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The following are previously unclassified quotes about religion, now classified under that heading, and under subheadings alphabetically by author and date, as a temporary intermediate step towards integrating them into my quotes pages proper.
"If we are unable to convince the skeptic, because of his bad faith or simply because of his negative faith, there is hope that the honest and impartial spectator who has followed the vicissitudes of the struggle will recognize the victor." (du Nouy L., "Human Destiny," Longmans, Green & Co: New York NY, 1947, Seventeenth Printing, p.xv).
"The thought that the relation between mind and the world is something fundamental makes many people in this day and age nervous. I believe this is one manifestation of a fear of religion which has large and often pernicious consequences for modern intellectual life. In speaking of the fear of religion, I don't mean to refer to the entirely reasonable hostility toward certain established religions and religious institutions, in virtue of their objectionable moral doctrines, social policies, and political influence. Nor am I referring to the association of many religious beliefs with superstition and the acceptance of evident empirical falsehoods. I am talking about something much deeper-namely, the fear of religion itself. I speak from experience, being strongly subject to this fear myself: I want atheism to be true and am made uneasy by the fact that some of the most intelligent and well-informed people I know are religious believers. It isn't just that I don't believe in God and, naturally, hope that I'm right in my belief. It's that I hope there is no God! I don't want there to be a God; I don't want the universe to be like that." (Nagel T., "The Last Word," Oxford University Press: New York NY, 1997, p.130).
"For some years now I have tutored undergraduates on various aspects of Biology. It is quite common during the course of conversation to ask the student if he knows the evidence for Evolution. This usually evokes a faintly superior smile at the simplicity of the question, since it is an old war- horse set in countless examinations. `Well, sir, there is the evidence from palaeontology, comparative anatomy, embryology, systematics and geographical distributions,' the student will say in a nursery-rhyme jargon, sometimes even ticking off the words on his fingers. He would then sit and look fairly complacent and wait for a more difficult question to follow, such as the nature of the evidence for Natural Selection. Instead I would continue on with Evolution. `Do you think that the Evolutionary Theory is the best explanation yet advanced to explain animal interrelationships?' I would ask. `Why, of course, sir,' would be the reply in some amazement at my question.' `There is nothing else, except for the religious explanation held by some Fundamentalist Christians, and I gather, sir, that these views are no longer held by the more up-to-date Churchmen.' `So,' I would continue, `you believe in Evolution because there is no other theory?' `Oh, no, sir,' would be the reply, `I believe in it because of the evidence I just mentioned.' `Have you read any book on the evidence for Evolution?' I would ask. `Yes, sir,' and here he would mention the names of authors of a popular school textbook, `and of course, sir, there is that book by Darwin, The Origin of Species.' `Have you read this book?' I asked. `Well, not all through, sir.' `About how much?' `The first part, sir.' `The first fifty pages?' `Yes, sir, about that much; maybe a bit less.' `I see, and that has given you your firm understanding of Evolution?' `Yes, sir.' `Well, now, if you really understand an argument you will be able to indicate to me not only the points in favour of the argument but also the most telling points against it.' `I suppose so, sir.' `Good. Please tell me, then, some of the evidence against the theory of Evolution.' `Against what, sir?' `The theory of Evolution.' `But there isn't any, sir.' Here the conversation would take on a more strained atmosphere. The student would look at me as if I was playing a very unfair game. It would be clearly quite against the rules to ask for evidence against a theory when he had learnt up everything in favour of the theory. He also would take it rather badly when I suggest that he is not being very scientific in his outlook if he swallows the latest scientific dogma and, when questioned, just repeats parrot fashion the views of the current Archbishop of Evolution. In fact he would be behaving like certain of those religious students he affects to despise. He would be taking on faith what he could not intellectually understand and when questioned would appeal to authority, the authority of a `good book' which in this case was The Origin of Species." (Kerkut, Gerald A. [Emeritus Professor of Neuroscience, University of Southampton, UK], "Implications of Evolution," in Kerkut G.A., ed. International Series of Monographs on Pure and Applied Biology, Division: Zoology, Volume 4, Pergamon Press: New York NY, 1960, pp.3-5)
"True, Darwin is not the last word in science; but neither is Shakespeare the final insight into human nature. He who fails to honor either genius for his positive accomplishments inevitably attracts the speculative psychiatric eye to himself." (Hardin, Garrett [Professor of Human Ecology, University of California at Santa Barbara], "Nature and Man's Fate," Rinehart: New York, 1959, p.249).
