Q
From Philosopedia
“Q,” a reconstructed Greek text of the Bible, is a hypothetical first-century work composed mostly of the alleged sayings of Jesus. First published in Belgium as Documenta Q, it is believed by some scholars that Q, which is short for Quelle, the German word for source, is a literary source for the Gospels of Matthew and Luke. Other scholars, however, believe the work never existed. (See Charlotte Allen’s “Q: The Search for a No-Frills Jesus,” The Atlantic Monthly, December 1996)
Quakers (Society of Friends) Members of the Religious Society of Friends, according to the journal of George Fox, were first called Quakers “because we bid him (Justice Gervase Bennett of Derby) tremble at the word of God, and this was in the year 1650.” The name, which at first was used in scorn, at once became popular. Fox’s preaching made converts among Seekers, Independents, Baptists, and other sectarians, and the new faith spread through the British Isles to the Continent to Barbados and in 1656 to America. Hangings in Boston by fellow Christians and imprisonment in Cromwellian and Restoration England failed to discourage the group. Rhode Island was the greatest mainland stronghold until in 1681 Pennsylvania was granted by Charles II to the distinguished Quaker convert, William Penn. Elias Hicks (1748–1830), a Quaker from Hempstead, New York, was one of the most able preachers of his time. He worked against slavery and in 1811 published his Observations on Slavery. When a division in the Society of Friends occurred in 1827, he was a leader of the liberal separation party, to which the name Hickside was unofficially given. Hicks, a neighbor and friend of Walt Whitman’s father, was unitarian in his view of Jesus, a position which was different from most others in the Society of Friends. His followers have been called Hicksite Quakers. When no longer persecuted, Friends lived as a people apart, and they became known for their humanitarianism. They renounced war, favored improved Indian relations, were against Negro slavery to the point that some shared in the activities of the Underground Railroad, and worked for prison reform, temperance, and Indian aid. Quakers believe in great simplicity in daily life and in worship. Their services consist mainly of silent meditation. Although in the past they wore distinctive clothing, Friends no longer do. Throughout the world and since the first World War, the American Friends Service Committee has been a well-known force for improving the plight of peoples without the accompanying missionarying common among most other religious service groups, except the Unitarian. Edwin H. Wilson, in “Humanism Among the Quakers,” cited the following Quakers as being Humanists: Jesse H. Holmes, professor emeritus of philosophy at Swarthmore College; Roscoe Pound, a professor at the University of Harvard College; Paul H. Douglas, professor of economics at the University of Chicago; J. Russell Smith, professor of economic geography at Columbia University; and Albert T. Mills, professor of history and political science at James Millikin University. {DCL; ER; EW}
The Making of a Quaker Atheist
George Amoss, Jr.
Copyright © George Amoss, Jr., 1999 All rights reserved.
How did I come to be a Quaker and an atheist?
I was raised as neither; my early life was filled with faith in God and a fascination with the Catholic priesthood and "the religious life"--life under vows in an order of friars or monks. It was not until young adulthood that I began to abandon my dream of that life, when I lost my faith in the Catholic Church and its God.
That faith was lost when, as the military attempted to conscript me, the Church, in the grip of the nationalism that had placed the flag next to Christ's tabernacle and engraved "Pro Deo et Patria" over our parochial school's door, would not support my conscientious objection to participation in war. When "Holy Mother Church"could insist that I violate my conscience and obey orders to maim and kill, I could not but question her authority.
To my surprise, I found that she could not withstand intense questioning: she claimed Jesus Christ as her cornerstone, but a study of Jesus' recorded teachings on violence revealed her to be in error. The stone removed, the sanctuary crumbled.
As the dust cleared, I was shocked to find that the sanctuary had been empty. The Christian God, my God, was revealed as the Church's creation, a fresco on a now-fallen wall. He had terrified me at times, but he had been the heart of my world; he had loved me, and I had loved him. My life ached with longing for my lost God.
