Convincing Evidence Quotes

• The entire hominid collection known today would barely cover a billiard table, ... the collection is so tantalizingly incomplete, and the specimens themselves often so fragmented and inconclusive, that more can be said about what is missing than about what is present. ...but ever since Darwin's work inspired the notion that fossils linking modern man and extinct ancestor would provide the most convincing proof of human evolution, preconceptions have led evidence by the nose in the study of fossil man.

  John Reader

  Men, Missing, Noses

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• The greatest threat of childhood diseases lies in the dangerous and ineffectual efforts made to prevent them through mass immunisation.....There is no convincing scientific evidence that mass inoculations can be credited with eliminating any childhood disease.

  Robert S. Mendelsohn

  Lying, Vaccines, Effort

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• After 1980, you never heard reference to space again. Surface, the most convincing evidence of the descent into materialism, became the focus of design. Space disappeared.

  Arthur Erickson

  Space, Focus, Design

  Speech to McGill University School of Architecture, www.arthurerickson.com. October 21, 2000.

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• There is convincing evidence that the search for solitude is not a luxury but a biological need. Just as humans posses a herding instinct that keeps us close to others most of the time, we also have a conflicting drive to seek out solitude. If the distance between ourselves and others becomes too great, we experience isolation and alienation, yet if the proximity to others becomes too close, we feel smothered and trapped.

  Bill Vaughan

  Distance, Luxury, Solitude

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• The Jews emerge into history, not a nation of keen spiritual aspirations and altruistic ethics, but that pagan people, worshipping rocks, sheep and cattle, and spirits of caves and wells, of whom the Old Testament, tending towards its higher ideal, gives fragmentary but convincing evidence.

  James T. Shotwell

  Spiritual, Sheep, Rocks

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• GUNPOWDER, n. An agency employed by civilized nations for the settlement of disputes which might become troublesome if left unadjusted. By most writers the invention of gunpowder is ascribed to the Chinese, but not upon very convincing evidence. Milton says it was invented by the devil to dispel angels with, and this opinion seems to derive some support from the scarcity of angels.

  Ambrose Bierce

  Angel, Science, Agency

  Ambrose Bierce (2001). “The Unabridged Devil's Dictionary”, p.102, University of Georgia Press

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• Christian apologists who argue that a story about an empty tomb is convincing evidence of a resurrected body are likely unfamiliar with Occam’s razor, which states that among competing hypotheses, the hypothesis with the fewest assumptions should be selected. They assume that the most likely explanation is miraculous resurrection through some unproven divine connection, but more likely scenarios include a stolen body, a mismarked grave, a planned removal, faulty reports, creative storytelling, edited scriptures, etc. No magic required.

  David G. McAfee

  Christian, Creative, Magic

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• I have long been something of a climate-change sceptic, but my views in recent years have shifted. For me, the most convincing evidence that something worrying is going on lies right here in the Arctic.

  Michael Hanlon

  Lying, Views, Years

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• To date, no convincing evidence for AGW (anthropogenic global warming) has been discovered. And recent global climate behavior is not consistent with AGW model predictions.

  Richard Courtney

  Climate, Global Warming, Behavior

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• It is one thing to impose drastic measures and harsh economic penalties when an environmental problem is clear-cut and severe....It is foolish to do so when the problem is largely hypothetical and not substantiated by observations....we do not currently have any convincing evidence or observations of significant climate change from other than natural causes.

  Frederick Seitz

  Cutting, Environmental, Climate

  "2008 Climate Debate" by William F. Jasper, www.thenewamerican.com. March 31, 2008.

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• Amending the U.S. Constitution, the document most sacred to those who love freedom and liberty, is a delicate endeavor and should be done only on the basis of the most clear and convincing evidence that a proposed amendment is necessary.

  Ben Nelson

  Liberty, Done, Sacred

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