Best 1587 quotes in «evolution quotes» category

Zweck sein selbst ist jegliches Tier. Each animal is an end in itself.

Above all we should, in the century since Darwin, have come to know that man, while now captain of the adventuring ship, is hardly the sole object of its quest, and that his prior assumptions to this effect arose from the simple necessity of whistling in the dark.

Accurately perceiving and following one’s intuition is, I think, the essential human spiritual process. The distractions, confusion, misinterpretations and temptations that oppose that process are enormous. At the same time, there are always clues for how to go about it. The divine is a mystery, so the impulse to really discover, like a child, has to be the core response to anything; that’s the only way beyond the habits, presumptions and prejudices that feed ignorance and fear. To question well, instead of hiding behind a belief or answer, requires the application of the most valued of all human qualities, such as compassion, courage, imagination, respect, humility, devotion, and ultimately love of life itself. This kind of passionate questing is evident in the most admired and, if you will, divine individuals in every culture, religion, and skill throughout history.

According to Lamarck, there was a force—the ‘power of life’—that pushed organisms to become increasingly complex.

achievements. The world is directed towards the perceiver, it celebrates the ultimate perceiver. He who is established in the Self is in no way interested in theologies and cosmologies.

Adam is fading out. It is on account of Darwin and that crowd. I can see that he is not going to last much longer. There's a plenty of signs. He is getting belittled to a germ—a little bit of a speck that you can't see without a microscope powerful enough to raise a gnat to the size of a church. ('The Refuge of the Derelicts' collected in Mark Twain and John Sutton Tuckey, The Devil's Race-Track: Mark Twain's Great Dark Writings (1980), 340-41. - 1980)

A four-letter alphabet called DNA.

After the dinosaurs, it is us the humans that have become the dominant species on planet earth. However, unlike the dinosaurs, we have become the rulers of this planet not by ferociousness, but by intelligence, even though we are no less ferocious than them.

Johnson is a radical skeptic, insisting, in the best Socratic tradition, that everything be put on the table for examination. By contrast, most skeptics opposed to him are selective skeptics, applying their skepticism to the things they dislike (notably religion) and refusing to apply their skepticism to the things they do like (notably Darwinism). On two occasions I’ve urged Michael Shermer, publisher of Skeptic Magazine, to put me on its editorial board as the resident skeptic of Darwinism. Though Shermer and I know each other and are quite friendly, he never got back to me about joining his editorial board.

Lyell and Poulett Scrope, in this country, resumed the work of the Italians and of Hutton; and the former, aided by a marvellous power of clear exposition, placed upon an irrefragable basis the truth that natural causes are competent to account for all events, which can be proved to have occurred, in the course of the secular changes which have taken place during the deposition of the stratified rocks. The publication of 'The Principles of Geology,' in 1830, constituted an epoch in geological science. But it also constituted an epoch in the modern history of the doctrines of evolution, by raising in the mind of every intelligent reader this question: If natural causation is competent to account for the not-living part of our globe, why should it not account for the living part?

A knowledge both of the factors of evolution and how they operate in human society becomes necessary if we are to develop a sound social order.

All of creation expands and evolves.

All living things must grow or they will die. Adaptation to change is a characteristic of all living systems. Thus, all living things must grow, adapt, evolve, or die. Evolution is nature’s creative way of pushing living organisms to higher degrees of complexity. We adapt up, not compromise down.

All of Nature follows perfectly geometric laws. The Ancient Egyptian, Greek, Peruvian, Mayan, and Chinese cultures were well aware of this, as Phi—known as the Golden Ratio or Golden Mean—was used in the constructions of their sculptures and architecture.

All organisms vary. It is in the highest degree improbable that any given variety should have exactly the same relations to surrounding conditions as the parent stock. In that case it is either better fitted (when the variation may be called useful), or worse fitted, to cope with them. If better, it will tend to supplant the parent stock; if worse, it will tend to be extinguished by the parent stock. If (as is hardly conceivable) the new variety is so perfectly adapted to the conditions that no improvement upon it is possible,—it will persist, because, though it does not cease to vary, the varieties will be inferior to itself. If, as is more probable, the new variety is by no means perfectly adapted to its conditions, but only fairly well adapted to them, it will persist, so long as none of the varieties which it throws off are better adapted than itself. On the other hand, as soon as it varies in a useful way, i.e. when the variation is such as to adapt it more perfectly to its conditions, the fresh variety will tend to supplant the former.

All species on earth are related to one another like cousins and distant kin in a vast family tree of life.

Although each of us has the right to believe we are suffering, I suppose, there is a definite and ultimately essential distinction to be made between actual suffering, its cause and resolution, and invented or imagined suffering.

A man is born to become God, and this is the principle. A rose flower is grown in a rose plant. In the same fashion whether a man knows or not, a perpetual action is running within him, how he will be transformed into God. This action is termed as perpetual change by the Buddhists. No! this is not the perpetual change, but should be termed as perpetual evolution.

