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Quote by Robert Green Ingersoll

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Robert Green Ingersoll
Robert Green Ingersoll

Robert Green Ingersoll was a prominent lawyer, orator, and freethinker. Born on August 11, 1833, and died on July 21, 1899, he was one of the most celebrated orators in 19th-century America. Known for his criticism of religion and government, Ingersoll was a leading advocate for individual freedom. more

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“Blake expressed some doubt as to whether God had made the tiger. But the tiger is in many ways an admirable animal. We have now to ask whether God made the tapeworm. And it is questionable whether an affirmative answer fits in either with what we know about the process of evolution or what many of us believe about the moral perfection of God.”

IfsKnowsWayBelieveMadeAsksProcessAnswersAnimalMoralDoubtEvolutionFitPerfectionTigersAdmirableAffirmativeQuestionableBlakeMoral Perfection
Author:John B. S. Haldane
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“The basic idea of Western science is that you don't have to take into account the falling of a leaf on some planet in another galaxy when you're trying to account for the motion of a billiard ball on a pool table on earth. Very small influences can be neglected. There's a convergence in the way things work, and arbitrarily small influences don't blow up to have arbitrarily large effects.”

WayTryingIdeasEarthFallInfluenceEffectsPlanetsAccountsBallsTablesWesternBlowPoolLeafsGalaxyNeglectedConvergencePool Table
Book:Chaos: Making a New Science
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“The business of proving evolution has reached a stage when it is futile for biologists to work merely to discover more and more evidence of evolution. Those who choose to believe that God created every biological species separately in the state we observe them, but made them in a way calculated to lead us to the conclusion that they are the products of an evolutionary development are obviously not open to argument. All that can be said is that their belief is an implicit blasphemy, for it imputes to God an appalling deviousness.”

WayBelieveMadeSaidStatesBeliefStageProductsDevelopmentEvolutionProveEvidenceArgumentSpeciesConclusionBlasphemyBiologistImplicitDeviousness
Author:Theodosius Dobzhansky
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“It is obvious that the great majority of humans throughout history have had grossly, even ridiculously, unrealistic concepts of the world. Man is, among many other things, the mistaken animal, the foolish animal. Other species doubtless have much more limited ideas about the world, but what ideas they do have are much less likely to be wrong and are never foolish. White cats do not denigrate black, and dogs do not ask Baal, Jehovah, or other Semitic gods to perform miracles for them.”

MenWorldHumansIdeasAsksBlackWhiteAnimalDogConceptsCatMiracleMajoritySpeciesObviousFoolishMistakenJehovah
Author:George Gaylord Simpson
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