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Evolution Quotes

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Evolution Quotes

“It is difficult to imagine evolution in alien planets operating in any manner other than Darwinian.”

Difficult Imagine Planets Evolution Aliens

Author:Simon Conway Morris

“Throughout his last half-dozen books, for example, Arthur Koestler has been conducting a campaign against his own misunderstanding of Darwinism. He hopes to find some ordering force, constraining evolution to certain directions and overriding the influence of natural selection. [...] Darwinism is not the theory of capricious change that Koestler imagines. Random variation may be the raw material of change, but natural selection builds good design by rejecting most variants while accepting and accumulating the few that improve adaptation to local environments.”

“As a bio-philosopher - as someone who draws upon the scriptures of nature, recognizing that we are the product of the process of evolution, and in a sense, we have become the process itself - through the emergence and evolution of our consciousness, our awareness, our capacity to imagine and to anticipate the future and to choose from amongst alternatives.”

Process Consciousness Imagine Awareness Products Evolution Draws Capacity Philosopher Scripture Alternatives Recognizing Anticipate Emergence Bios

Author:Jonas Salk

“We've only explored about five percent of our ocean. There are great discoveries yet to be made down there, fantastic creatures representing millions of years of evolution and possibly bioactive compounds that could benefit us in ways that we can't even yet imagine.”

Way Years Made Millions Imagine Evolution Creatures Ocean Benefits Discovery Fantastic Representing Compounds

Author:Edith Widder

“Intelligent design cannot explain Darwinian evolution. Darwin's whole point is that variation and change are random and without higher purpose. We cannot imagine that God designed this disproof of His own existence.”

Whole Purpose Existence Imagine Design Evolution Higher Intelligent Imagine That Variation Intelligent Design Higher Purpose

Author:James K. Galbraith

“...Which brings me to the Hubble Space Telescope's newest images. If it's wonder that you're looking for, and mystery, don't just scan the photographs. Stop and think about them. Try to imagine the scale. The Earth is just a speck of dust on one distant whirling tentacle of the Milky Way galaxy, which contains billions of stars. A 'collision' of galaxies seems unimaginably large - and yet it is something scientists long ago imagined... The imaginings of pseudoscience are feeble by comparison.”

“The reason we don't often confront the larger question of whether or not war is survivable is because of a failure of imagination. We honestly cannot imagine having reached a state in our own evolution in which we do not fight.”

War States Reason Fighting Imagination Imagine Evolution Honestly

Author:Marianne Williamson

“There is a relative order to the fossilized species of plants found in the geologic record for which Flood Geology cannot account, unless you can imagine apple and orange trees with Nike sneakers on their roots, racing past the magnolias and primitive mammals, leaving the ginkgoes back there with the dinosaurs when the Flood waters began to rise.”

“You can imagine a different world in which a number of species developed with different genetically determined linguistic systems. It hasn't happened in evolution. What has happened is that one species has developed, and the genetic structure of this species happens to involve a variety of intricate abstract principles of linguistic organization that, therefore, necessarily constrain every language, and, in fact, create the basis for learning language as a way of organizing experience rather than constituting something learned from experience.”

“In the abstract, it might be tempting to imagine that irreducible complexity simply requires multiple simultaneous mutations - that evolution might be far chancier than we thought, but still possible. Such an appeal to brute luck can never be refuted... Luck is metaphysical speculation; scientific explanations invoke causes.”

Stills Might Causes Imagine Evolution Luck Appeals Explanation Abstract Complexity Imagine That Multiple Metaphysical Speculation Brutes Serendipity Tempting Invoke Mutation Simultaneous

Author:Michael Behe

“I believe in intuition and inspiration. Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited, whereas imagination embraces the entire world, stimulating progress, giving birth to evolution. It is, strictly speaking, a real factor in scientific research.”

Source: Einstein on Cosmic Religion and Other Opinions and Aphorisms

“It is an error to imagine that evolution signifies a constant tendency to increased perfection. That process undoubtedly involves a constant remodeling of the organism in adaptation to new conditions; but it depends on the nature of those conditions whether the direction of the modifications effected shall be upward or downward.”

Science Process Imagine Conditions Depends Evolution Perfection Constant Errors Tendencies Imagine That Organisms Adaptation Modification Remodeling

Book:Evolution and Ethics

Source: Evolution and Ethics

“It is certainly true in the United States that there is an uneasiness about certain aspects of science, particularly evolution, because it conflicts, in some people's minds, with their sense of how we all came to be. But you know, if you are a believer in God, it's hard to imagine that God would somehow put this incontrovertible evidence in front of us about our relationship to other living organisms and expect us to disbelieve it. I mean, that doesn't make sense at all.”

“I have encountered a few "creationists" and because they were usually nice, intelligent people, I have been unable to decide whether they were really mad or only pretending to be mad. If I was a religious person, I would consider creationism nothing less than blasphemy. Do its adherents imagine that God is a cosmic hoaxer who has created the whole vast fossil record for the sole purpose of misleading humankind?”

“Imagine spending four billion years stocking the oceans with seafood, filling the ground with fossil fuels, and drilling the bees in honey production - only to produce a race of bed-wetters!”

Years Business Race Four Imagine Creation Produce Evolution Bed Ocean Productions Spending Billions Finance Fuel Honey Bees Fossils Filling Fossil Fuel Seafood Stockings Drilling

Book:WORST YEARS OF OUR LIVES

Source: WORST YEARS OF OUR LIVES