Best 1587 quotes in «evolution quotes» category

Prosperity cannot be experienced by living detached from Nature. Everything else is only a gradation of materialistic, earthly ambitions. We came from the stars and there lies the path to our substantive evolution.

Q: But what do you think that the Bible, itself, says? Don't you know how it was arrived at? A: I never made a calculation Q: What do you think? A: I do not think about things I don't think about. Q: Do you think about things you do think about? A: Well, sometimes.

Push up some mountains. Cut them down. Drown the land under the sea. Push up some more mountains. Cut them down. Push up a third set of mountains, and let the river cut through them. “Unconformity” is the geologic term for an old, eroded land surface buried under younger rock layers. Put your outspread hand over the Carlin Canyon, Nevada unconformity and your fingers span roughly forty million years- the time that it took to bevel down the first set of mountains and deposit the younger layers on top. What is forty million years? Enough time for a small predatory dinosaur to evolve into a bird. Enough time for a four-legged, deer-like mammal to evolve into a whale. And far more than enough time to turn an ape-like creature in eastern Africa into a big-brained biped who can marvel at such things. The Grand Canyon’s Great Unconformity divides 1.7 billion-year-old rock from 550 million-year-old rock, a gap of more than one billion years. One billion years. I earn my salary studying the Earth and teaching its history, but I admit utter helplessness in comprehending such a span. A billion pages like those of this book would stack up more than forty miles. I had lived one bullion seconds a few days before my thirty-second birthday. A tape measure one billion inches long would stretch two-thirds of the way around the Earth. Such analogies hint at what deep time means- but they don’t get us there. “The human mind may not have evolved enough to be able to comprehend deep time," John McPhee once observed, “it may only be able to measure it.

...quantum problems unseat many classical ideas about matter, causality, and change that biologists use, and that disruption in turn entails radical revisions to the ideas about the mechanism in evolution, in ways we don't yet acknowledge.

Random mutations much more easily debilitate genes than improve them, and that this is true even of the helpful mutations. Let me emphasize, our experience with malaria’s effects on humans (arguably our most highly studied genetic system) shows that most helpful mutations degrade genes. What’s more, as a group the mutations are incoherent, meaning that they are not adding up to some new system. They are just small changes - mostly degradative - in pre-existing, unrelated genes. The take-home lesson is that this is certainly not the kind of process we would expect to build the astonishingly elegant machinery of the cell. If random mutation plus selective pressure substantially trashes the human genome, why should we think that it would be a constructive force in the long term? There is no reason to think so.

Rather than living only in the present, the use of verbal symbols allowed the Homo sapiens to mysteriously transcend the immediate experience given by the physical senses and to live in an abstract, extra-sensory, and hypothetical world.

Rather than being medicalized or romanticized, mental disorders, or mental dis-eases, should be understood as nothing less or more than what they are, an expression of our deepest human nature. By recognizing their traits in ourselves and reflecting upon them, we may be able both to contain them and to put them to good use. This is, no doubt, the highest form of genius.

Readers of Darwin's life, for instance, and particularly of the published correspondence of Darwin, are henceforth naturalists in the making. Ever afterwards they are Darwins on a small scale, seeing animals and plants in an entirely different light and with a correspondingly keener interest.

Real arms races are run by highly intelligent, bespectacled engineers in glass offices thoughtfully designing shiny weapons on modern computers. But there's no thinking in the mud and cold of nature's trenches. At best, weapons thrown together amidst the explosions and confusion of smoky battlefields are tiny variations on old ones, held together by chewing gum. If they don't work, then something else is thrown at the enemy, including the kitchen sink - there's nothing "progressive" about that. At its usual worst, trench warfare is fought by attrition. If the enemy can be stopped or slowed by burning your own bridges and bombing your own radio towers and oil refineries, then away they go. Darwinian trench warfare does not lead to progress - it leads back to the Stone Age.

