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Piergiorgio Odifreddi

81 quotes

“Thus, Catholicism hangs itself by its own rope: by excluding from the ecclesiastical community those who do not accept all its dogmas, it defines itself as a faith in which no one can believe, in clear contradiction to the original meaning of the word καθολικός, 'concerning all'. (pp. 190–191; 2008)”
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“Perhaps the most successful attempt at unification is Baha'ism, described by Leo Tolstoy as 'the highest and purest form of religion' and by Arnold Toynbee as 'the world religion of the future', which already has millions of followers in 200 countries. (p. 195; 2008)”
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“Buddhism is therefore a wholly humanistic, democratic and scientific religion: this explains the interest it has aroused in Europe and America in recent times. This intrinsic interest is then combined with the allure of particular personalities and places, most notably the Dalai Lama and Tibet. (p. 202; 2008)”
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“By definition, the soul is the principle of inner, spiritual life, understood as an independent entity. The soul is a natural area for religions and theologies to explore, and many mythologies trace its origins back to direct divine intervention. No Revelation, whether mathematical or theological, can justify itself. Religion is the mathematics of the poor in spirit. (p. 211; 2008)”
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“If we want to try to eliminate the differences between the learned and the unlearned, the best way forward is to teach mathematics, which enables us to save what can be saved, namely the spiritual experience to which, as Buddhism teaches, religion should indeed be reduced. (p. 211; 2008)”
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“Ultimately, Croce was a champion of scientific ignorance – and therefore of ignorance tout court – as well as a champion of lost causes. (p. 116)”
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“When you were a tadpole and I was a fish, back in the Paleozoic era, my heart was overflowing with joyful vitality because I had loved you ever since then. (p. 3)”
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“Aristotelian categories [were] divided into 'substance, quantity, quality, relation, place, time, being, having, acting and being acted upon'.”
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“I find it less shameful to be descended from an ape than from someone who uses their intelligence to obscure the truth.”
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“'Christ' is the transliteration of the Greek term christos, meaning 'anointed', chosen by the Septuagint Bible to translate the Hebrew term mashiah, meaning 'messiah', which in the Old Testament referred to the one who was to come and restore the kingdom of Israel.”
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“Of course, this is not to say that we should lump everything together, although in the twentieth century, the Catholic Church did manage to reach an agreement on each of these lumps.”
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“The final plague, on the other hand, is a tragic ethnic cleansing, in which Yahweh exterminates all the firstborn of the Egyptians and, for some unknown reason, also their animals. This is an event that the Book of Exodus merely describes with sober satisfaction: 'There was a great cry in Egypt, for there was not a house without someone dead!'It is this splendid feat that Jews would celebrate over the centuries as Pesach, 'Passover' or 'Easter', because a mark of lamb's blood on the door had indicated the houses not to be struck. (2007, p. 30)”
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“The reason for the prohibition of naturalistic depictions, especially for religious purposes, is quite clear: to use the well-known Buddhist metaphor, they risk focusing attention on the pointing finger and diverting it from the Moon it points to. Metaphor aside, they risk leading to idolatry and superstition rather than to God, as indeed happens in religions where such representations are permitted: Catholicism first and foremost, as evidenced by pageants such as the Holy Week processions in Seville or the dissolution of the blood of St Januarius in Naples. (2007, p. 44)”
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“Our first personal boundary is, of course, our skin, which separates our body from the outside world. Similarly, the surface of a solid object also separates its interior from the exterior, and the Pythagoreans referred to it as 'chroia', meaning 'skin', although Euclid later introduced the term ' epiphaneia ' , meaning 'that which must be done from the outside' (from epi, 'above', and phénein, 'to appear'). It is impossible to literally step out of one's own skin, but metaphorically, we do so whenever we seek to broaden our individual horizons. (2020, p. 75)”
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“Therefore, our attraction to literature and art, like our need for friendship and love, are simply the most immediate and basic ways in which our desire to transcend ourselves is expressed. (2020, p. 76)”
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“If Jesus believed that his second coming was imminent, he would certainly not have founded a Church. And if he did not, then this Church and those people are clearly nothing more than a band of usurpers. (2007, p. 77)”
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“If, as is likely, you have read Giordano Bruno's works, well, in La cena delle ceneri (The Supper of the Ashes), he puts forward a strange argument. He says: Let's imagine we have a ball, like the Earth. The Earth is illuminated by the Sun, but only part of the Earth is illuminated by the Sun. As you move further away, the Sun is further away from the Earth, and an increasingly larger part of the sphere is illuminated. So, the question is: what is the maximum proportion of the sphere that can be illuminated? If the Sun were at an infinite distance, then it would illuminate exactly half of the sphere. So, Giordano Bruno asks himself: What about the other half of the sphere, poor thing? What does it do? Does it remain in shadow? So, Giordano Bruno's idea is this: when we reach infinity, we take a step further; we start to go beyond this first infinity, and the Sun will begin to illuminate the back of the sphere. When we reach infinity for the second time, the entire sphere is illuminated. Needless to say, this is, of course, a purely metaphorical idea; it makes no sense at all. However, this is the first time in history that anyone has actually considered the possibility of there being two or more infinities. Today, mathematicians have even come up with infinities of infinities.”