"Primates are visual animals par excellence, and the iconography of persuasion strikes even closer than words to the core of our being. Every demagogue, every humorist, every advertising executive, has known and exploited the evocative power of a well-chosen picture. ... But many of our pictures are incarnations of concepts masquerading as neutral descriptions of nature. These are the most potent sources of conformity, since ideas passing as descriptions lead us to equate the tentative with the unambiguously factual. Suggestions for the organization of thought are transformed to established patterns in nature. Guesses and hunches become things. The familiar iconographies of evolution are all directed-sometimes crudely, sometimes subtly-toward reinforcing a comfortable view of human inevitability and superiority." (Gould, Stephen J. [late Professor of Zoology and Geology, Harvard University], "Wonderful Life: The Burgess Shale and the Nature of History," [1989], Penguin: London, 1991, reprint, p.28)
"Darwinian orthodoxy demands implicit faith in the efficacy of natural selection operating on chance mutations. Subscribe to this and all doubts and hesitations disappear; question it and be forever lost. The case for orthodoxy can seldom have been stated with greater cogency and enthusiasm than by Dr. Julian Huxley in "Evolution in Action". A few readers, perhaps rather pagan in their outlook, may think it a little strange that, if the case is quite so strong as they are asked to believe, it should still be necessary to argue the merits of natural selection with almost evangelistic vigour." (Gray, Sir James [late Professor of Zoology, Cambridge University], "The Case for Natural Selection." Review of "Evolution in Action," by Julian Huxley, Chatto & Windus: London, 1953, in Nature, Vol. 173, No. 4397, February 6, 1954, p.227)
"The theory of evolution by natural selection is not a difficult concept to grasp, and Charles Darwin addressed The Origin of Species itself to a general audience. But neither is it self-evident to many people that natural selection can fully account for the world they observe. Thus when questions about the theory arise in public forums, the scientific community would do much better in the long run to patiently list supporting facts and frankly admit where positive evidence is lacking, rather than paternalistically maintaining that an understanding of the theory of evolution is reserved for the priesthood of professional scientists." (Behe, Michael .J.* [Professor of Biochemistry, Lehigh University, Pennsylvania], "Understanding Evolution," Letters, Science, 30 August 1991, p.950)
"If you doubt the power of natural selection I urge you, to save your soul, to read Dawkins's book [The Blind Watchmaker]. I think you will find it a revelation. Dawkins gives a nice argument to show how far the process of evolution can go in the time available to it. He points out that man, by selection, has produced an enormous variety of types of dog, such as Pekinese, bulldogs, and so on, in the space of only a few thousand years. Here "man" is the important factor in the environment, and it is his peculiar tastes that have produced (by selective breeding, not by `design') the freaks of nature we see preserved all around us as domestic dogs, yet the time required to do this, on the evolutionary scale of hundreds of millions of years, is extraordinarily short. So we should not be surprised at the ever greater variety of creatures that natural-selection has produced on this much larger time scale." (Crick F.H.C., "What Mad Pursuit: A Personal View of Scientific Discovery," [1988], Penguin Books: London, 1990, reprint, p.29).