Devastated by his death, I turned to Buddhism, a faith founded, like Christianity, on a profound reaction against human suffering. Whereas Jesus had expected that God would quickly end all suffering by creating a new world, the Buddha had taught a way for us to overcome pain here and now. Buddhism sought spiritual liberation through one's own efforts, but it left open the possibility of God. Captivated, I pored over sutras, Zen dialogues, and Madhyamika dialectics. And I learned to allow my mind to become still in zazen meditation, a practice that later enriched my Quaker worship.
But Buddhism lacked an activist social conscience, and it lacked the person of Jesus. Moved by Jesus' vision of the Kingdom of God, a transformed world of peace, justice, and well-being, and sensing that his crucifixion symbolized a divine self-emptying at the heart of all things, I began to study the works of scripture scholars and contemporary theologians, hoping to find a way to believe in his presence again. For a dozen years, I struggled to work out both a theology of a suffering, kenotic God and an exegesis that would make New Testament eschatology something other than a barrier to belief. It was an effort that, despite my hopes, would ultimately fail; for a time, however, both disciplines being elastic, it provided a canvas for a Christocentric faith.
It was during that time that I began to worship among Friends at Little Falls Meeting in Maryland.
Drawn by curiosity about my ancestors, who are buried in the Meeting's cemetery, and about Friends' beliefs and practices, I visited the meetinghouse one day when it was unoccupied. My eye was caught by a lettered wooden sign posted by the door; it testified to a belief, "based on the life and teachings of Jesus," in working for peace and equality. Feeling in sympathy with that statement, I joined the small group of Friends for worship on the next Sunday. When I was invited to stay for the business meeting afterward, I accepted, and my life was changed.
The Friends, concerned over their dwindling numbers, were planning to renovate an old schoolhouse on the property to provide classroom and meeting space as well as a kitchen and washrooms, of which there were none in the meetinghouse. The project was clearly essential to the survival of the meeting, but one member was blocking consensus on grounds that, I thought, approached being irrational. Despite their obvious sense of urgency about the project, the other Friends labored patiently and lovingly with the dissenter, and when it became clear that he could not agree to the proposed building design, the issue was set aside for further consideration.
I was astonished: never before had I seen a group of people so single-mindedly put love and respect above "getting things done."
There was a real spiritual power among the Friends. As I participated in their worship and business practice, learned of their work and witness, and experienced their respect for and challenges to individual and community consciences, I became convinced that the Friends were living in the spirit of Jesus. Through them, I came to believe--unlike, ironically, some of those Friends themselves--in the presence and guiding activity of Christ. The experience was strong and sure enough, I felt, to warrant belief in the resurrection of Jesus and therefore in the Christian God. I had recovered--reconstructed--my God.
Naturally, I felt that my experience of God should be much as it had been when I was young, excepting those characteristics, which I attributed to Roman Catholicism, that had darkened my early life with abject fear of divine wrath. However, the Quakerism of Little Falls Meeting, although it had led me back to Christian faith, was not explicitly Christocentric, nor did it offer context for the exegetical and theological explorations I'd come to love. So I used my family's move into the city as an opportunity to "isit other churches,"as I put it to one of the Friends, and I soon found that the local Episcopal church offered beautiful services and relative freedom of thought in a traditional Christian setting. It seemed to be just what I wanted, and, within three years of my discovery of Quakerism, I was ritually received into the Episcopal Church.
The sacred beauty and joy of the church's liturgy outweighed, I told myself, the church's failure to embrace equality and nonviolence. ("here is an Episcopal Peace Fellowship,"the rector told me, "but it's not very active. You could try to start a chapter in this parish, but I mentioned it here a few years ago and found that there's no interest in that sort of thing."
The liturgy could give me a momentary sense of Christ's presence as well as the comfort of returning to something like the religion of my childhood. But it could not, I eventually found, quiet my questions and concerns about equality, justice, and peace; nor could it shield God from harsh reality. When my grandfather, who had been crippled for much of his life with a painful, degenerative disease, died of colon cancer, my faith failed; already weakened by the church's assent to injustice and violence, it could not withstand the sight of that beloved man's agony of body and spirit.
