Gérard Santarini's quotes (sethmessenger.fr - Some short news to get away from it all).

#38604
Science does not allow us to find out what the Universe is; it only allows (and it's already huge...) to find what can be said relevant to the Universe. Finding out what the Universe really is is perhaps more about meditation (the misnamed) than reflection, for this hypothetical ultimate reality is probably no stranger to our consciousness and that of God, if it exists.

Gérard Santarini
(Source inconnue)

#38605
WE are all brothers. You have to know that! All animals, whether human or non-human, and even plants and other living organisms are my brothers or more precisely my cousins. This reality (perhaps already foreshadowed by a Francis of Assisi) is often seen as a mere metaphor. However, it must be taken literally since we now know that all of us living beings are descended from the same distant ancestors. Today's fantastic genetic studies, made possible by the discovery of DNA and the magnificent progress in its study, even allow us to accurately reconstruct our common family tree whose roots go back billions of years. It originates in the mineral world and it is for me a real wonder to know that science has succeeded in reconstituting our parentage even in these very distant times. We are, literally, children of the stars. Most of the nuclei of atoms we are made up of, especially those of carbon, oxygen and nitrogen, essential for life on Earth, formed in the heart of the first stars that appeared after the Big Bang. The planets orbiting these stars could not carry life because the Big Bang had produced only hydrogen and helium: all chemistry was excluded and, a fortiori, life. It is thanks to the explosion of these primordial stars, the dispersion of the new atoms they had forged and their recycling in the formation of new generations of stars and planets that life was able to appear and then develop by mutation and s e l e c tion. We are cousins of all living beings, but also of all that exists in the Universe! "We must all learn to live together as brothers or we will all perish together as fools" ("We must all learn to live as brothers" , to the point of denying the evolution of living species, do not derive all the philosophical consequences on interdependence and universal brotherhood. He still has successors, Wilberforce, the Anglican bishop of Oxford, who ironically asked zoologist Thomas Huxley "whether he was descended from the monkey by his grandfather or by his grandmother." Huxley essentially retorted that "he would rather blush to have an ancestor like the bishop who meddles in problems that he does not know for the sole purpose of confusing them" (Presentation by Jean-Marc Drouin of "The Origin of Species" by Charles Darwin, u p d a t ed in 2008, Flammarion). Today, these successors of Wilberforce can no longer deny this parentage, but they are ashamed of their ancestors. They still want, despite all the obvious, to feel alien to the real world, separated, different and, of course, superior! It is a pity for them and for the world because they lose the happiness of being part of a fantastic living planetary organism and therefore ignore, or underestimate, all the consequences concerning our immense responsibility, especially in the field of ecology. Moreover, their ideas or rather their prejudices, their beliefs contaminate their loved ones and incite them to fall back on them, to perpetuate the narrow visions developed throughout the history of religions and philosophies, instead of opening themselves to the wonderful ideal of a universal brotherhood. The withdrawal on oneself, on one's family, on one's region, on one's "homeland" are only different versions of the same selfishness that is likely to make us all die together "like idiots"! "I like my daughter better than my niece, my niece than my cousin, my cousin than my neighbour" (repeated statement by Jean-Marie Le Pen) This cult phrase that sums up the philosophy of the Front National seems terribly perverse to me. The Devil, it seems, has a habit of taking truths, twisting them a little to disguise them and then using them to spread his poison. I think this slogan is an excellent example of this practice. It encourages cascading selfishness that strives to "protect" the "homeland" from foreign invaders of different cultures, the region from other regions of different traditions, the family against other families of different habits and finally myself against the whole world! He closes and hardens the hearts of those he contaminates so that they can no longer be moved by the suffering of others, claiming that they are less kind since they are different. When one begins to sort through suffering, compassion is no longer there and, a fortiori, love. The immense problem of welcoming refugees illustrates this trend: would suffering and dying in a country at war be more compassionate than suffering and starving in another country ruined for climate causes? Migration under the latter category is only just beginning: climate change will most likely exacerbate them in terrifying proportions. "For a fraternal revolution" (slogan of the Catholic Relief-Caritas France) It is a profound change in the minds that our world needs not to destroy itself completely, a fraternal revolution. In an age when the interdependence of all that lives on this planet is taking on a scale that humanity has never known, the selfishness that, throughout history, has helped to defend individuals and groups against other individuals and groups becomes a mortal risk. The "well-ordered charity" that begins with oneself is killing humanity. Even if it is with selfish motivation (you feel better when you help others!), it is urgent to develop altruism at all levels. Would Jesus Christ have sensed it when, even in his day, he recommended "to love one's neighbour as oneself"?

