Here are some of our favorite quotes culled from news reports from across Texas, and beyond.
David Lane, the secretive organizer of pastors’ policy briefings, such as those for the Texas Restoration Project and the Iowa Renewal Project, at which clergy are urged to politick from the pulpit:
What we’re doing with the pastor meetings is spiritual, but the end result is political. From my perspective, our country is going to hell because pastors won’t lead from the pulpits.
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Texas state Sen. Robert Deuell, R-Greenville, saying he hopes the funding to family planning services removed by the state House can be restored in conference committee:
I don’t care for Planned Parenthood, (but) I don’t want to cut access to family planning. I don’t want to decrease access. One way to stop abortions is to prevent unwanted pregnancies.
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Sir Martin Rees, the astronomer royal and former president of the Royal Society, on being named as the recipient of the £1 million annual Templeton prize in London on Wednesday:
I think doing science makes me realise that even the simplest things are pretty hard to understand and that makes me suspicious of people who believe they’ve got anything more than an incomplete and metaphorical understanding of any deep aspect of reality. And also I see human beings as not the culmination, but only a stage in the marvellous unfolding of evolution, because the timeline ahead is as long as the time that has lapsed up to now. Those are respects in which my professional interests affect my response to dogmatic religion. But as I say, I participate in occasional religious services which are the customs of the society I grew up in. I’m not allergic to religion.
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Texas state Rep. John Zerwas, R-Simonton, and chairman of the appropriations subcommittee that handles health funding, explaining that his vote to move funding away from family planning services was based on ideology rather than responsible public policy:
There are important women’s health services that are provided here, many of which are very cost effective. But when it comes down to it, these votes were about political philosophy, and I voted in favor of moving the money.
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Two comments from state legislators — the first in Alabama, the second in Nebraska — when asked to define “Sharia” or to identify any cases in which Sharia law has been used in a troubling way in American courts:
I don’t have my file in front of me.
I’m not in my office to look them up.
Despite their ignorance on the issue, both lawmakers have proposed bills that would bar a nonexistent threat: Sharia law in the United States.
“I think doing science makes me realise that even the simplest things are pretty hard to understand and that makes me suspicious of people who believe they’ve got anything more than an incomplete and metaphorical understanding of any deep aspect of reality. And also I see human beings as not the culmination, but only a stage in the marvellous unfolding of evolution, because the timeline ahead is as long as the time that has lapsed up to now. Those are respects in which my professional interests affect my response to dogmatic religion. But as I say, I participate in occasional religious services which are the customs of the society I grew up in. I’m not allergic to religion.”
This reminds me of my favorite “The Other Limits” episode from the early 1960s. It’s about speeding up human evolution. Here is the entire episode along with a few embedded commercials. It’s well worth your time. The title is “The Sixth Finger.”
http://www.hulu.com/watch/63087/the-outer-limits—original-the-sixth-finger#s-p9-so-i0