No good God would allow such things, I knew. The Christian God had once more been revealed as fantasy. Twice-dead, he would not be raised again.
After that abortive return to a form of Catholicism, I wanted to abandon religion completely. But religion had sensitized me to the dark side of life, to the violence, injustice, and pain that characterize our world; I couldn't keep my gaze averted. And I had seen a spirit of committed and courageous love among Friends, some of whom did not hold traditional Christian beliefs, that I had encountered nowhere else.
A friend who had become a member of another Quaker meeting happened to call at that time, and we began a series of conversations that led to my attendance at Homewood Meeting in Baltimore. As I began again to know the transforming power of Quaker practice, I dove into reading of Quaker history and spirituality, and I satisfied my desire for broader intellectual inquiry into religion by completing a college program of comparative religion, scripture criticism, and seminars on moral questions. Keeping a journal, I attempted to make critical sense of my experience, applying lessons learned in life as well as in school and reading.
Over some years, my experiences and studies came together in a synthesis that I expressed in an ancient image: "being Christ." Jesus was not a supernatural being, I'd concluded, and his resurrection was a scripture-based myth born of desperate hope; nevertheless, in his willingness to give himself to and for the Kingdom, Jesus did incarnate a holy spirit, a deeply human spirit that dares to envision and work toward a loving world.
I knew that Jesus'spirit can live in human beings; I'd met that spirit among the Friends, and I'd felt it stir within me in response to their "answering that of God" in me. To learn to live in that spirit, to join with others as the heart and hands of Christ in the world, would, I decided, be the finest thing any human being could do. Quakerism focused directly on that challenge, letting everything else fall away; while the churches looked for Christ primarily in ritual and scripture, Friends quietly worked to make the Christ-spirit actively present here and now.
I shared the Quaker thirst for Jesus' Kingdom of God; I found deep if ineffable meaning in the silent communion of worship; I knew the power of group discernment to awaken wisdom and love within us. Among Friends, I was, at last, at home. In response to my request for membership, Homewood Meeting graciously received me, asking not whether I believed in God or would conform myself to "testimonies" construed as rules, but whether I was committed to the people and practices of that Quaker community, particularly to seeking to live in that spirit we see in Jesus. I accepted membership with joy and a sense of responsibility to contribute to the life of the meeting and the society as best I could.
One part of that contribution would be to continue the task of interpreting my experience of Quakerism for myself and others. I knew first-hand the transforming power of our silent worship, but how could we understand a worship directed to no God? And how understand the ability of our business practice to weave our differences into unity?
Seeking deeper insight into the foundational experiences of our movement, I returned to the history of early Quakerism. In his journal, George Fox claimed that, nearing despair at the failure of Christian teachings to "speak to [his] condition," not knowing what to believe or how to act in order to fulfill God's will, he had been inspired to see that the divine Christ could teach him, and all people, directly. In fact, Fox decided, only the inwardly-received leading of the living Christ could be relied upon. "There is one," the voice of insight had told him, "even [Christ] Jesus, that can speak to thy condition." In that "opening" was born the Quaker movement, which would call all people to disregard human teachings and to discern and obey the leading of the living Spirit of Christ, the Inner Light, within them. Such obedience would lead to perfection, Fox believed, and to the realization of the Kingdom of God, inwardly and outwardly, here and now.
But I saw that as the founding evangelists traveled through seventeenth-century England planting seeds of the new faith, tares of truth were already sprouting in their fertile fields. Friends' sole reliance on Christ's inward guidance led to unacceptable behavior and schism almost from the beginning of the Quaker movement.
