Quotes About Evolution

My attempts to demonstrate evolution by an experiment carried on for more than 40 years have completely failed.....It is not even possible to make a caricature of an evolution out of paleobiological facts...The idea of an evolution rests on pure belief.

Some claim evolution is just a theory. As if it were merely an opinion. The theory of evolution, like the theory of gravity, is a scientific fact. Evolution really happened. Accepting our kinship with all life on Earth is not only solid science. In my view, it’s also a soaring spiritual experience.

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?

We need to participate directly in the evolution of consciousness, which, at its core, is the evolution of love.

Creationists reject Darwin's theory of evolution on the grounds that it is "just a theory". This is a valid criticism: evolution is indeed merely "a theory", albeit one with ten billion times more credence than the theory of creationism - although, to be fair, the theory of creationism is more than just a theory. It's also a fairy story. And children love fairy stories, which is presumably why so many creationists are keen to have their whimsical gibberish taught in schools.

The History of Evolution is the real source of light in the investigation of organic bodies. It is applicable at every step, and all our ideas of the correlation of organic bodies will be swayed by our knowledge of the history of evolution. To carry the proof of it into all branches of research would be an almost endless task. (1828)

In short, evolution is as close to being a scientific fact as is possible for any theory, given that science is open - ended and no one can predict with certainty what may change in the future. The prospect that evolution by natural selection, at least as a broad mechanism, will be overthrown in the future is about as likely as the prospect of finding out some day that the Earth is really flat. Unfortunately, those who regard these scientific facts as a threat to faith have chosen to distort and misrepresent them to the public.

But I think schools also ought to be fair to all views. Because, frankly, Darwinism is not an established scientific fact. It is a theory of evolution, that's why it's called the theory of evolution.

Your true evolution is not what you do out there. That's secondary. Your true evolution is to do with the arising of awareness in you as you go about your life.

I do feel that evolution is being controlled by some sort of divine engineer. I can't help thinking that. And this engineer knows exactly what he or she is doing and why, and where evolution is headed. That's why we've got giraffes and hippopotami and the clap.

The theory of evolution is impossible. At base, in spirit of appearances, no one any longer believes in it... Evolution is a kind of dogma which the priests no longer believe, but which they maintain for their people.

We want to be special. We want our place in the cosmos to be central. We want evolution-even godless evolution-to have been directed toward us so that we stand at the pinnacle of nature's ladder of progress. Rewind the tape of life and we want to believe that we (Homo Sapiens) would appear again and again. Would we? Probably not.

There is not enough evidence, consistent evidence to make it as fact, and I say that because for theory to become a fact, it needs to consistently have the same results after it goes through a series of tests. The tests that they put- that they use to support evolution do not have consistent results. Now too many people are blindly accepting evolution as fact. But when you get down to the hard evidence, it's merely a theory.

No evolution is accomplished in nature without revolution. Periods of very slow changes are succeeded by periods of violent changes. Revolutions are as necessary for evolution as the slow changes which prepare them and succeed them.

I mean, obviously, one of the strongest arguments against evolution and selection of the fittest and progress, which is part of evolution, is the current field of the presidential candidates. We started off with Washington and Adams and Jefferson and then we had Lincoln, and now we moved ahead and look where we are now.

Once again a new world view is arising ... This idea is the culmination of all human history. It holds the promise of fulfilling the great aspirations of the past and heralds the advent of the next phase of our evolution. It is the idea of conscious evolution.

The most telling and profound way of describing the evolution of the universe would undoubtedly be to trace the evolution of love.

I've written almost 200 songs with Bad Religion. No matter where you look in our history, the focus has been trying to instill some of these disturbing realities about the world, some of the implications of evolution into an artistic format that can be interpreted by people who may never study evolution.

The consciousness of lucid dreaming is a cultural evolution. It's something that we are talking about and learning about, not biological evolution.

If it is true that an influx of doubt and uncertainty actually marks periods of healthy growth in a science, then evolutionary biology is flourishing today as it seldom has flourished in the past. For biologists collectively are less agreed upon the details of evolutionary mechanics than they were a scant decade ago. Superficially, it seems as if we know less about evolution than we did in 1959, the centennial year of Darwin's on the Origin of Species.