Reason restrains. But imagination evolve.

Recently, a professor at Penn State told my son Joshua's class that during a trip to Africa, he had a mysterious encounter with a witch doctor of a tribe. He watched with horror as this witch doctor put a man into a trance and made the man put his face into burning coals and move them around with his nose on the ground. The man received no burns and wasn't even aware of the sensation of burning his flesh. The professor, being a committed naturalist, had no way to understand this obviously satanic phenomena. His scientific model didn't include any supernatural cause, whether it be godly or satanic. He admitted this fact to the class. He said that he saw what happened yet he did not believe it, because he couldn't fit it into what he called his scientific model . . . If their presuppositions rule out the supernatural, that is that! There is no more.

Recovery through sleep isn’t going to happen if the majority of the components of your being aren’t getting enough stimulation or resistance to work against. Your brain may be tired after work, but if your body and emotions haven’t been challenged through the day, they’re going to keep irritating you even if you’re asleep. They don’t need rest; they need work for real recovery to take place.

Reflecting back on the journey to the “Great Outdoors” places me in a different tonal mood, filled up with hope and passion, not resentful, suppressed relics of anger unresolved Did you listen to the winds? What did you hear? Did you listen to the trees? What knowledge did they bring you? Did you listen to the birds? What songs did they sing to you? Did you listen to the Universe(s)? What messages did they bring you? Did you listen to the ancestors? What hope did they send you? Did you really listen? Close your eyes and open up your full heart and listen again Not for me Do it 4 UrSelf Do it 4 tha Future Look beyond UrSelf Open up UrSelf Love ThySelf Quiet the chatter of your mind, close the racing tracks and be still and quiet so that U can hear what they’re trying to say to U. Be appreciative for what U have been bestowed and blessed to be stewards of, please do not take this to mean: Destroy, dominate, and control. Let it mean be cognizant of the complexity, respect true biodiversity, respect and honor all Life, allow for balance, and recognize evolutionary adaptability in all of Creation. The winds are blowing good tidings and blessings in this here direction as this one poem comes to a close while striving for the rootedness of an ancient Sequoia so high up in the sky and deeply rooted in our common Mother. Listen to my woes of loneliness and see that will Life all around, NO one is truly lonely or alone.

Regardless of all our pretenses, deep within, we are still unconsciously the same old cave-people.

Regardless of one's point of view, it's quite easy to see that Darwinism is not in the same league as the hard sciences. For instance, Darwinists will often compare their theory favorably to Einsteinian physics, claiming that Darwinism is just as well established as general relativity. Yet how many physicists, while arguing for the truth of Einsteinian physics, will claim that general relativity is as well established as Darwin’s theory? Zero.

RELATIONSHIPS & THE INNER BEING The other is a mirror of our own face; the other is a mirror of our inner being. The entire universe is a manifestation of our own inner being. Man is the microcosm and the universe is the macrocosm. In our inner being, we are one with all. True relationships is to see ourselves in all beings and to see all beings in ourselves. The inner being is not only present in human beings, but it is also present in flowers, trees, animals, stones and the stars. The divine exists everywhere in nature. Once we realize this we will never feel alone. We find the communion of the heart everywhere.

Religions served a purpose in establishing social order during the human evolving experience, but in today’s secular connected world, religions had become a liability for further progress….

Remember meditation is an active, deep remembrance, and that is discernment. Wherever you go, wherever you are, whatever you're doing, remember to utilize discernment so that you can hear and sense and feel the vibration of love rather than the vibration of illusion.

Remember, we're all just tubes with some fancy bits attached, looking for stuff to put in the front, and finding places to put whatever comes out the other side.

