Atheists & Agnostics

Although the story has circulated for a long time, the most famous retelling comes from the Stephen Hawking book A Brief History of Time:

"A well-known scientist (some say it was Bertrand Russell) once gave a public lecture on astronomy. He described how the Earth orbits around the sun and how the sun, in turn, orbits around the centre of a vast collection of stars called our galaxy.
"At the end of the lecture, a little old lady at the back of the room got up and said: 'What you have told us is rubbish. The world is really a flat plate supported on the back of a giant turtle.'
"The scientist gave a superior smile before replying, 'What is the turtle standing on?'
"'You're very clever, young man, very clever,' said the old lady. 'But it's turtles all the way down.'"