Committed to their faith in the Inward Christ, Fox and other early leaders assumed that some Friends were confusing their own desires with the Light's leadings. They addressed the problem by expanding the Quaker business practice, setting up a system, the outline of which remains today, of "meetings" or bodies to oversee the lives and practice of Friends. But to the extent that it imposed human authority and control, that system was a betrayal of the original faith in direct divine guidance, a tacit admission that the living Christ was not, after all, sufficient to guide human beings into truth. The system may have helped the fledgling movement survive a hostile time, but it ultimately failed to keep Friends in unity. And it opened the door to further appeals to authority, most destructively to demands that scripture be enthroned as a rule book.
When faithful to its foundation--and in every generation of Friends, there have been many faithful--the Quaker community reaches its decisions through the discernment of those who wait together upon the leading of the Inward Light. And it often happens that individuals who at first seem to be wrong or "out of the Light" eventually prove to be the community's link to inspiration.
As a process, then, our practice seems circular: the community that must judge the validity of individual inspiration depends upon that inspiration for its judgments. Consequently, tension between individual and community claims to divine revelation cannot be resolved without subordinating inward inspiration to external authority.
The appeal to authority does break the circle, but in so doing it wrecks the process. Quaker practice "works" only when love is paramount, as it was in the business meeting I witnessed at Little Falls. When individual and group desires are "brought low" under love's leading, all participants in the process are equal, and the community's primary goal is not to judge but to love each other. In such a gathered meeting, there can be no tension between individualand group objectives, nor need or place for authority. The circle is dissolved.
And there I found the key: Quaker practice is nothing more or less than the actualization of love.
Love, available to all, is our Light on the way and our sole basis for unity: that is the central lesson of the Quaker experience. And silent worship is the womb of our corporate life. As we open ourselves in worship to loving as Jesus loved, we become one spirit and accomplish things great and small without striving or contention. Ultimately, belief in supernatural beings is unnecessary. Our strength, our vision, and our unity derive solely from the love in our hearts.
If some of us, at least, can no longer claim supernatural guidance, it is nonetheless true that our Quaker worship continues to center our lives in love, empowering us to live compassionately and courageously. And if we can no longer aspire to live as perfected beings in the Kingdom of God here and now, it is nonetheless true that the witness and work of Friends for relief of suffering, equality of persons, tolerance, freedom, peace, and justice continue to make the world a better place for countless people. The lives of Friends today and throughout our history prove that, whether Christ lives or not, what Fox believed to be Christ's voice within the human heart is real. From the beginning, Friends have known experientially that something in us seeks Jesus' Kingdom of God, and that through our uniquely powerful practice of waiting together upon its inspiration, we bring that something, that holy spirit of human love, to the fore, strengthening our dedication to discerning its voice and living as it leads us. In so doing, we become, corporately and severally, the living Christ.
In sharing that conviction, that experience, I am a Quaker.
QUALIFICATIONS FOR A LEADER • 0 Number of times Jesus exhorted his followers to pray in public • 0 Number of times Jesus urged followers to aspire to public office • 0 Number of times Jesus advocated rebellion against the Roman Empire • 0 Number of times Jesus demanded the abolition of slavery, abortion, pornography, gladiatorial combat, war, and child abuse • 0 Number of times the Bible prohibits or even mentions the word “abortion” • 0 Number of times the Bible calls for establishment of democracy, jury trials, freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom of assembly: • 0 Number of times Jesus advocated strong close-knit families • 0 Number of times Jesus urged equal rights and fair treatment of women {From the Internet)
QUANTUM THEORY “Quantum theory, which has been evolving since the beginning of the century, is a mathematical framework describing the behavior of extra-small objects, including atoms,” Malcolm W. Browne explained in a New York Times article (14 October 1998) about the 1998 Nobel Prizes in Physics and Chemistry. The theory is, simply, that radiant energy is transmitted in the form of discrete units, “quantum” referring to the quantity or specific portion that can be measured. Together with the theory of relativity, quantum theory is the theoretical basis of modern physics. The former assumes importance in the special situation where very large speeds are involved, the latter for the special situation where very small quantities are involved. Older theories treated energy solely as a continuous phenomenon, and matter was assumed to occupy a very specific region of space and to move in a continuous manner. Dr. Robert B. Laughlin of Stanford University, one of the Nobel Prize winners, told reporters that the fractional quantum Hall effect (“the generation of an electric potential perpendicular to both an electric current flowing along a conducting material and an external magnetic field applied at right angles to the current upon application of the magnetic field,” according to the American Heritage Dictionary) would likely have no immediate applications. “It’s more of cosmological than practical interest at the moment,” Laughlin said, adding
Potentially, it can help us understand the quantum structure of the vacuum throughout the space-time of the universe. There are two great tends in physics: Newtonian reductionism, in which you look for the wheels and cogs that make the big mechanism work, and the opposite, in which you take little things like the equations of motion and see how they make the big mechanism work. The latter is [my] approach.