REMEMBER YOUR GREATNESS Before you were born, And were still too tiny for The human eye to see, You won the race for life From among 250 million competitors. And yet, How fast you have forgotten Your strength, When your very existence Is proof of your greatness. You were born a winner, A warrior, One who defied the odds By surviving the most gruesome Battle of them all. And now that you are a giant, Why do you even doubt victory Against smaller numbers, And wider margins? The only walls that exist, Are those you have placed in your mind. And whatever obstacles you conceive, Exist only because you have forgotten What you have already Achieved. REMEMBER YOUR GREATNESS by Suzy Kassem

Resolution of conflicting interests within each of us—the desire to fulfill a personal purpose versus the desire to forget about it and just go have fun, for example—takes time and focus and application of a lot of qualities, like playing a difficult piece of music with two hands on the piano. Many people are looking for a simple pill to make that apparent dichotomy go away. Once they discover it doesn’t exist, it’s very frustrating.

Revelation is God's way of telling humanity that he is afraid of their possibility; the possibility of one day being able to surpass even him.

Saadi’s dictum, in the Bostan: ‘The Path is not in the rosary, the prayer-mat and the robe

Salmon mysteriously return to their riverine birthplace after years of being away at sea. We are still learning how they do this, but scientists agree that smell is one of their navigation tools. What if we were born in a tidepool and our attraction to the sea is a coming home?

Russell commented that the development of such gifted individuals (referring to polymaths) required a childhood period in which there was little or no pressure for conformity, a time in which the child could develop and pursue his or her own interests no matter how unusual or bizarre.

Sadly, Our Dispirited Dream often conditions us to conform to a safe path rather than journey through the unknown in resonance with the one true voice within us. We are guided to choose one of the sanctioned roles, instead of unfolding our own. This outwardly authorized path, this siren song of security, holds hostage our highest potential, our most valuable contribution, and ultimately, our wellbeing.

Satisfaction doesn't come from needs and desires or fulfilling them, it comes from being yourself, being true.

Saying of the Prophet Death Die before your death.

Saying of the Prophet Humility Humility and courtesy are themselves a part of piety.

Satan is behind the theory of evolution. Satan hates God and us.  Satan is the father of all lies. So he wants nothing more than to make every human being alive believe lies about God, ourselves and how and why we exist.

Science can neither prove nor disprove Scripture; it can hope only to begin to understand it.

Scientists working on the origin of life deserve a lot of credit; they have attacked the problem by experiment and calculation, as science should. And although the experiments have not turned out as many hoped, through their efforts we now have a clear idea of the staggering difficulties that would face an origin of life by natural chemical processes. In private many scientists admit that science has no explanation for the beginning of life.

Saying of the Prophet Envy Envy devours good deeds, as a fire devours fuel.

Saying of the Prophet Sleep Sleep is the brother of death.

Saying of the Prophet Struggle The holy warrior is he who struggles with himself.

Saying of the Prophet Ink and Blood The ink of the learned is holier than the blood of the martyr.

Saying of the Prophet Understanding Speak to everyone in accordance with his degree of understanding.

See how a body will change, to give you the best chance it can.

Sermon of the Mounts Matthew 5 AND SEEING THE MULTITUDES, HE WENT UP INTO A MOUNTAIN, AND WHEN HE WAS SET, HIS DISCIPLES CAME UNTO HIM The Gospels starts in a very beautiful way. The Bible is the book of the books. The meaning of the word "bible" is - the book. It is the most precious and beautiful document that humanity has. These statements are the most beautiful ever made. That is why it is called "The Testament", because Jesus has become the witness of God. While Buddha's words are refined and philosophic, Jesus words are poetic, plain and simple. The beginning of the Gospel of Matthew states that 42 generations have passed from Abraham, the founder of Judaism, to Jesus. Jesus is the flowering, the fulfillment, of these 42 generations. The whole history that has preceded Jesus is the fulfillment in him. Jesus is the fruit, the growth, the evolution, of those 42 generations. The path of Jesus is the path of love. Jesus moved among ordinary people, while Buddha - whose path is the path of meditation, intelligence and understanding - moved with sophisticated people, who was already on the spiritual path, Jesus is the culmination of the whole Jewish consciousness, while Buddha was the culmination of the Hindu consciousness and Socrates was the culmination of the Greek consciousness. But the strange things is that the tradition rejected both Jesus, Buddha and Socrates. All the prophets of the Jews that had preceded jesus was preparing the ground for him to come. That is why John the Baptist was saying: "I am nothing compared to the person that I am preparing the way." But when Jesus came, the etablishment, the religious leaders and the priests, started feeling offended. His presence made the religious leaders look small. Hence Jesus was crucified. And this has always been so, because of the sleep and the stupidity of humanity.

