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Evolution Quotes

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Evolution Quotes

“Jonathan Wells has done us all - the scientific community, educators, and the wider public - a great service. In Icons of Evolution he has brilliantly exposed the exaggerated claims and deceptions that have persisted in standard textbook discussions of biological origins for many decades, in spite of contrary evidence. these claims have been so often repeated that they seem unassailable - that is, until one reads Wells's book.”

“Human beings were not well served by permanence or stasis. Obviously, if individuals were progressing, they were undergoing a series of presumably desirable alterations, but in a universe where flux is fundamental, it can be argued that even change for the worse is preferable to no change at all. Isn't fixity the hallmark of the living dead?.”

“Brambles, in particular, protect and nourish young fruit trees, and on farms bramble clumps (blackberry or one of its related cultivars) can be used to exclude deer and cattle from newly set trees. As the trees (apple, quince, plum, citrus, fig) age, and the brambles are shaded out, hoofed animals come to eat fallen fruit, and the mature trees (7 plus years old) are sufficiently hardy to withstand browsing. Our forest ancestors may well have followed some such sequences for orchard evolution, assisted by indigenous birds and mammals.”

“If we want to postulate a deity capable of engineering all the organized complexity in the world, either instantaneously or by guiding evolution, that deity must have been vastly complex in the first place. The creationist, whether a naive Bible-thumper or an educated bishop, simply postulates an already existing being of prodigious intelligence and complexity. If we are going to allow ourselves the luxury of postulating organized complexity without offering an explanation, we might as well make a job of it and simply postulate the existence of life as we know it!”

“There are many other (besides testosterone) behaviour-eliciting hormones fundamental for humen well-being, including estrogen and progesterone in females. The fact that complex behavioural patterns can be triggered by a tiny concentration of moleculas coursing through the bloodstream, and that different animals of the same species generate different amounts of these hormones, is something worth thinking about when it's time to judge such matters as free will, individual responsibility, and law and order.”

“If the oncoming mutation to interstellar immortality is screwed up by the politicians, it will be because those of us who see the opportunities in modern science are not adroit enough to outmaneuver the forces of inertia, stupidity and greed. Well, if we're not intelligent enough to overcome such obstacles, then we don't deserve to carry off the mutation at this stage of evolution.”

“The new advocates of ID [Intelligent Design] ask that their ideas be judged by scientific, not religious, criteria. OK, let's see how well ID stacks up as a scientific alternative to Darwinism. To gauge how well ID is doing as a platform for scientific research, I logged into the best database of the biological literature. A search for keyword ''evolution'' yielded 24,000 hits in the last decade. A search for ''intelligent design'' yielded not a single piece of research. Evolution by natural selection remains the basis of every successful biological research program.”

“A somewhat casual observer from outer space might well deduce that the course of evolution in this planet had produced a species of large four-wheeled bugs with detachable brains; peculiar animals which rested when they sent their brains away from them but performed in rather predictable manner when their brains were recalled.”

“It takes time and devotion to learn the language of color and lighting in the garden. Your tastes are sure to change over time, reflecting your inner evolution. Seeing the garden as a canvas for your celebration of Nature's palette is a wonderful expression of the soul's love of beauty and artistry. Your own inner intuition, however, is often your best teacher, but don't forget that Mother Nature will always have a few surprises up Her sleeve as well.”

“There are a lot of black men doing really well, taking care of their families, taking care of their wives, being successful, doing the right thing, promoting the right thing. There needs to be an evolution in our portrayal. We have to come together, pool our resources and tell our own stories. People won't respect us unless we make them.”

“In the first Chucky film, there's a scene in the elevator where a woman is just bringing food to a friend's home and they're in that cage elevator. She says, 'What an ugly doll,' and walks away. As the elevator begins to descend, Brad just decides he's going to drop this in and it was so simple but he just goes 'F*&k you,' and the audience went crazy. It was really a marker for us, and an evolution to understand what the potential of not just this killer, but this guy that obviously has some opinions as well.”