A difficult theory, particularly to humanists whose forte often is the humanities, it was described by Browne:
All very small objects—molecules, atoms, subnuclear particles, photons of light—obey the rules of quantum mechanics. Quantum mechanics deals with large assemblages of particles and calculates probabilities rather than certainties. Viewed quantum mechanically, all objects are said to have “wave functions” that include all their possible conditions. For instance, it is possible, because a wave function includes all possibilities, for an object to be in two places at the same time. Since the electrons that orbit atoms are quantum particles, the mathematical of quantum mechanics apply to them, and physicists and chemists have long known that it is theoretically possible to predict the interactions of atoms by calculating the wave functions of their orbital electrons.
The five quantum theorists who won Nobel Prizes in 1998 besides Laughlin were Dr. Walter Kohn of the University of California at Santa Barbara; Dr. John A. Pople, a mathematician at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois; Dr. Horst L. Störmer of Columbia University In New York City; and Dr. Daniel C. Tsui of Princeton University in New Jersey. (See entry for String Theory.) {CE; The New York Times, 14 October 1998}
QUASARS Quasars, or quasi-stellar objects, are the most distant and most luminous objects in the universe. Astronomers in space, uninterested in ancient explanations of the universe’s genesis, have in the 1990s detected a quasar an estimated sixty sextillion miles away. A quasar is 10 billion light years away, or 60 sextillion miles—60 followed by 21 zeros. Astronomers are working on the assumption that a few minutes after the “big bang,” an immense explosion created the universe. That explosion probably spread lots of hydrogen gas and much less helium gas between galaxies. Using the Hubble Space Telescope, they continue to make new discoveries, one being that most quasars are presumably powered by black holes—extremely dense regions at the center of many galaxies where gravity is so strong that light cannot escape—and that the bulk of quasar formation appears to have occurred about 2.5 billion years after the Big Bang. Before 1.9 billion years and after 3 billion, the creation of quasars was exceedingly rare. However, astronomers continue to develop new findings, and what presently is known about quasars is regularly modified. {CE}
Quatrefages, Jean Louis Armande, de Breau (1810–1892) Quatrefages, a French zoologist, at first opposed theories of evolution, then got Darwin nominated a corresponding member of the French Academy. He is frequently quoted as “one of the great Christian scientists,” but after being raised a Protestant he gave up Christianity for deism early in life. In Les Emules de Darwin (The Rivals of Darwin, published 1894, 12 volumes), Quatrefages continued to reject Darwinism but also rejected the Christian version. For him, the origin of life and similar problems remained “a mystery.” {JM; RAT; RE} QUEENS UNIVERSITY Queens University humanists are found on the Web: <www.secularhumanism.org/cfa/orgs.html>.
QUEENSLAND HUMANIST An Australian publication, Queensland Humanist is at GPO Box 2041, Brisbane 4001, Australia.