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“(About Albert Einstein) After recalling that, ever since he was a child, he had been deeply struck by 'the vanity of the hopes and strivings by which most men are incessantly driven in a feverish race through life', he goes on to remember that he initially became very religious, but suddenly ceased to be so at the age of twelve, because, having read popular science books, he had 'very soon become convinced that the stories told in the Bible could not be true'. This experience made him realise that 'young people were consciously deceived by the State with false teachings, and it was a shocking impression'. As a result, this precocious thinker developed an attitude of suspicion towards all forms of authority and scepticism towards social conventions, which he would never lose. From that point on, he found liberation in the 'intellectual possession of the world that exists independently of us human beings and that stands before us like a great, eternal enigma, only partially accessible to our observation and our thinking'.”
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“Interviewer: You are accused of being arrogant, of “eating priests”, of being insolent. Your impertinence irritates some people a great deal, yet you are one of the most ardent advocates in the fight against rampant irrationality, without which the world and life would be better. It almost seems like a paradox. How do you explain that? Odifreddi: [...] In reality, impertinence is just a way of being; it's perhaps about adding a bit of spice to the things you say in an attempt to provoke a bit of a reaction. [...] I'm not particularly rational or a rationalist. I don't think that reason alone should be the yardstick for everything we do. [...] I think that in a great many activities of human life, rationality is, if not superfluous, at least somewhat limited, whereas in others it is not. In particular, I believe that we cannot do without rationality when it comes to the truth.”
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“What I meant to say, briefly, is that in fact I also felt somewhat closer to Pope Ratzinger, because [...] indeed, Ratzinger wrote books and had a certain depth of thought, which I don't seem to see in Pope Francis, who is more of what is called a country parish priest, saying platitudes disguised as religious metaphors. So, from this point of view, Pope Francis has never made a great impression on me, and above all, I am not very impressed by this sort of pauperism that characterises his image. [...] In reality, the Pope is quite literally the richest man in the world, because the Constitution of the Vatican City State makes no distinction between the property of the state and the property of the head of state.”
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“The euro would have made sense if it had actually been the single currency of a politically united Europe, but, since a political Europe has not materialised and it does not seem like the time is right to create one, it has simply become a tool that has given the European Central Bank more power. Essentially, what can be described as the suspension of democracy in Italy in 2011 under the Monti government was prompted by the famous letter from the ECB that reached the government, and then the President of the Republic made his decisions. [...] Nevertheless, it's not the case that one can be solely against the euro, because clearly there are benefits at times.”
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“Here in Italy, science has always been sidelined; this is not a phenomenon of the last 10 or 20 years alone, nor is it a problem that can be confined to popular science writers and journalists. Interviewer: What or who is to blame? Odifreddi: Unfortunately, this is a much broader and much older cultural problem. Science has been sidelined by Italian intellectual society ever since the days of Croce's idealism. Croce was Minister of Education and boasted that he knew even less than what was being said. This continued into the era of Gentile, who reformed the Italian education system at the start of the Fascist period in a way that still has a significant impact on the curricula of today's children, almost a hundred years later. Both of them have always sidelined science, even viewing it as something to be stigmatised. In short, this anti-science sentiment predates what we are experiencing today by many decades – this loss of the importance of authority, this widespread ignorance that calls everything into question, fake news, and all of that.”
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“[...] Now, in fact, even videos can be manipulated with extreme ease. We need to get used to the idea that anything that is mediated and represented could be false, and this is an even stronger reason to make greater use of reason. However, even in this case, perhaps the problem is more broadly our relationship with the media. Interviewer: What do you mean? Odifreddi: Let me explain: the media in general were certainly not created to spread the truth. They are not independent, and they do not have an educational mission. You only have to look at who founds them, who owns them, who buys them: the Elkann family in Turin, the Rizzoli and Berlusconi families in Milan, the De Benedetti family in Rome. It really doesn't seem to me that these people are fighting to spread knowledge, understanding, or probably even information. And here, once again, there is nothing surprising about it. Newspapers have always been used to spread things other than information; they have always been used to spread political views, ideologies, and to engage in propaganda.”
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“(About Pietro Mennea) He was an example of professionalism and honour, a man who had worked hard to achieve his goals: on the one hand, a world record that stood for 17 years, and on the other, four degrees (in political science, law, physical education and humanities). In a recent interview, when asked why Italy no longer excels in athletics like it did in his day, he responded 'calmly and serenely'. He recalled that, for ten years, he had never missed a training session, not even on New Year's Day. He also pointed out that, by contrast, today's young people are 'overgrown babies' who don't want to put in the effort, whether physically or intellectually.”