Self Love is a romance of its own kind. Remember self love does not imply being selfish and just thinking about your own happiness. I believe it is an idea which revolves around acceptance of yourself as you are so that you can accept others as they are. It is a principle of loving your own being so that you are full of love and positivity. It is about coming to peace with your own self and letting go of your past wounds, it is about healing. Self Love is about becoming a butterfly from a caterpillar. It is about personal development, it is about an evolution. Self Love is about seeing yourself through your own eyes.

Self is an illusory by-product of the brain's response to the environment, with the purpose of survival of life. However, within the subjective realm of the human mind, due to higher brain capacities, the self is capable of creating its own illusory purpose, in an attempt to provide meaning in life.

Sentiments that glorify humanity know no racial distinction.

She captured the spot of my world’s centre and sent me in elliptic rings about it, causing the ground beneath me to vanish and the breath of my lungs to disperse. I was a rock locked in helpless orbit.

So, if someone like Richard Dawkins indignantly protests that his passion about these sorts of things -- the passion that drives the "God Delusion" -- should not be taken as a religious passion, I am happy to accept that. I do nevertheless think that often Dawkins and company show the sociological characteristics of the religious. This comes across particularly in what Freud calls the narcissism of small differences, the hatred of those who are close to them but not quite close enough. Just as evangelicals can differ bitterly over the true meaning of the host, so the New Atheists loathe people like me who (like them) have no religious belief but who think that science as such does not refute religion. [Is Darwinism a Religion? - Michael Ruse]

She seems to always get it To have become adept at empathy Always giving excuses for people who’ve aggrieved her To the point it’s hard for her to hit back when necessary All because she assumes she ‘understands’ Then, one day . . . She finally stands up for herself At that moment, she revels in the natural instinct of self-preservation She realises all this while the power she’s been withholding In a transcendent moment of epiphany It’s all beautiful ‘cause Now, she can get back to empathy with understanding, rather, than without.

Show me a person who really knows what 'good' is, and I will show you that he almost never uses the word.

So do not throw your pearls before swine, Instead in the sand go and draw your line. For this love you have is rare dear girl, A guide and blessing in the name of Estelle. I sat and woke to see it all clear, A stage I was seeking, no longer to fear. For I've spent too long wasting precious time, Never again will I throw pearls before swine.

Sigmund Freud founded virtually all of psychotherapy on introspection, so one would expect him to be able to explain his own feelings, no matter how primitive. In one area, however, he baffled himself: He could not explain group loyalty. He wrote that he was “irresistibly” bonded to Jews and Jewishness, by “many obscure and emotional forces, which were the more powerful the less they could be expressed in words, as well as by a clear consciousness of inner identity, a deep realization of sharing the same psychic structure.” Freud was writing about powerful feelings of kinship to an entire people. These are the feelings of nationalists and fanatics—and of ordinary people—and do not lend themselves to precise analysis. By refusing to take seriously that which they cannot analyze, social scientists misunderstand how real societies work.

So as evolution progresses, consciousness becomes more involved in matter: living beings become a fuller expression of spirit and move closer to the source from which they, and all things, came.

Somehow creationists keep us naturalists in track to some extent. They are the representation of human stupidity at its extreme. And we need some stupidity in the society for true intellect to be adored.