QUEER THEORY Queer Theory, as understood on campuses, is a prism through which scholars examine literary texts. Such theorists scorn traditional definitions of “homosexual” and “heterosexual,” making no strict demarcation between male and female. Instead, and as Foucault pointed out, sexuality is that which exists on a continuum, with some people preferring sex partners of the opposite sex, others enjoying partners of both sexes. “Only since the 19th century,” journalist-critic Dinitia Smith has written, “have sexual definitions become rigid. And along with this rigidity . . . has come anxiety, panic, and intensifying homophobic attitudes.” By looking at literary works through the prism of queer theory, queer theorists attempt to clarify them and explain their mysteries. At the forefront of the outlook, Smith has pointed out, are Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, a Duke University professor who does not like being called “the straight woman who does queer studies,” and Judith Butler, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley. In provocatively titled essays like “Jane Austen and the Masturbating Girl,” “How to Bring Your Kids Up Gay,” and “Is the Rectum Straight?: Identification and Identity in The Wings of the Dove,” Sedgwick has taken texts traditionally seen as heterosexual and exposes what she says are their homoerotic themes. Desire and repression, she agrees with Foucault, are at the root of all politics. “You can’t,” she holds, “understand relations between men and women characters unless you understand the relationship between people of the same gender. Also important is the way homophobia is aroused in a particular cultural setting.” For example, in the case of Dickens’s Our Mutual Friend, with its “cultural setting” that of England of the mid-1800’s, a strong attraction between two men would not necessarily culminate in sex but would lead to a kind of “homosexual panic.” Disagreeing with queer theory, the critic and Catholic Andrew Sullivan has regarded such theorists “as a sect restricted to the academy, which they control as a cartel. Their essential argument is that the whole notion of gender is wrong, there is no such thing as responsibility, and any attempt to go by the rules is oppressive.” Sedgwick has countered, “I think it’s ridiculous to say ‘queer theory’ is not about ethical responsibility. There is an ethical urgency about queer theory that is directed at the damage that sexual prohibitions and discriminations do to people.” (See entry for Eve Kosofsky Sedwick.) {Dinitia Smith, The New York Times, 17 January 1998}
Quental, Antero de (1842–1891) Said by Wheeler to be one of the most advanced minds in Portugal, Quentel published poetry and prose that showed him to be a student of Hartmann, Proudhon, and Rénan. In his Os Sonetos Completos (1886), Quental showed how his early mysticism passed into a rather pessimistic atheism, then to a tranquil agnosticism. Quental was a socialist who led the Coimbra dissidents in their opposition to the monarchy and to romanticism. {BDF; CE; JM; RAT; RE}
Quering, Wanda (20th Century) Quering, from Nebraska, is on the board of directors of the Freedom From Religion Foundation.
Quesnay, François (1694–1774) Quesnay was a French economist who is noted for his Tableau Economique (1708) and his doctrine of Laissez Faire. Quesnay, a physician, derived moral and social rules from physical laws. A peasant boy, he had not been taught to read until he was twelve years old, but he learned Latin and Greek, studied medicine, surgery, philosophy, and mathematics, winning a high repute as a surgeon. He founded the Physiocratic School of political economy. Although he did not specify his own views, he associated with Diderot and wrote articles for the Encyclopédie. {BDF; JM; RAT; RE}
QUEST & CONTROVERSEY Quest & Controversy, a quarterly of Humanist of Inland Communities, is at PO Box 1001, San Jacinto, California 92581.
QUESTIONING • Judge a man by his questions rather than his answers. . . . He must be very ignorant for he answers every question he is asked. –Voltaire
• No man really becomes a fool until he stops asking questions. –Charles P. Steinmetz
Quételet, Lambert Adolphe Jacques (1796–1874) Quételet was director of the Brussels Observator and a professor of astronomy, geodesy, and mathematics at the Military School. He was eight times President of the International Statistical Congress and is counted as one of the founders of statistical science as well as of meteorology. His advanced rationalism is seen in Sur l’homme et le développement de ses facultiés (1835, 2 volumes). {RAT; RE}
Qufu Qufu is the birth and burial place in China of K’ung-Fu-Tze (Confucius).