"Various theories have been offered - one of them being evolution creatrice by Henri Bergson - that assume the existence of a guiding principle in evolution, which replaces the chance and accident in variations; these theories are often united under the name orthogenesis, the best known of such ideas. The adherents of orthogenesis claim the existence of a plan and a goal. But since, in such a theory, Providence enters into action, and to make nature independent of it was a major objective of the theory of evolution as opposed to the teaching of special creation, after some deliberation orthogenesis, or creative evolution, met largely with rejection. The orthogeneticists could argue that many traits, when they first appeared, must have been entirely useless, yet not senseless if they were destined to become useful after many generations. Then why should these traits have gone on developing from age to age, finally to become an asset to the species, unless orthogenesis was in action; why should the pocket of the kangaroo have increased in size through many generations until it could be used for carrying baby kangaroos?" (Velikovsky I., "Earth in Upheaval," [1950] Abacus: London, 1978, reprint, p.210)
"The development or behavior of an individual is purposive; natural selection is definitely not. When MacLeod (1957) stated, `What is most challenging about Darwin, however, is his re-introduction of purpose into the natural world,' he chose the wrong word. The word purpose is singularly inapplicable to evolutionary change, which is, after all, what Darwin was considering. If an organism is well adapted, if it shows superior fitness, this is not due to any purpose of its ancestors or of an outside agency, such as `Nature' or `God,' that created a superior design or plan. Darwin `has swept out such finalistic teleology by the front door,' as Simpson (1960) has rightly said." (Mayr, Ernst [Emeritus Professor of Zoology, Harvard University], "Toward a New Philosophy of Biology: Observations of an Evolutionist," [reprint of Mayr E., "Cause and effect in biology," Science, Vol. 134, 1961, pp.1501-1506], Harvard University Press: Cambridge MA, 1988, p.31)
"Darwin's Discovery: Design without Designer ... It was Darwin's greatest accomplishment to show that the directive organization of living beings can be explained as the result of a natural process, natural selection, without any need to resort to a Creator or other external agent. ... Darwin's theory encountered opposition in religious circles, not so much because he proposed the evolutionary origin of living things (which had been proposed many times before, even by Christian theologians), but because his mechanism, natural selection, excluded God as the explanation accounting for the obvious design of organisms." (Ayala F.J., "Darwin's Revolution," in Campbell J.H. & Schopf J.W., eds., "Creative Evolution?!: Proceedings of a symposium sponsored by the Center for the Study of Evolution and the Origin of Life at the University of California, Los Angeles, in March, 1993," Jones & Bartlett: London, 1994, pp.4-5)
"THERE is superstition in science quite as much as there is superstition in theology, and it is all the more dangerous because those suffering from it are profoundly convinced that they are freeing themselves from all superstition. No grotesque repulsiveness of mediæval superstition, even as it survived into nineteenth-century Spain and Naples, could be much more intolerant, much more destructive of all that is fine in morality, in the spiritual sense, and indeed in civilization itself, than that hard dogmatic materialism of to-day which often not merely calls itself scientific but arrogates to itself the sole right to use the term. If these pretensions affected only scientific men themselves, it would be a matter of small moment, but unfortunately they tend gradually to affect the whole people, and to establish a very dangerous standard of private and public conduct in the public mind. This tendency is dangerous everywhere, but nowhere more dangerous than among the nations in which the movement toward an unshackled materialism is helped by the reaction against the deadly thraldom of political and clerical absolutism." (Roosevelt, Theodore [former President of the USA], "History as Literature," 1913. http://www.bartleby.com/56/9.html)
"The doctrine of 'scientism' - with its implied belief in the omnicompetence of science - has been steadily gaining ground in our culture throughout this century. ... The territory claimed here is not just that of the religions. It is the whole area of organised and everyday thought. And science, as a claimant for that territory, means essentially just physical science. Though the doctrine is sometimes expanded to include technology and social science, these extensions are foreign to it. This seductive promise of universal explanation is something new. It outbids the explanatory offers of any religion, both in scope and certainty. The religions habitually admit, indeed claim, that they deal in matters not fully knowable by human beings, whereas science now seems able to offer fully reasoned proof for all answers to all possible questions. People today are far more vulnerable to such offers than they were a century ago, because the world has become so confusing. In today's desperate muddles, people long for a map, a clear world picture." (Midgley M., "Can Science Save Its Soul?," New Scientist, Vol 135, No. 1832, 1 August 1992, p.24-27, p.24)
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Created: 27 November, 2002. Updated: 7 July, 2005.