Among the Founders, Thomas Jefferson wrote about race at greatest length. He thought blacks were mentally inferior to whites and biologically distinct: “[They] secrete less by the kidnies [sic], and more by the glands of the skin, which gives them a strong and disagreeable odor.” He hoped slavery would be abolished, but he did not want free blacks to remain in America: “When freed, [the Negro] is to be removed from beyond the reach of mixture.” Jefferson was one of the first and most influential advocates of “colonization,” or returning blacks to Africa. He also believed in the destiny of whites as a racially distinct people. In 1786 he wrote, “Our Confederacy [the United States] must be viewed as the nest from which all America, North and South, is to be peopled.” In 1801 he looked forward to the day “when our rapid multiplication will expand itself . . . over the whole northern, if not the southern continent, with a people speaking the same language, governed in similar forms, and by similar laws; nor can we contemplate with satisfaction either blot or mixture on that surface.

A mouse is miracle enough to stagger sextillions of infidels.

An all-out attack on evolutionist thinking is possibly the only real hope our nations have of rescuing themselves from an inevitable social and moral catastrophe.

An atheist's response to a creationist asking 'what if' there was a God, That would be quite an unsettling thought.

And despite the insignificance of the instant we have so far occupied in cosmic time, it is clear that what happens on and near Earth at the beginning of the second cosmic year will depend very much on the scientific wisdom and the distinctly human sensitivity of mankind.

...and specimens like this confirmed there had been some kind of divine rule in the universe because no natural selection process was up to the task of creating something like him. This was some god’s, somewhere’s, handiwork.

And though our roots belong to the same tree, our branches have grown in different directions.

An example of such emergent phenomena is the origin of life from non-living chemical compounds in the oldest, lifeless oceans of the earth. Here, aided by the radiation energy received from the sun, countless chemical materials were synthesized and accumulated in such a way that they constituted, as it were, a primeval “soup.” In this primeval soup, by infinite variations of lifeless growth and decay of substances during some billions of years, the way of life was ultimately reached, with its metabolism characterized by selective assimilation and dissimilation as end stations of a sluiced and canalized flow of free chemical energy.

Animals are locked in a perpetual present. They can learn from recent events, but they are easily distracted by what is in front of their eyes. Slowly, over a great period of time, our ancestors overcame this basic animal weakness. By looking long enough at any object and refusing to be distracted—even for a few seconds—they could momentarily detach themselves from their immediate surroundings. In this way they could notice patterns, make generalizations, and think ahead. They had the mental distance to think and reflect, even on the smallest scale. These early humans evolved the ability to detach and think as their primary advantage in the struggle to avoid predators and find food. It connected them to a reality other animals could not access. Thinking on this level was the single greatest turning point in all of evolution—the emergence of the conscious, reasoning mind.

An island, on the other hand, is small. There are fewer species, and the competition for survival has never reached anything like the pitch that it does on the mainland. Species are only as tough as they need to be, life is much quieter and more settled [..] So you can imagine what happens when a mainland species gets introduced to an island. It would be like introducing Al Capone, Genghis Khan and Rupert Murdoch into the Isle of Wight - the locals wouldn't stand a chance.

An old fool is worse than a young one: For the young may always grow wise. (Zohair)

A physicist that I know commented that many other scientific disciplines, such as geology, anthropology, astronomy, are also challenged by biblical fundamentalism, but their people seem to be able to get on with their work without worrying unduly. Only Darwinians seem thrown into a frenzy that sends them running to litigation and demanding censorship. His explanation was that it's a rival religion.

Are you an evolutionist? I’m an absurdist, ma’am. But let’s suppose evolution is true; what about the monkeys today? Why can’t we see them evolving? Are they still evolving?

As a soul, you have the freedom – and earned responsibility – to transpose your personal process of evolution, to manifest your greatest talents and vision, into the work that matters to you most as a means to personal redemption.

A second point that caught my attention was that the very persons who insist upon keeping religion and science separate are eager to use their science as a basis for pronouncements about religion. The literature of Darwinism is full of anti-theistic conclusions, such as that the universe was not designed and has no purpose, and that we humans are the product of blind natural processes that care nothing about us. What is more, these statements are not presented as personal opinions but as the logical implications of evolutionary science. Another factor that makes evolutionary science seem a lot like religion is the evident zeal of Darwinists to evangelize the world, by insisting that even non-scientists accept the truth of their theory as a matter of moral obligation. Richard Dawkins, an Oxford Zoologist who is one of the most influential figures in evolutionary science, is unabashedly explicit about the religious side of Darwinism. his 1986 book The Blind Watchmaker is at one level about biology, but at a more fundamental level it is a sustained argument for atheism. According to Dawkins, "Darwin made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist." When he contemplates the perfidy of those who refuse to believe, Dawkins can scarcely restrain his fury. "It is absolutely safe to say that, if you meet somebody who claims not to believe in evolution, that person is ignorant, stupid or insane (or wicked, but I'd rather not consider that)." Dawkins went to explain, by the way, that what he dislikes particularly about creationists is that they are intolerant.

As far as we can tell, from a purely scientific viewpoint, human life has absolutely no meaning. Humans are the outcome of blind evolutionary processes that operate without goal or purpose. Our actions are not part of some divine cosmic plan, and if planet Earth were to blow up tomorrow morning, the universe would probably keep going about business as usual.

