Stephen Jay Gould Quotes About Religion

Quotes about: Religion

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  In science, 'fact' can only mean 'confirmed to such a degree that it would be perverse to withhold provisional assent.' I suppose that apples might start to rise tomorrow, but the possibility does not merit equal time in physics classrooms.

  Stephen Jay Gould

  Mean, Science, Apples

  Hen's Teeth and Horse's Toes "Evolution as Fact and Theory" (1983)

• 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

• Nothing is more dangerous than a dogmatic worldview - nothing more constraining, more blinding to innovation, more destructive of openness to novelty.

  Stephen Jay Gould

  Innovation, Religion, Novelty

  Stephen Jay Gould (1995). “Dinosaur in a haystack: reflections in natural history”, Harmony

• 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

• Creation science has not entered the curriculum for a reason so simple and so basic that we often forget to mention it: because it is false, and because good teachers understand why it is false. What could be more destructive of that most fragile yet most precious commodity in our entire intellectual heritage-good teaching-than a bill forcing our honorable teachers to sully their sacred trust by granting equal treatment to a doctrine not only known to be false, but calculated to undermine any general understanding of science as an enterprise?.

  Stephen Jay Gould

  Teacher, Teaching, Science

• 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.

• Creationist critics often charge that evolution cannot be tested, and therefore cannot be viewed as a properly scientific subject at all. This claim is rhetorical nonsense.

  Stephen Jay Gould

  Religion, Evolution, Nonsense

  Stephen Jay Gould (1995). “Dinosaur in a haystack: reflections in natural history”, Harmony

• Since we proposed punctuated equilibria to explain trends, it is infuriating to be quoted again and again by creationists-whether through design or stupidity, I do not know-as admitting that the fossil record includes no transitional forms. Transitional forms are generally lacking at the species level, but they are abundant between larger groups.

  Stephen Jay Gould

  Stupidity, Design, Religion

  Stephen Jay Gould (2010). “Hen's Teeth and Horse's Toes: Further Reflections in Natural History”, p.260, W. W. Norton & Company

• No rational order of divine intelligence unites species. The natural ties are genealogical along contingent pathways of history.

  Stephen Jay Gould

  Order, Ties, Religion

  Stephen Jay Gould (1995). “Dinosaur in a haystack: reflections in natural history”, Harmony

• As in 1925, creationists are not battling for religion. They have been disowned by leading church men of all persuasions, for they debase religion even more than they misconstrue science. They are a motley collection to be sure, but their core of practical support lies with the evangelical right, and creationism is a mere stalking horse or subsidiary issue in a political program...The enemy is not fundamentalism; it is intolerance. In this case, the intolerance is perverse since it masquerades under the 'liberal' rhetoric of 'equal time'.

  Stephen Jay Gould

  Horse, Lying, Men

• Evolution has encountered no intellectual trouble; no new arguments have been offered. Creationism is a home-grown phenomenon of American sociocultural history-a splinter movement ... who believe that every word in the Bible must be literally true, whatever such a claim might mean.

  Stephen Jay Gould

  Believe, Home, Mean

  Stephen Jay Gould (2011). “Leonardo's Mountain of Clams and the Diet of Worms”, p.270, Harvard University Press

• 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

• I am not, personally, a believer or a religious man in any sense of institutional commitment or practice. But I have a great respect for religion, and the subject has always fascinated me, beyond almost all others (with a few exceptions, like evolution and paleontology).

  Stephen Jay Gould

  Religious, Commitment, Science

  Stephen Jay Gould (1999). “Leonardo's Mountain of Clams and the Diet of Worms: Essays on Natural History”, Three Rivers Press (CA)

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

  Stephen Jay Gould

  Religion, Atheism, Life Is

• 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

• But we all recognise the primary foible of frail humanity - our propensity for embracing hope and shunning logic, our tendency to believe what we desire rather than what we observe.

  Stephen Jay Gould

  Believe, Humanity, Religion

• The invalid assumption that correlation implies cause is probably among the two or three most serious and common errors of human reasoning.

  Stephen Jay Gould

  Two, Errors, Religion

  Stephen Jay Gould (2006). “The Mismeasure of Man (Revised & Expanded)”, p.178, W. W. Norton & Company

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