Quidde, Ludwig (1858–1929) Quidde, a German historian, was the Nobel Prize winner in 1927. A professor of history at Munich University and Vice-President of the International Peace Conference, he had in 1894 caused a sensation with Caligula, which was understood to be an attack on the Kaiser. Quidde in his writings approvingly quoted Frederick the Great’s negative comments on Christianity. {RE}
Quigley, Harold J. (20th Century) When he signed Humanist Manifesto II, Quigley was a leader of the Ethical Humanist Society of Chicago. A Presbyterian dismissed for heresy, he became a Leader of Ethical Culture Societies in Cleveland, Los Angeles, and Chicago (1962–1981). (See entry for Ethical Culture.) {HM2}
Quimada, Toribio (Died 1988) Quimada founded the Universalist Church of the Philippines in 1954. His outlook included the idea that salvation is for all; that God is love and therefore Hell for sinners is illogical; that Jesus was a son of Mary and Joseph, not a god; that Jesus preached love, peace, equality, and justice. In 1988 he was brutally murdered.
Quin, Malcolm (19th Century) Quin was a secular leader in Leicester, England, during the 1870s. He helped supply hymns, saying, “People who believed in nothing else believed in hymns.” {RSR; WSS}
Quinn, Thom (20th Century) Quinn, a professor at the University of Wisconsin, signed Humanist Manifesto 2000.
Quincy, Josiah (1772–1864) Quincy was son of Josiah Quincy Sr. (1744–1775), the eminent political leader during the American Revolution who, along with John Adams, defended the British soldiers in their trial following the Boston Massacre. Like his father, Quincy was a political leader, serving as a Federalist in the state senate. He then became minority leader in the U.S. House of Representatives, arguing against admitting Louisiana as a state unless the original thirteen states all voted in favor. Quincy opposed the War of 1812, left Congress, became mayor of Boston, and in 1829 became president of Harvard, where he served until 1845. Quincy wrote The History of Harvard University (1840). Robert A. McCaughey, in Josiah Quincy, 1772–1864, The Last Federalist (1974), cites Quincy as being a Unitarian. {U}
Quine, Willard Van Orman (1908– ) Quine, a professor of philosophy emeritus at Harvard University, is a Humanist Laureate in the Council for Secular Humanism’s International Academy of Humanism. He is a contributing editor on Philo. Among his works are Methods of Logic (1950); From A Logical Point of View (1953), Word and Object (1960); Set Theory and Its Logic (1963); The Ways of Paradox (1966); Ontological Relativity (1969); and From Stimulus to Science (1995). In 1992, Harvard University Press issued a new edition of his Pursuit of Truth, in which he states: “I am of that large minority or small majority who repudiate the Cartesian dream of a foundation for scientific certainty firmer than scientific method itself. But I remain occupied, we see, with what has been central to traditional epistemology, namely the relation of science to its sensory data. I approach it as an input-output relation within flesh-and-blood denizens of an antecedently acknowledged external world, a relation open to inquiry as a chapter of the science of that world. . . . I call the pursuit naturalized epistemology. . . . “The most notable norm of naturalized epistemology actually coincides with that of traditional epistemology. It is simply the watch-word of empiricism: nihil in mente quod non prius in sensu. This is a prime specimen of naturalized epistemology, for it is a finding of natural science itself, however fallible, that our information about the world comes only through impacts on our sensory receptors. And still the point is normative, warning us against telepaths and soothsayers. . . . “The science game is not committed to the physical, whatever that means. Bodies have long since diffused into swarms of particles, and the Bose-Einstein statistic has challenged the particularity of the particle. Even telepathy and clairvoyance are scientific options, however moribund. It would take some extraordinary evidence to enliven them, but, if that were to happen, then empiricism itself—the crowning norm, we saw, of naturalized epistemology—would go by the board. . . . The collapse of empiricism would admit extra input by telepathy or revelation, but the test of the resulting science would still be predicted sensation.” “In other words,” observes Prof. Eric Walther of C. W. Post College, “science really is the Pope who declares himself to be fallible. All that religion or spirituality or any hypothesis whatsoever needs to do, to win our allegiance, is to predict our sensations more accurately than can be done without it.” (See the discussion about Quine by C. F. Presley in the Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Vol. 7.) {CA; CE; E; SHD}
