Welcome to the forums Craveman 
How about this quote? This is pretty much how I view the matter, how I think of it:
"We are going to die, and that makes us the lucky ones. Most people are never going to die because they are never going to be born. The potential people who could have been here in my place but who will in fact never see the light of day outnumber the sand grains of Arabia. Certainly those unborn ghosts include greater poets than Keats, scientists greater than Newton. We know this because the set of possible people allowed by our DNA so massively exceeds the set of actual people. In the teeth of these stupefying odds it is you and I, in our ordinariness, that are here."
-- Richard Dawkins, excerpt from Chapter I, "The Anaesthetic of Familiarity," of Unweaving the Rainbow: Science, Delusion and the Appetite for Wonder (1998)
It's one of my favourite quotes of all.
Got it from here: http://www.positiveatheism.org/hist/quotes/dawkins.htm
It's from Dawkins' book Unweaving the Rainbow. Quite relevant to the matter I think I recently got it myself for my birthday a few days ago, I'm looking forward to reading it all.
Anyway, welcome to the forums.
EvF
How about this quote? This is pretty much how I view the matter, how I think of it:
"We are going to die, and that makes us the lucky ones. Most people are never going to die because they are never going to be born. The potential people who could have been here in my place but who will in fact never see the light of day outnumber the sand grains of Arabia. Certainly those unborn ghosts include greater poets than Keats, scientists greater than Newton. We know this because the set of possible people allowed by our DNA so massively exceeds the set of actual people. In the teeth of these stupefying odds it is you and I, in our ordinariness, that are here."
-- Richard Dawkins, excerpt from Chapter I, "The Anaesthetic of Familiarity," of Unweaving the Rainbow: Science, Delusion and the Appetite for Wonder (1998)
It's one of my favourite quotes of all.
Got it from here: http://www.positiveatheism.org/hist/quotes/dawkins.htm
It's from Dawkins' book Unweaving the Rainbow. Quite relevant to the matter I think
I recently got it myself for my birthday a few days ago, I'm looking forward to reading it all.Anyway, welcome to the forums.
EvF
