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This guy holds to the constitution exactly as a biggot holds to the flag

I remember one of the smart but more humanities oriented friends of mine tried to engage the AP Physics teacher in a debate about whether the world really exists or could be a simulation/fantasy/etc. At the first posing of the question, the teacher immediately turned and flung himself bodily against the wall and exclaimed that it seemed pretty real to him.

The physics teacher was quoting Samuel Johnson, who kicked a rock and stated "Thus I refute Berkeley" (who had argued that we can't know whether any material objects actually exist) : http://www.samueljohnson.com/r...

It's not clear what Johnson thought he'd proved by that.

Slashdot commenters discussing politics always put me in mind of Samuel Johnson's quip about women preaching.

The first two-thirds of it, anyway.

I think engineers can get ahead of the "idiot improvement" curve if they just add 4" spikes to the steering wheel hub and change all dashboard surfaces to reinforced tempered steel.

"Depend upon it, sir, when a man knows he is to be die in a car crash caused by his own inattention, it concentrates his mind wonderfully."

-- Samuel Johnson... almost.

Cool, I'm glad you enjoyed it! Here is link to give credit! Many more good ones here to if you're interested.
http://www.samueljohnson.com/soldiers.html

"When a man is tired of London, he is tired of life."
-- Samuel Johnson, 1777

http://www.samueljohnson.com/tiredlon.html

I'll always admire T.S. Elliot for saying, "I'd have written you a shorter letter, but I didn't have time."

This is the first time that I have seen this quote attributed to T. S. Elliot. Usually I see it attributed to Mark Twain, who did in fact use it. However, it comes from before him. It has been attributed to Samuel Johnson as well, but it is not his either. Instead, it comes from Blaise Pascal's "Lettres Provinciales", Letter XVI in 1657:

Mes Reverends Peres, mes lettres n'avaient pas accoutume de se suivre de si pres, ni d'etre si etendues. Le peu de temps que j'ai eu a ete cause de l'un et de l'autre. Je n'ai fait celle-ci plus longue que parce que je n'ai pas eu le loisir de la faire plus courte.

http://fr.wikisource.org/wiki/Les_Provinciales_-_Seizi%C3%A8me_lettre_aux_r%C3%A9v%C3%A9rends_p%C3%A8res_j%C3%A9suites

My Reverend Fathers, my letters are not accustomed to follow so closely, nor to be so extensive. The limited time that I had was because of one thing and another. I made it longer because I have not had the opportunity to make it shorter.

Please forgive my poor translation.

http://www.samueljohnson.com/apocryph.html

http://www.37signals.com/svn/posts/454-why-most-copywriting-on-the-web-sucks

http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?TimeToMakeItShort

http://lists.village.virginia.edu/lists_archive/Humanist/v05/0444.html

Well, it would help if you were to say which usage of the word you had in mind. Although if you find atmospheric pressure to be in the same class as religion, we can probably assume definition A) The theory that physical matter is the only reality and that everything, including thought, feeling, mind, and will, can be explained in terms of matter and physical phenomena.

If so, would you be open to the idea that you are projecting your own viewpoint onto "educated people" as a whole? Materialism as defined above is a rather narrow and extremist worldview. It's great for winding up your classmates at school, or drunks at a party, but taken exclusively it's rather too limiting to form the basis for any useful ontology. In this respect, it has a lot in common with its philosophical mirror image solipsism in that it willfull invalidates fifty percent of human experience.

And, just as Samuel Johnson refuted Bishop Berkely, so it is almost trivially easy to refute materialism as a philosophy: it takes no account of information. I can communicate the number "four" to you in a number of ways: I can voice the word (in a variety of langauages); I can send a pattern of electrons over a computer network; I can hold up a number of fingers, I can inscribe a number of different patterns on paper or other substances. All these will send the ideal of "four" from my brain to yours, but the concept of "fourfoldness" is implicit in none of these things.

Then there is mathematics whereby it is possible to construct purely abstract systems with no reference or application to physical reality.

Going a degree more mystical, there is the question of preception: it's all very well to exlain my perceptions in terms of enzymes and electrons, the fact remains that there is an "I" to whom these perceptions are presented. There is even support for this in orthodox physics in the consciousness causes collapse interpretation of Quantum Mechanics.

I could go on, but that's enough to make the point.

Summing up, materialism can be useful but any supporting arguments tend to be circular since they have to disregard all non-materialist evidence. This would be acceptable if there was anything approaching the consensus you suggest, but that seems unlikely in the extreme: try telling your wife/GF/S.O. that "love" is nothing but an emergent effect arising from a combination of hormones and sensory stimuli. The chances are you'll get a quick grounding in why approx. 50% of the population has a problem with that proposition.

The point I'm getting to here is that Materialism is a religious belief. One of the defining characteristics of religious beliefs is that they take certain propositions on faith, both in the absence of evidence, and in the absence of any test that might falsify those propositions.

Interestingly, this makes atheism into a religion, since just as the theist professes a belief in a God in the absence of evidence, so does the atheist profess disbelief in the absence of any evidence. Agnosticism has the benefit of withholding judgement until evidence can be presented. However it is difficult to reconsice Meterialism with agnosticism since materialism tends to reject "God" as a valid concept for debate, and it's hard to define agnostic without reference to "God".

So I wonder which is most important to you: a rationalist world view, or your materialist religion? As you start to think of it in those terms, it becomes difficult to reconcile the two increasingly antagonistic viewpoints.

"Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel."

- Samuel Johnson

I am Photoshop certified and use the app every day in my work. I have also enthusiastically installed and am a sometime user of GIMP (on Mac) and I've gotta say this guy is right on target.

Enthusiasm for the GIMP reminds me of Samuel Johnson's famous comments on women preaching.

Historical sexism aside, his point was that when we see something hard being done by someone unexpected, we sometimes fail to notice how poorly it's actually being done.

In the OS community, everyone gets so excited about having a "free" (as in beer) app which potentially replaces an expensive commercial app, that we get a bit carried away in our enthusiasm.

Its like the do-it-yourself TiVo's that aren't really anywhere near as convenient or feature rich as the real deal.

GIMP gives us a glimpse of the tremendous potential of Open Source software, but anyone who thinks its "as good as PS," isn't a serious Photoshop user.

Hi, I run samueljohnson.com, and Johnson may not have been referring to any single individual as much as opposition movements in general. But they were talking about Edmund Burke later that night, and Burke was guilty of many of Johnson's complaints about false patriots. Please see this post.

The url is http://www.samueljohnson.com/qotw02q2.html#0630

Wasn't it said of Al Capone - "Patriotism is the last resort of the scoundrel".

No cookie for you: "Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel" -- Samuel Johnson. It's not known who he was referring to, but it couldn't have been Al Capone; Capone was not born until 115 years after Johnson's death.

a la "I refute it thus?" ... except Samuel Johnson's method was a lot more friendly than yours!

Refutation of Bishop Berkely After we came out of the church, we stood talking for some time together of Bishop Berkeley's ingenious sophistry to prove the nonexistence of matter, and that every thing in the universe is merely ideal. I observed, that though we are satisfied his doctrine is not true, it is impossible to refute it. I never shall forget the alacrity with which Johnson answered, striking his foot with mighty force against a large stone, till he rebounded from it -- "I refute it thus."

This rudderless world is not shaped by vague metaphysical forces. It is not God who kills the children. Not Fate that butchers them or Destiny that feeds them to dogs. It's us. Only us.

patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel. This is just another example.

That would be Saumel Johnson. He said lots of interesting things.