Evolution Quotes - Page 30

• Journalists generally have no bias toward one cosmological theory or another, but many have a natural preference for excitement.

  Steven Weinberg

  Excitement, Natural, Preference

  Steven Weinberg (2012). “Facing Up”, p.175, Harvard University Press

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Creation,' in the ordinary sense of the word, is perfectly conceivable. I find no difficulty in conceiving that, at some former period, this universe was not in existence, and that it made its appearance in six days (or instantaneously, if that is preferred), in consequence of the volition of some preexisting Being.

  Thomas Huxley

  Ordinary, Six, Appearance

  4 Copy quote

• It is emphatically the case that life could not arise spontaneously in a primeval soup of any kind.... Furthermore, no geological evidence indicates an organic soup ever existed on this planet. We may therefore with fairness call this scenario the myth of the pre-biotic soup.

  Fred Hoyle

  Soup, May, Fairness

  4 Copy quote

• There are only two possible explanations as to how life arose: Spontaneous generation arising to evolution or a supernatural creative act of God.... There is no other possibility. Spontaneous generation was scientifically disproved 120 years ago by Louis Pasteur and others, but that just leaves us with only one other possibility... that life came as a supernatural act of creation by God, but I can't accept that philosophy because I do not want to believe in God. Therefore I choose to believe in that which I know is scientifically impossible, spontaneous generation leading to evolution.

  George Wald

  Philosophy, Believe, Years

  47 Copy quote

• All scientists agree that evolution has occurred-that all life comes from a common ancestry, that there has been extinction, and that new taxa, new biological groups, have arisen. The question is, is natural selection enough to explain evolution? Is it the driver of evolution?

  Lynn Margulis

  Groups, Extinction, Ancestry

  24 Copy quote

• Agassiz, when I saw him last, had read but a part of Origin of Species. He says it is POOR-VERY POOR!!. The fact is, he is very much annoyed by it.

  Asa Gray

  Annoyed, Lasts, Saws

  4 Copy quote

• Each is but a means to an end; in the perfected end we find the intent, and there God — not in the laws themselves, except as his means of revealing himself. For that same reason, human science cannot discover God. For human science is but the backward undoing of the tapestry-web of God's science, it works with its back to him, and is always leaving him — his intent.

  George MacDonald

  Leaving, Revelations, Undoing

  "Discovering the character of God".

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• It is quite true that many scientists, many physicists, maintain that the physical constants, the half dozen or so numbers that physicists have to simply assume in order to derive the rest of their understanding ... have to be assumed. You can't provide a rationale for why those numbers are there. Physicists have calculated that if any of these numbers was a little bit different, the universe as we know it wouldn't exist.

  Richard Dawkins

  Numbers, Order, Understanding

  4 Copy quote

• Some physicists solve that problem of the necessity of finely tuned physical constants ... by invoking the anthropic principle, saying, well, here we are, we exist, we have to be in the kind of universe capable of giving rise to us. That in itself is, I think, unsatisfying, and as John Lennox rightly says, some physicists solve that by the multiverse idea-the idea that our universe is just one of many universes.

  Richard Dawkins

  Thinking, Ideas, Giving

  15 Copy quote

• I defy any of my coreligionists to tell me they do not laugh at the idea of Dawkins burning in hell.

  Ann Coulter

  Ideas, Laughing, Burning

  Ann Coulter (2006). “Godless: The Church of Liberalism”, p.268, Crown Forum

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• The world has entered a new era, evolving from an industrial into a knowledge-based society, and into a society that wants to live in harmony with nature.

  Minoru Mori

  Knowledge, World, Want

  7 Copy quote

• When you realize that the laws of nature must be incredibly finely tuned to produce the universe we see, that conspires to plant the idea that the universe did not just happen, but that there must be a purpose behind it.

  John Polkinghorne

  Nature, Everything Happens For A Reason, Law

  "Science Finds God". www.washingtonpost.com. July 20, 1998.