“There is first the problem of acquiring content, which is learning. There is another problem of acquiring learning skills, which is not merely learning, but learning to learn, not velocity, but acceleration. Learning to learn is one of the great inventions of living things. It is tremendously important. It makes evolution, biological as well as social, go faster. And it involves the development of the individual.”

“In spite of all these disquieting triumphs in the field of natural science, it's astonishing how little man has learned about himself, and how much there is to learn. How little we know about this brain which made social evolution possible, and of the mind. How little we know of the nature and spirit of man and God. We stand now before this inner frontier of ignorance. If we could pass it, we might well discover the meaning of life and understand man's destiny.”

“To be sure, Darwin's theory of evolution is imperfect. However, the fact that a scientific theory cannot yet render an explanation on every point should not be used as a pretext to thrust an untestable alternative hypothesis grounded in religion into the science classroom or to misrepresent well-established scientific propositions.”

“Since the white man says he came from the evolution of animals, well, maybe the black man didn't. The white man has made so many errors in the handling of people that maybe he did come from a gorilla or a fish and crawl up on the sand and then into the trees. Of course, evolution doesn't take God into consideration. I don't think people learned to do all the things they do through evolution.”

“Human beings are so destructive. I sometimes think we're a kind of plague, that will scrub the earth clean. We destroy things so well that I sometimes think, maybe that's our function. Maybe every few eons, some animal comes along that kills off the rest of the world, clears the decks, and lets evolution proceed to its next phase.”

“With the passing of time, as well as the social evolution and genetic exchange, we ended up putting our conscience in the colour of blood and in the salt of tears, and, as if that were not enough, we made our eyes into a kind of mirror turned inwards, with the result that they often show without reserve what we are verbally trying to deny.”

“All political theories assume, of course, that most individuals are very ignorant. Those who plead for liberty differ from the rest in that they include among the ignorant themselves as well as the wisest. Compared with the totality of knowledge which is continually utilized in the evolution of a dynamic civilization, the difference between the knowledge that the wisest and that the most ignorant individual can deliberately employ is comparatively insignificant.”

“There are sacraments of evil as well as of good about us, and we live and move to my belief in an unknown world, a place where there are caves and shadows and dwellers in twilight. It is possible that man may sometimes return on the track of evolution, and it is my belief that an awful lore is not yet dead.”

“An extra-terrestrial philosopher, who had watched a single youth up to the age of twenty-one and had never come across any other human being, might conclude that it is the nature of human beings to grow continually taller and wiser in an indefinite progress towards perfection; and this generalization would be just as well founded as the generalization which evolutionists base upon the previous history of this planet.”

“Men are impatient, and for precipitating things; but the Author of Nature appears deliberate throughout His operations, accomplishing His natural ends by slow, successive steps. And there is a plan of things beforehand laid out, which, from the nature of it, requires various systems of means, as well as length of time, in order to the carrying on its several parts into execution.”

“Well, it [evolution] is a theory, it is a scientific theory only, and it has in recent years been challenged in the world of science and is not yet believed in the scientific community to be as infallible as it once was believed. But if it was going to be taught in the schools, then I think that also the biblical theory of creation, which is not a theory but the biblical story of creation, should also be taught.”

“The tragedy of young-earth creationism is that it takes a relatively recent and extreme view of Genesis, applies to it an unjustified scientific gloss, and then asks sincere and well-meaning seekers to swallow this whole, despite the massive discordance with decades of scientific evidence from multiple disciplines. Is it any wonder that many sadly turn away from faith concluding that they cannot believe in a God who asks for an abandonment of logic and reason?”

“Opponents say natural selection is not a theory supported by observation or experiment; that it is not based on fact; and that it cannot be proved. Well, no, you cannot prove the theory to people who won't believe in it any more than you can prove that the Battle of Hastings took place in 1066. However, we know the battle happened then, just as we know the course of evolution on earth unambiguously shows that Darwin was right.”