At one point I intended to write precursor and sequel novels, about the establishment of the Web and its next evolution, but I am very unlikely to now; they would take place in a different universe.

Fifty years from now if an understanding of man's origins, his evolution, his history, his progress is not in the common place of the school books we shall not exist.

jewels have played a colorful part in the evolution of world affairs. Because precious stones tend to inspire both admiration and greed, leaders have found convenient excuses for seeking them and have used them to impress crowds, reward friends, deprive foes, forge alliances, and justify war. Jewels may find their highest expression in the decorative arts, but they have also earned a place in the art of the possible.

The first step in the evolution of ethics is a sense of solidarity with other human beings.

We on Earth have just awakened to the great oceans of space and time from which we have emerged. We are the legacy of 15 billion years of cosmic evolution. We have a choice: We can enhance life and come to know the universe that made us, or we can squander our 15 billion-year heritage in meaningless self-destruction. What happens in the first second of the next cosmic year depends on what we do, here and now, with our intelligence and our knowledge of the cosmos.

As a chemist, I wanted to ask myself the question frustrated by biology: What is the minimal unit of matter that can undergo Darwinian evolution?

We don't have a revolution, and we don't have the time for evolution, where does it come from? It must come from some kind of shared experience that everybody agrees with.

By the time of the Singularity, there won't be a distinction between humans and technology. This is not because humans will have become what we think of as machines today, but rather machines will have progressed to be like humans and beyond. Technology will be the metaphorical opposable thumb that enables our next step in evolution.

How can you look at this and not see it as the symbol for the self-referencing nature of progressive evolution.

Folks, it's time to evolve. That's why we're troubled. You know why our institutions are failing us, the church, the state, everything's failing? It's because, um - they're no longer relevant. We're supposed to keep evolving. Evolution did not end with us growing opposable thumbs. You do know that, right?

Death is not necessarily what gives meaning to life LIFE gives meaning to life, and what we do with life, which is to create knowledge like music, art, science To this end, I believe intelligent life might be evolution's secret weapon: the ultimate hack that might help us transcend entropy.

Evolution tells us where we came from, not where we can go.

No matter how numerous they may be, mutations do not produce any kind of evolution.

To put it simply, no Darwin, no Hitler. Hitler tried to speed up evolution, to help it along, and millions suffered and died in unspeakable ways because of it.

If evolution wins, Christianity goes!

Enlightenment is not so much a hard-won achievement, much less a "creation," but instead is deep relaxation and recovery of our natural condition. You come to see the evolution of the soul, the soul's journey, as a realization of what has always been there in the first place.

Evolution, of course, is not something that simply applies to life here on earth; it applies to the whole universe.

We are the facilitators of our own creative evolution.

I did not know from a scientific perspective why I did not believe in evolution - but I knew from a Biblical perspective it had to be wrong or my faith was in trouble.

Fish deserve to be caught for they are lazy. Two million years of evolution and they still haven't got out of the water.

The Church's note must be a supernatural note which distinguishes incarnation from immanence, redemption from evolution, the Kingdom of God from mere spiritual process.

To keep up even a worthwhile tradition means vitiating the idea behind it which must necessarily be in a constant state of evolution: it is mad to try to express new feelings in a mummified form.

In nothing is there more evolution than the American mind.

Man is not merely an evolution but rather a revolution.

I'm still my parent's child, I'm still me, but I made a choice. I evolved into Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. I think it has to do with evolution.

Today, the Indian government is trying to present privatization as the alternative to the state, to public enterprise. But privatization is only a further evolution of the centralized state, where the state says that they have the right to give the entire power production in Maharashtra to Enron.

It is always the individual who thinks. Society does not think any more than it eats or drinks. The evolution of human reasoning from the naive thinking of primitive man to the more subtle thinking of modern science took place within society. However, thinking itself is always an achievement of individuals.

It seems to me that there will be a point in out development or our evolution where you put your guns aside.