Quinet, Edgar (1803–1875) After an attack on the Church (Le génie des religions) in 1842, Quinet roused such enthusiasm that he was appointed professor of history at Paris University. He was then deposed, however, for attacking religion in his lectures. For his share in the Revolution of 1848 he was exiled, during which time he wrote a number of Rationalist works in Belgium. In 1871, Quinet returned to France and sat with the anti-clericals in the Chambre. His twenty-eight volumes of work advanced rationalism both in France and in Belgium. {RAT; RE}
Quintin, Jean (Died 1530) “The heretic of Picardy,” Quintin allegedly founded the Libertines. He is said in 1525 to have preached in Holland that religion is a human invention. He was arrested and burned at Tournay, Belgium, in 1530. {BDF}
Quiogue, Gonzalo (20th Century) When he signed Humanist Manifesto II, Quiogue was vice president of the Humanist Association of the Philippines. He wrote Thought-Provoking Essays of Humanists, Rationalists, and Freethinkers (1978). {GS; HM2}
QUR’AN (also called Alcoran; previously spelled Koran) • Koran, n. A book which the Mohammedans foolishly believe to have been written by divine inspiration, but which Christians know to be a wicked imposture, contradictory to the Holy Scripture. –Ambrose Bierce The Devil’s Dictionary
The Qur’an is Islam’s sacred text, considered by Muslims to contain the “revelations” of Allah which were delivered to Muhammed by Gabriel. In addition to humans, the work speaks of three classes of creatures:
• angels (malaika), the messengers and slaves of God are commanded by four archangels: Jibril (Gabriel), Mikail, Izrail, and Israfil; • jinns, which probably represent the old animistic gods, have been created by fire, are intelligent, and have a connection with magic and talismans—they can be made to serve man; • devils, such as Shaitan (Satan) and Shayatiyn (several shaitan), do not reside in Hell but will end up there at the end of time. One of their weapons against men is disease, especially the plague. Shaitan is the power in man’s heart that is opposed to God.
The Qur’an teaches an uncompromising monotheism, is completely patriarchal in its outlook, and urges absolute submission to the one God: Allah. Written in classical Arabic, it gives “guidance for the pious who believe in the mysteries of the faith, perform their prayers, give alms.” A 1734 translation was made by G. Sale, an 1861 translation was made by J. M. Rodwell, and numerous later editions are available. The book contains as much violence as the other sacred books; e.g.,
Sura 89.17: God killed them, and those shafts were God’s, not yours. Sura 14.4: God misleads whom he will and whom he will he guides. Sura 32.32: If we had so willed, we could have given every soul its guidance, but now my Word is realized: ‘I shall fill Hell with jinn and men together.’ ” Sura 19.72: There is not one of you who will not go down to it [hell], that is settled and decided by the Lord. Sura 97.5: For Laza [the fires of hell] dragging by the scalp, shall claim him who turned his back and went away, and amassed and hoarded. Sura 104.4: “It is God’s kindled fire, which shall mount above the hearts of the damned. Sura 54:45: The sinners are in error and excitement. On the day when they shall be dragged into fire on their faces.
No secular-style Voltaire or Thomas Paine has ever spoken out in the Muslim world or, at any rate, was openly allowed to live on in such a society. (See Ibn Warraq’s Why I Am Not A Muslim.) {ER; Qur’an}
Quris, Charles (19th Century) A French advocate of Angers, Quris published some works on law and La Défense Catholique et la Critique (1864). {BDF}
