shed much light on a naturally dark world but they have very probably helped civilize your own specific religion.