#vol

Scientific theories never dictate human values, but they can often cast new light on ethical issues. From a sexual selection viewpoint, moral philosophy and political theory have mostly been attempts to shift male human sexual competitiveness from physical violence to the peaceful accumulation of wealth and status. The rights to life, liberty, and property are cultural inventions that function, in part, to keep males from killing and stealing from one another while they compete to attract sexual partners. ↗

— Geoffrey Miller

#evolution #politics #sex #life

There is only one story. It is the story of an evolving cosmos awakening to itself and becoming conscious. Who could argue with that? It happened. And it is happyning. First there was matter. Then one fine day, life. Then just a short while back, self-consciousness. And most recently, the recognition of, and identification with, Spirit. ↗

— Gaghdad Bob

#spirituality #life

Obsolescence is a fate devoutly to be wished, lest science stagnate and die. ↗

— Stephen Jay Gould

#evolution #radical-science #science

The young man looked down from the cart at the people in front of him. Jonah felt his teacher’s eyes meet his own, and for a fraction of a second a smile played on the prisoner’s lips. Then he glanced toward heaven and spoke. “I only regret that I have but one life to lose for my country. ↗

— Anna Myers

#heroes #history #nathan-hale #patriotism #revolutionary-war

Despite the Great Chain of Being's traditional ranking of humans between animals and angels, there is no evolutionary justification for the common assumption that evolution is somehow 'aimed' at humans, or that humans are 'evolution's last word'. ↗

— Richard Dawkins

#science #science

Scientists rightly resist invoking the supernatural in scientific explanations for fear of committing a god-of-the-gaps fallacy (the fallacy of using God as a stop-gap for ignorance). Yet without some restriction on the use of chance, scientists are in danger of committing a logically equivalent fallacy-one we may call the “chance-of-the-gaps fallacy.” Chance, like God, can become a stop-gap for ignorance. ↗

— William A. Dembski

#chance #coincidence #darwinism #evolution #god-of-the-gaps

The greatest and most powerful revolutions often start very quietly, hidden in the shadows. Remember that. ↗

— Richelle Mead

#revolution #remember

To attempt, to brave, to persist, and persevere, to be faithful to one's self, to wrestle with destiny, to astound the catastrophe by the slight fear which is causes us, now to confront unjust power, again to insult intoxicated victory, to hold firm and withstand -- such is the example which nations need and the light which electrifies them. ↗

— Victor Hugo

#politics #revolution #faith

Fantasy. Lunacy. All revolutions are, until they happen, then they are historical inevitabilities. ↗

— David Mitchell

#history #revolution #fantasy

No fossil is buried with its birth certificate. That, and the scarcity of fossils, means that it is effectively impossible to link fossils into chains of cause and effect in any valid way... To take a line of fossils and claim that they represent a lineage is not a scientific hypothesis that can be tested, but an assertion that carries the same validity as a bedtime story—amusing, perhaps even instructive, but not scientific. ↗

— Henry Gee

#confessions-of-the-darwinists #darwin #darwinism #darwinist-confessions #evolution