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“[...] In Italy, the audience for low-grade charlatans is indeed a vast majority, which turns out on any occasion that gives it the chance to do so. For example, isn't the number of pilgrims who go to San Giovanni Rotondo or Padua each year to ask Padre Pio or Saint Anthony to intercede so that they may be granted the graces they desire roughly the same as the number of voters for Berlusconi and Grillo? And how high does this number rise if, in addition to the Apulian and Venetian friars, we include all the Madonnas and saints venerated throughout Italy? And isn't the number of the poor in spirit who, when they are also physically ill, place their trust in the treatments of charlatans and healers of all kinds, from Vanna Marchi to Luigi Di Bella, again of a similar magnitude? And how many people follow homeopathy, alternative therapies, Eastern practices, trendy exercise regimes, tabloid diets, or faith healers? And how many people read horoscopes, visit magicians and fortune tellers, and entrust their illusions to illusionists? When it comes to politics, why on earth shouldn't all these people believe in the con artist–charlatans who, in their field, are the equivalents of the Padre Pios and the Vanna Marchis of the world? If someone believes that prayers or the laying on of hands can make them have a child or cure cancer, why shouldn't they believe that Berlusconi can pay back their IMU (property tax) out of his own pocket, or that Grillo can give them a universal basic income? [...] The problem isn't Berlusconi or Grillo; the problem is us.”
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“Finally, on the subject of wordplay, it is worth noting that without humour, life would become an unbearable via crucis: and, as John Chrysostom put it, Jesus never laughed. He is not alone, and it seems that people like him have a problem with distinguishing between language and metalinguage, and with confusing literal and metaphorical meanings, and vice versa. So, let us welcome jokes, witticisms, slips of the tongue, Bartezzaghi's books, and anything else that can remind us that life is a game, and that those who take it too seriously end up putting others on the cross, putting themselves on the cross, or being put on the cross unnecessarily. (Il signore degli strani anelli, Lingua e letteratura)”
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“Where do we come from? Who are we? Where are we going? Scientists usually content themselves with stating that these questions either don't make sense or don't have an answer. However, their own work contradicts them, as it sometimes yields answers that are neither obvious nor known.However, the idea that the universe had a beginning is more a matter of faith than a necessary deduction from experimental data, and this fact is by no means accepted by all cosmologists, even though it does, to some extent, represent the scientific orthodoxy. In a 1917 paper that was to make history, Einstein himself inaugurated modern cosmology. The metaphysical assumptions needed to inspire his model were provided by the cosmological principle , which had already been foreshadowed by Nicholas of Cusa and Giordano Bruno: at any given moment, the universe appears the same, from any point and in any direction you look at it. (p. 42; 2008)”
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“The inexhaustible vitality of the paradoxical conception of religion is evidenced by the numerous proposals it put forward in the second half of the 20th century. The most radical of these proposals has adopted the empty forms of the "theology of the death of God" developed by Thomas Altizer, William Hamilton and Paul van Buren: authors of works with memorable titles, such as The Gospel of Christian Atheism. This theology offers variations on Nietzsche's theme, 'God is dead' (The Gay Science, 125), which in turn is a variation on a theme from Plutarch: 'Great Pan is dead' (De deferta oraculomm, 17). (p. 129; 2008)”
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“Descartes also made a mistake, claiming that the essence of God implies His existence just as the essence of a triangle implies that the sum of its angles is 180°. Unfortunately for Descartes, he could not have chosen a worse example of 'necessity', since the angle sum of a triangle is entirely 'contingent': it is less than, equal to, or greater than 180°, depending on whether the geometry is hyperbolic, Euclidean or elliptic. Nor can this obstacle be circumvented by referring to the geometry of the physical world, since Einstein proved that, whatever it may be, it is not Euclidean. (p. 140; 2008)”
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“Why on earth would those who dictated [the Holy Scriptures] have wanted so many things to be written which, as we have begun to notice and will continue to do, are scientifically incorrect, logically contradictory, historically false, humanly foolish, ethically reprehensible, literarily poor and stylistically clumsy, instead of simply inspiring a work that is accurate, coherent, true, intelligent, fair, beautiful and straightforward? *Ultimately, therefore, the criticism of Christianity could be reduced to this: that, as a religion for literal-minded idiots, it is not suited to those who, perhaps to their misfortune, have been condemned not to be such idiots.”
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“Fortunately, however, today the reference to slavery has disappeared from the Church's version of the final commandment, which simply states: – Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's goods –. However, having lost the second commandment along the way, and to avoid the embarrassment of having an Ennalogue instead of a Decalogue, the Church decided to split the tenth commandment in two, adding as its ninth: – Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's wife –. Moreover, it refers to women, even though it would have been easy to avoid this lopsided chauvinism by simply stating, 'Thou shalt not covet another's spouse.' (2007, p. 85)”
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