Quotes & Sayings About Constructing Reality

At the heart of all temptations, as we see here, is the act of pushing God aside because we perceive him as secondary, if not actually superfluous and annoying, in comparison with all the apparently far more urgent matters that fill our lives. Constructing a world by our own lights, without reference to God, building on our own foundation; refusing to acknowledge the reality of anything beyond the political and material, while setting God aside as an illusion - that is the temptation that threatens us in many varied forms. Moral — Pope Benedict XVI

If there is some demiurge out there, delicately constructing camera eyes or piecing together rotary flagella, he or she is a contingent being, part of the physical order, just another natural phenomenon, but not the source of all being, not the transcendent creator and rational ground of reality, and so not God. By the same token, if there is no such demiurge, that too is a matter of utter indifference for the question of God. How, after all, could the existence or nonexistence of some particular finite being among other beings provide an ultimate answer to the mystery of existence as such? — David Bentley Hart

Nor is mathematics about a Platonic reality of eternal truths. It is a creation of the human body and senses, growing out of the activities of moving along a path and of collecting, constructing, and measuring objects. — Steven Pinker

This is an important distinction, because most of the modern philosophies that deny that we can know reality, and ultimately truth, make the mistake of constructing epistemological systems to explain how we know reality without first acknowledging the fact that we do know reality. After they begin within the mind and find they can't construct a bridge to reality, they then declare that we can't know reality. It is like drawing a faulty road map before looking at the roads, then declaring that we can't know how to get from Chicago to New York! — Josh McDowell

modern era of multivalent "secularity" and "exclusive humanism" in which we live, a shift from the premodern, socially embedded "porous self" to the meaning-constructing "buffered self" that lives within our "immanent frame" of disenchanted modern reality that (supposedly) lacks room for the sacred.24 — Brad S. Gregory

If everybody would agree that their current reality is A reality, and that what we essentially share is our capacity for constructing a reality, then perhaps we could all agree on a meta-agreement for computing a reality that would mean survival and dignity for everyone on the planet, rather than each group being sold on a particular way of doing things. — Francisco Varela

Why are the super-rich for socialism? Don't they have the most to lose? I take a look at my bank account and compare it with Nelson Rockefeller's and it seems funny that I'm against socialism and he's out promoting it. Or is it funny? In reality, there is a vast difference between what the promoters define as socialism and what it is in actual practice. The idea that socialism is a share-the-wealth program is strictly a confidence game to get the people to surrender their freedom to an all-powerful collectivist government. While the Insiders tell us we are building a paradise on earth, we are actually constructing a jail for ourselves. — Gary Allen

One of the strengths of Labor Zionism had always been its strong pragmatic outlook, its philosophy that a new reality can be built only by careful planning and then constructing things brick by brick, acre after acre. It — Thomas L. Friedman

I am aware that when we see something, we are getting only a measure of information, a sense, an inkling of what is really there to see. I don't know the details or the terminology but I do know that the optic nerve is not telling the full truth. We're seeing only intimations. The rest is our invention, our way of constructing what is actual, if there is any such thing, philosophically, that we can call actual. — Don DeLillo

Knowing reality means constructing systems of transformations that correspond, more or less adequately, to reality. — Jean Piaget

If you don't like your current situation, career, or relationships, by envisioning a different reality and constructing a new life within your mind, you literally cause the fabric of existence around you to bend to that new reality. You begin drawing in opportunities, people, and situations that you can take advantage of to propel yourself where you want to go. — Alvin Huang

The traditional notion of an architect having a vision of a building and then drawing it either on paper or on a computer and then constructing it isn't really how architecture works, and in reality, the computer has a lot of influence on design. — Michael Hansmeyer

While self-interest arising from the enjoyment of meat eating is obviously one reason for its entrenchment, and inertia another, a process of language usage engulfs discussions about meat by constructing the discourse in such a way that these issues need never be addressed. Language distances us from the reality of meat eating, thus reinforcing the symbolic meaning of meat eating, a symbolic meaning that is intrinsically patriarchal and male-oriented. Meat becomes a symbol for what is not seen but is always there
patriarchal control of animals and of language. — Carol J. Adams

Confusing the thing observed with the mind of the observer, of constructing not a picture of external reality but simply a mirror of the thinker. Can this danger be avoided without falling into an opposite but related error, that of separating too deeply the observer and the thing observed, subject and object, and again falsifying our view of the world? There is no way out of these difficulties - you might as well try running Cataract Canyon without hitting a rock. Best to launch forth boldly, with or without life jackets, keep your matches dry and pray for the best. — Edward Abbey