“I can have little patience with those who oppose ... the theory of evolution or what are called "mechanistic" explanations of the phenomena of life because of certain moral consequences which at first seem to follow from these theories, and still less with those who regard it as irrelevant or impious to ask certain questions at all. By refusing to face the facts , the conservative only weakens his own position.” FirstsLittlesStillsI CanFactsSeemsFacesCertainAsksMoralPositionTheoryEvolutionConsequenceRegardConservativeExplanationPhenomenonIrrelevantTheory Of Evolution Author:Friedrich August von Hayek
“If you put on a lousy production with white actors, it's lousy. There is a problem, or can be, at this stage of our social evolution, with mixing the casts. It may not be a question of race so much as class. You would rarely find a black man in a high executive position where he was swinging his weight around.” IfsMenMayProblemActorsSocialBlackWhiteRaceClassStagePositionEvolutionWeightCastsProductionsExecutivesMixing Author:Howard Schultz
“As we enter our centennial year we are still a young nation, very much in the formative stages. Our national condition is still flexible enough that we can make almost anything we wish of our nation. No other country is in a better position than Canada to go ahead with the evolution of a national purpose devoted to all that is good and noble and excellent in the human spirit.” YearsHumansStillsCountryEnoughYoungSpiritPurposeNationsWishConditionsStagePositionEvolutionNobleExcellentCanadaDevotedOther CountriesHuman SpiritFlexibleCentennial Author:Lester B. Pearson
“To suppose universal laws of nature capable of being apprehended by the mind and yet having no reason for their special forms, but standing inexplicable and irrational, is hardly a justifiable position. Uniformities are precisely the sort of facts that need to be accounted for. Law is par excellence the thing that wants a reason. Now the only possible way of accounting for the laws of nature, and for uniformity in general, is to suppose them results of evolution.” WayWantNeedsMindReasonFactsFormLawResultsSpecialPositionEvolutionCapableStandingUniversalExcellenceNo ReasonIrrationalLaws Of NatureAccountingInexplicableUniformityUniversal Laws Author:Charles Sanders Peirce
“Any strategy that attempts to reinforce faith by undermining science is also doomed to failure. Showing that some scientific theory is wrong will not prove that the religious alternative is correct by default. When the sun was shown not to be the center of the universe, as Copernicus had proposed, the Earth was not moved back to that singular position in the cosmos. If Darwinian evolution is proved wrong, biologists will not develop a new theory based on the hypothesis that each species was created separately by God 6,000years ago.” IfsEarthReligionUniverseReligiousSunPositionTheoryEvolutionProveMovedStrategySpeciesAlternativesCosmosDoomedHypothesisDefaultBiologistUnderminingScientific TheoryCenter Of The UniverseCopernicus Author:Victor J. Stenger
“The myriad valleys could have arisen anywhere on the landscape. The current positions are quite accidental. If we could repeat the experiment, we might obtain no valleys at all, or a completely different system. Yet we now stand at the shore line contemplating the fine spacing of valleys and their even contact with the sea. How easy it is to be misled and to assume that no other landscape could possibly have arisen.” IfsDifferentMightEasyLinesSeaPositionFineEvolutionAssumingCurrentsExperimentsContactLandscapeRepeatsShoreValleysContemplatingMisledSpacing Author:Stephen Jay Gould
“I suspect the reason is that most people [...] have a residue of feeling that Darwinian evolution isn't quite big enough to explain everything about life. All I can say as a biologist is that the feeling disappears progressively the more you read about and study what is known about life and evolution. I want to add one thing more. The more you understand the significance of evolution, the more you are pushed away from the agnostic position and towards atheism. Complex, statistically improbable things are by their nature more difficult to explain than simple, statistically probable things.” PeopleWantI CanReasonEnoughFeelingsBigsDifficultSimpleKnownStudyOne ThingAtheismPositionEvolutionAddComplexesPositive AtheismDisappearSignificanceSuspectsAgnosticImprobableBiologistPushed Away Author:Richard Dawkins
“After chiding the theologian for his reliance on myth and miracle, science found itself in the unenviable position of having to create mythology of its own: namely, the assumption that what, after long effort, could not be proved to take place today had, in truth, taken place in the primeval past.” LongTodayPastFoundEffortTakenPositionEvolutionMiracleMythMythologyAssumptionTheologianRelianceOrigin Of LifePrimeval Book:The Immense Journey: An Imaginative Naturalist Explores the Mysteries of Man and Nature Source: The Immense Journey: An Imaginative Naturalist Explores the Mysteries of Man and Nature
“The fact of evolution is the backbone of biology, and biology is thus in the peculiar position of being a science founded on an unproved theory -is it then a science or a faith? Belief in the theory of evolution is thus exactly parallel to belief in special creation - both are concepts which believers know to be true but neither, up to the present, has been capable of proof.” KnowsHas BeensFactsBeliefSpecialCreationPositionTheoryEvolutionCapableConceptsProofBelieverBeing TrueBiologyPeculiarParallelsBackboneTheory Of Evolution Author:L. Harrison Matthews