  68 Copy quote

  Show source

• All of us who study the origin of life find that the more we look into it, the more we feel it is too complex to have evolved anywhere. We all believe as an article of faith that life evolved from dead matter on this planet. It is just that life's complexity is so great, it is hard for us to imagine that it did.

  Harold Urey

  Believe, Origin Of Life, Looks

  11 Copy quote

• It remains true, as every paleontologist knows, that most new species, genera, and families, and that nearly all categories above the level of families, appear in the record suddenly and are not led up to by known, gradual completely continuous transitional sequences.

  George Gaylord Simpson

  Records, Levels, Fossils

  13 Copy quote

• I can envision observations and experiments that would disprove any evolutionary theory I know.

  Stephen Jay Gould

  Theory, Observation, Experiments

  Stephen Jay Gould (2010). “Hen's Teeth and Horse's Toes: Further Reflections in Natural History”, p.256, W. W. Norton & Company

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• The universe and the Laws of Physics seem to have been specifically designed for us. If any one of about 40 physical qualities had more than slightly different values, life as we know it could not exist: Either atoms would not be stable, or they wouldn't combine into molecules, or the stars wouldn't form heavier elements, or the universe would collapse before life could develop, and so on...

  Stephen Hawking

  Stars, Law, Quality

  33 Copy quote

• The German Fuhrer, as I have consistently maintained, is an evolutionist; he has consistently sought to make the practices of Germany conform to the theory of evolution.

  Arthur Keith

  Practice, Theory Of Evolution, Germany

  5 Copy quote

• The chief distinction in the intellectual powers of the two sexes is shown by mans attaining to a higher eminence, in whatever he takes up, than the woman. Whether deep thought, reason, or imagination or merely the use of the senses and hands.....We may also infer.....The average mental power in man must be above that of woman.

  Charles Darwin

  Sex, Men, Average

  29 Copy quote

• It may be quite true that some negroes are better than some white men; but no rational man, cognisant of the facts, believes that the average negro is the equal, still less the superior, of the average white man. And, if this be true, it is simply incredible that, when all his disabilities are removed, and our prognathous relative has a fair field and no favour, as well as no oppressor, he will be able to compete successfully with his bigger-brained and smaller-jawed rival, in a contest which is to be carried on by thoughts and not by bites.

  Thomas Huxley

  Believe, Men, Thinking

  "Emancipation – Black and White". Essay by Thomas Henry Huxley, mathcs.clarku.edu. 1865.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Recapitulation provided a convenient focus for the persuasive racism of white scientists; they looked to the activities of their own children for comparison with normal adult behavior in lower races.

  Stephen Jay Gould

  Children, White, Race

  7 Copy quote

• 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.

  Loren Eiseley

  Taken, Past, Origin Of Life

  Loren Eiseley (2011). “The Immense Journey: An Imaginative Naturalist Explores the Mysteries of Man and Nature”, p.199, Vintage

  15 Copy quote

  Show source

• Darwinism has become our culture's official creation myth, protected by a priesthood as dogmatic as any religious curia.

  Nancy Pearcey

  Religious, Culture, Creation

  23 Copy quote

• Faith does not imply a closed, but an open mind. Quite the opposite of blindness, faith appreciates the vast spiritual realities that materialists overlook by getting trapped in the purely physical.

  John Templeton

  Spiritual, Reality, Opposites

  John Templeton (1998). “The Humble Approach: Scientists Discover God”, p.115, Templeton Foundation Press

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• It is hard to resist the impression that the present structure of the universe, apparently so sensitive to minor alterations in numbers, has been rather carefully thought out...The seemingly miraculous concurrence of these numerical values must remain the most compelling evidence for cosmic design.

  Paul Davies

  Numbers, Design, Sensitive

  13 Copy quote

• Would it not be strange if a universe without purpose accidentally created humans who are so obsessed with purpose?

  John Templeton

  Purpose, Strange, Obsessed

  John Templeton (1998). “The Humble Approach: Scientists Discover God”, p.19, Templeton Foundation Press

  10 Copy quote

  Show source