This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
The process of evolution can only be described as the gradual insertion of more and more freedom into matter.
Religions, considered as moral teachers, are realized and effective only when their moral teaching is in conformity with the teaching of their age.
Age | Conformity |
The next great advance in the evolution of civilization cannot take place until war is abolished.
Civilization | Evolution | War |
The greatest step forward in human evolution was made when society began to help the weak and the poor, instead of oppressing and despising them.
Judaism can be viewed as the evolution of a people in the grip of two toweringly great ideas. The first is the idea of One God - imageless, primordially creative, and utterly transcendent - who, nevertheless, cares for the creation. The second is the idea of human dignity: men and women become fully human only by responding to the moral intuitions divinely etched in their hearts.
If there is any purpose or direction in the evolution of culture, it has to do with bringing people under the control of more and more of the consequences of behavior.
Behavior | Consequences | Control | Culture | Evolution | People | Purpose | Purpose |
A man following Christ’s teaching is like a man carrying a lantern before him at the end of a pole. The light is ever before him, and ever impels him to follow it, by continually lighting up fresh ground and attracting him onward.
While the theory of evolution spells out how the changes take place, any concept of a cosmic plan would specify why.
If there is no place for pleasure in teaching, surely our Teaching has failed us altogether.
Pleasure |
Bad teaching is teaching which presents an endless procession of meaningless signs, words and rules, and fails to arouse the imagination.
Imagination | Words |
The ultimate objective of social futurism [is] not merely the transcendence of technocracy and the substitution of more humane, more far-sighted, more democratic planning, but the subjection of the process of evolution itself to conscious human guidance. For this is the supreme instant, the turning point in history at which man either vanquishes the processes of change or vanishes, at which, from being the unconscious puppet of evolution he becomes either its victim or its master.
The responsibility for change… lies with us. We must begin with ourselves, teaching ourselves not to close our minds prematurely to the novel, the surprising, the seemingly radical. This means fighting off the idea-assassins who rush forward to kill any new suggestion on grounds of its impracticality, while defending whatever now exists as practical, not matter how absurd, oppressive, or unworkable it may be. It means fighting for freedom of expression – the right of people to voice their ideas, even if heretical.
Absurd | Change | Fighting | Freedom | Ideas | Kill | Means | People | Responsibility | Right |