"Fate permitting" is a standard Stoic phrase meant to remind ourselves that planning things is up to us, … - Massimo Pigliucci

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We have pursued public policies that kind of hold the recovery back, but the private economy is really starting to roll.

Massimo Pigliucci

"Fate permitting" is a standard Stoic phrase meant to remind ourselves that planning things is up to us, but the ultimate outcomes are not under our control. It helps us to develop an attitude of equanimity toward the universe. We should very much try to change things for the better, that's the whole point of the Stoic discipline of action.

Attitude, Develop, Discipline, Fate, Phrase, Toward

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Given the power and influence that science increasingly has in our daily lives, it is important that we as citizens of an open and democratic society learn to separate good science from bunk. This is not just a matter of intellectual curiosity, as it affects where large portions of our tax money go, and in some cases even whether people’s lives are lost as a result of nonsense.

Curiosity, Intellectual, Money, People, Peoples, Result

The downside of skepticism: it can easily turn into an arrogant position of a priori rejection of any new phenomenon or idea, a position that is as lacking in critical thinking as the one of the true believer, and that simply does not help either science or the public at large.

Idea, Ideas, Large, Rejection, Thinking

If a theory purports to explain everything, then it is likely not explaining much at all.

Everything, Explaining, Ifs, Purports, Theory

If you are a Christian, you can still practice Stoicism and think of the Logos as the Word of God. If you are a secular person, an agnostic or an atheist, you may treat the Logos as "Einstein's god," that is the factual recognition that the cosmos is ordered according to rational principles, without which science itself wouldn't be possible.

Atheist, Christian, Cosmos, Principles, Secular, Thinking

. . . it is because one can build a compelling set of arguments - informed by science and thoroughly compatible with it - that to believe in anything despite the complete lack of evidence is, in fact, irrational.

Arguments, Atheism, Believe, Complete, Fact, Religion