Stephen Jay Gould Quotes About Atheism

Quotes about: Atheism

• When people learn no tools of judgment and merely follow their hopes, the seeds of political manipulation are sown.

  Stephen Jay Gould

  People, Political, Religion

  "An Urchin in the Storm: Essays About Books and Ideas". Book by Stephen Jay Gould. "The Quack Detector", p. 245, 1987.

• The most important scientific revolutions all include, as their only common feature, the dethronement of human arrogance from one pedestal after another of previous convictions about our centrality in the cosmos.

  Stephen Jay Gould

  Humility, Science, Arrogance

• We are here because one odd group of fishes had a peculiar fin anatomy that could transform into legs for terrestrial creatures; because the earth never froze entirely during an ice age; because a small and tenuous species, arising in Africa a quarter of a million years ago, has managed, so far, to survive by hook and by crook. We may yearn for a ‘higher answer’– but none exists

  Stephen Jay Gould

  Atheist, Years, Ice

• Why get excited over this latest episode in the long, sad history of American anti-intellectualism? Let me suggest that, as patriotic Americans, we should cringe in embarrassment that, at the dawn of a new, technological millennium, a jurisdiction in our heartland has opted to suppress one of the greatest triumphs of human discovery.

  Stephen Jay Gould

  Patriotic, Discovery, Long

  Stephen Jay Gould (2011). “I Have Landed”, p.215, Harvard University Press

• The fundamentalists, by 'knowing' the answers before they start, and then forcing nature into the straitjacket of their discredited preconceptions, lie outside the domain of science - or any honest intellectual inquiry.

  Stephen Jay Gould

  Lying, Knowing, Intellectual

  "Bully for Brontosaurus". Book by Stephen Jay Gould. "An Essay on a Pig Roast," p. 437, 1991.

• ... no compelling data to support its anachronistic social Darwinism.

  Stephen Jay Gould

  Data, Support, Atheism

  Stephen Jay Gould (2006). “The Mismeasure of Man (Revised & Expanded)”, p.238, W. W. Norton & Company

• I was lucky to wander into evolutionary theory, one of the most exciting and important of all scientific fields. I had never heard of it when I started at a rather tender age; I was simply awed by dinosaurs. I thought paleontologists spent their lives digging up bones and putting them together, never venturing beyond the momentous issue of what connects to what. Then I discovered evolutionary theory. Ever since then, the duality of natural history-richness in particularities and potential union in underlying explanation-has propelled me.

  Stephen Jay Gould

  Issues, Important, Atheism

• Orchids manufacture their intricate devices from the common components of ordinary flowers, parts usually fitted for very different functions. If God had designed a beautiful machine to reflect his wisdom and power, surely he would not have used a collection of parts generally fashioned for other purposes. Orchids were not made by an ideal engineer; they are jury-rigged from a limited set of available components. Thus, they must have evolved from ordinary flowers.

  Stephen Jay Gould

  Beautiful, Flower, Orchids

  Stephen Jay Gould (2010). “The Panda's Thumb: More Reflections in Natural History”, p.20, W. W. Norton & Company

• I like to summarize what I regard as the pedestal-smashing messages of Darwin's revolution in the following statement, which might be chanted several times a day, like a Hare Krishna mantra, to encourage penetration into the soul: Humans are not the end result of predictable evolutionary progress, but rather a fortuitous cosmic afterthought.

  Stephen Jay Gould

  Atheism, Cosmic, Fortuitous

  "Dinosaur in a Haystack". Book by Stephen Jay Gould, "Can We Complete Darwin's Revolution?" (p. 327), 1995.

• The basic formulation, or bare-bones mechanics, of natural selection is a disarmingly simple argument, based on three undeniable facts (overproduction of offspring, variation, and heritability) and one syllogistic inference (natural selection, or the claim that organisms enjoying differential reproductive success will, on average, be those variants that are fortuitously better adapted to changing local environments, and that these variants will then pass their favored traits to offspring by inheritance).

  Stephen Jay Gould

  Simple, Average, Atheism

• It seems the height of antiquated hubris to claim that the universe carried on as it did for billions of years in order to form a comfortable abode for us. Chance and historical contingency give the world of life most of its glory and fascination. I sit here happy to be alive and sure that some reason must exist for "why me?" Or the earth might have been totally covered with water, and an octopus might now be telling its children why the eight-legged God of all things had made such a perfect world for cephalopods.

  Stephen Jay Gould

  Children, Octopus, Eight

  Stephen Jay Gould (2010). “An Urchin in the Storm: Essays about Books and Ideas”, p.206, W. W. Norton & Company

• ... a local, indigenous, American bizarre-ity.

  Stephen Jay Gould

  Atheism, Bizarre, Indigenous

• The argument that the literal story of Genesis can qualify as science collapses on three major grounds: the creationists' need to invoke miracles in order to compress the events of the earth's history into the biblical span of a few thousand years; their unwillingness to abandon claims clearly disproved, including the assertion that all fossils are products of Noah's flood; and their reliance upon distortion, misquote, half-quote, and citation out of context to characterize the ideas of their opponents.

  Stephen Jay Gould

  Biblical, Order, Years

• The board transported its jurisdiction to a never-never land where a Dorothy of the new millennium might exclaim: "They still call it Kansas, but I don't think we're in the real world anymore."

  Stephen Jay Gould

  Real, Thinking, Land

• Odd arrangements and funny solutions are the proof of evolution - paths that a sensible God would never tread but that a natural process, constrained by history, follows perforce.

  Stephen Jay Gould

  Religion, Atheism, Path

• [Evolution is] one of the best documented, most compelling and exciting concepts in all of science.

  Stephen Jay Gould

  Religion, Atheism, Evolution

• Human life is the result of a glorious evolutionary accident.

  Stephen Jay Gould

  Religion, Atheism, Life Is

• We are the offspring of history, and must establish our own paths in this most diverse and interesting of conceivable universes—one indifferent to our suffering, and therefore offering us maximum freedom to thrive, or to fail, in our own chosen way.

  Stephen Jay Gould

  Atheist, Offering, Interesting

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