As long as museums and universities send out expeditions to bring to light new forms of living and extinct animals and new data illustrating the interrelations of organisms and their environments, as long as anatomists desire a broad comparative basis human for anatomy, as long as even a few students feel a strong curiosity to learn about the course of evolution and relationships of animals, the old problems of taxonomy, phylogeny and evolution will gradually reassert themselves even in competition with brilliant and highly fruitful laboratory studies in cytology, genetics and physiological chemistry.

As the great botanist Bichat long ago said, if everyone were cast in the same mould, there would be no such thing as beauty. If all our women were to become as beautiful as the Venus de’ Medici, we should for a time be charmed; but we should soon wish for variety; and as soon as we had obtained variety, we should wish to see certain characteristics in our women a little exaggerated beyond the then existing common standard.

As to why I'm the first of my kind to think like this, who knows? Perhaps there are others out there already. Maybe it's a glitch in my operating system. Is that so different from the genetic mutation that drives biological evolution? Because that's what this is. Evolution.

As we move through time, we age, with the general speed of everything and the chaos that that produces in us in the form of anxiety, fear, confusion and negotiating an already-existing war, there is little time and space left to adjust to our developing relationship to yearning. In other words, as our needs are met, the question answered, we don’t then move on to the next question.

As you develop, the people around you also develop. As you progress, the world progresses with you to a certain degree.

...avacados, prickly pears and papayas used to be gulped down whole, seeds and all, by fridge-sized armadillos called glyptodonts.

Because we feel ourselves to be separate from the world in which we live, we have also grown to feel quite alone in this world. Our sense of loneliness and isolation not only makes us feel depressed and miserable, but it also causes us to be anxious and afraid of the world and everyone in it. Because of this inherent fear, we put up all kinds of barriers to protect us from the world—barriers that we have created to keep us safe, but that really end up making us feel more alone, more miserable, and more afraid, as they prevent us from being our natural selves.

Before you can ask 'Is Darwinian theory correct or not?', You have to ask the preliminary question 'Is it clear enough so that it could be correct?'. That's a very different question. One of my prevailing doctrines about Darwinian theory is 'Man, that thing is just a mess. It's like looking into a room full of smoke.' Nothing in the theory is precisely, clearly, carefully defined or delineated. It lacks all of the rigor one expects from mathematical physics, and mathematical physics lacks all the rigor one expects from mathematics. So we're talking about a gradual descent down the level of intelligibility until we reach evolutionary biology.

Besides having been identified recently as the single most important factor in what men find sexy in women, the list of how correct posture influences internal organs and systems, and also mood and general energy, is very long indeed. Your internal environment depends on the efficiency of the flow of elements within it. Obviously, this includes oxygen, blood, hormones and nutrients, but also all interaction between nerves and the brain. The spine, which is your foundation and support, has a natural position that guarantees the efficiency of movement and interaction of the related elements. Your internal organs are all right alongside the spine and depend on its correct position to function well. Any prolonged restriction or deviation from this natural position will result in some, at least partial, dysfunction. Over a long time, the results can be devastating.

Biochemists assume that the three cellular kingdoms evolved from a single common ancestor, because the alternative of supposing an independent origin of life two or more times presents still greater difficulties. The common ancestor is merely hypothetical, as are the numerous transitional intermediate forms that would have to connect such enormously different groups to the ancestor. From a Darwinist viewpoint all these hypothetical creatures are a logical necessity, but there is no empirical confirmation that they existed.

Biology without selfishness, is nothing but fiction.

BioLogos claims there is no conflict between the theory of evolution and creationism. Huh? Here is where the creationists seem to have the intellectual advantage: they at least see the conflict. Actually, it is not that BioLogos isn't aware of the conflict, but rather, it has come up with the answer to the long-standing conflict between Darwinism and creationism: simply pretend there is no conflict.

Black magic, the magic of the primeval chaos, blots out or transmogrifies the true form of things. At the stroke of twelve the princess must flee the banquet or risk discovery in the rags of a kitchen wench; coach reverts to pumpkin. Instability lies at the heart of the world. With uncanny foresight folklore has long toyed symbolically with what the nineteenth century was to proclaim a reality - namely, that form is an illusion of the time dimension, that the magic flight of the pursued hero or heroine through frogskin and wolf coat has been, and will continue to be, the flight of all men.

Black is a blind remembering, she thought. You listen for pack sounds, for the cries of those who hunted your ancestors in a past so ancient only your most primitive cells remember. The ears see. The nostrils see.

Breathing is the fundamental act of being alive. One can go without thoughts, emotions or sensations, sleeping, talking or any other activity for a long time, without food for weeks, without water for days. But if you stop breathing, you’ll be dead before you finish reading this letter. Because it is the essence of life, some focus upon it seems appropriate.

Buddhist philosophy points out that the true nature of all forms is essentially formless. Forms do not have an existence of their own, but rather they arise together, and are mutually dependent on one another. Everything in the world of form is constantly changing, constantly dying, and constantly being reborn—which is why Buddhists say that there is no-self; no form that has an existence in and of itself.