Gérard Santarini
(Believe or Know?: Small Seeds of Reflection for a Better World)

#38609
ERROR "Errare humanum est, perseverare diabolicum" ("To be wrong is human, but to persevere in error is evil", sentence sometimes attributed to Seneca) If science has succeeded, in less than four centuries, in breaking the boundaries of humanity's knowledge on itself, on its history, on its planet and on the Universe in which it is immersed, if it has been able to relieve as much of its suffering. , it is because her systematic practice of doubt leads her to constantly seek, with patience and humility, her own mistakes and to constantly strive to correct them. It has even made this process its main research tool and it is this powerful tool that has led to all its discoveries. Not everyone who regularly practices the scientific method often has any idea of the clutter of cemeteries of scientific "good ideas" denied by experience. They are full to bursting since scientists wake up almost every morning with a new good idea and fall asleep almost every night after finding that this idea was not validated by the facts. And all these funerals do not lead to the construction of a tombstone, far from it! We only know the tombstones of the "great" ideas that survived for a long time, before being dethroned by better ideas. It is this humility, this flexibility to tune in to reality, that constitutes the strength of science. As soon as an idea crystallizes into belief, the process is blocked and the research becomes sterile. Unfortunately, when scientists, whether "professional" or "amateur," venture to point the finger at the mistakes of others, be they religions or ideologies, they encounter a completely opposite turn of mind: instead of humbly correcting their mistakes by constant questioning, these believers maintain them by using the regular repetition of acts of faith. Thus, to the present day, almost, untruths such as transubstantiation and beliefs such as the central place of Earth and man in the Universe or the omnipotence of a supposedly good God have been maintained. Towards a law to punish incitement to stupidity? In order for humanity to finally break these deadlocks and to succeed in definitively stifling the seeds of fundamentalism, the scientific method should be better known, that this knowledge should be appreciated at its true value and that it spread widely, with a particular focus on young people. It's about training instead of distorting, opening instead of closing, learning to learn instead of embracing... Let every human being of good will work on it! But we suspect it will take a long time. In the meantime, shouldn't our democracies protect themselves more from stupidity? The law punishes, for example, incitement to racial hatred and the challenge to crimes against humanity. I think we should go further: it should severely punish all "denialisms", starting with those who attack all the knowledge revealed by science. It does not seem to me to be tolerable to let it be taught with impunity that the Earth was created in six days or even just to insinuate it. These germs end up leading to the same horrors as racial hatred; they are of the same nature and potentially also harmful to humanity.

Gérard Santarini
(Believe or Know?: Small Seeds of Reflection for a Better World)

#38610
"There are beings who make a sun a simple yellow spot, but there are also some that make a simple yellow spot, a real sun" (quote attributed to Pablo Picasso) One day I showed one of my grandsons some potted plants on the balcony of the family apartment, I was a little disconcerted and very pleasantly impressed to surprise him. , shortly afterwards, explaining to his brother: "It's incredible, the most beautiful flower in Papy's pots, it's one he didn't plant!" He was talking about a dandelion flower that had developed from a seed brought by the wind. Many adults would have seen it as a "weed" that had to be removed to preserve the so-called harmony of artificial plantations. Yet a child, whose perception was not yet blunt, was able to marvel at what an overripe adult ends up finding banal. This bluntness is not inevitable: I think that a Francis of Assisi, for example, showed that he had maintained this natural ability of the children when he recommended not to cultivate the whole garden, but to agree to leave a part of it in wasteland, to keep intact our ability to marvel at the beauty of wild herbs. I think my grandson's remark expressed a very profound truth and taught us a very important lesson. Did Jesus Christ not say, it seems: "If you do not change your attitude and become like little children, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven" (New Testament, Matthew 18:3). I don't know what the "kingdom of heaven" is, let alone what it takes to get in. However, what I am convinced of is that we cannot be really happy if we do not find or maintain the purity of the look we had when we were children. It is necessary to understand and feel in depth, with one's mind, heart and body, that nothing is banal! Fortunately, this can be learned (like many other things)! It is necessary, patiently, to maintain the flame in the depths of oneself, to reject the "adult" tendencies to be considered "childish" wonder, but on the contrary, regularly address to this inner sun, the same praise as that addressed by Edmond Rostand to the outside sun: "O Sun! you without whom things would be only what they are! (Hymn to the Sun in Chantecler). But if you don't succeed, at least out of pity, refrain from stifling the wonder of others! Never say, especially to a child, something like" "It's just the sun" or "It's just a flower." Nothing is mundane!

Gérard Santarini
(Believe or Know?: Small Seeds of Reflection for a Better World)

Seth Messenger : Gérard Santarini's quotes

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