Why Evolution Is True QUOTES

1 " Now, science cannot completely exclude the possibility of supernatural explanation. It is possible - though very unlikely - that our whole world is controlled by elves. "

― Jerry A. Coyne , Why Evolution Is True

2 " There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved. "

― Jerry A. Coyne , Why Evolution Is True

3 " Every day, hundreds of observations and experiments pour into the hopper of the scientific literature. Many of them don't have much to do with evolution - they're observations about the details of physiology, biochemistry, development, and so on - but many of them do. And every fact that has something to do with evolution confirms its truth. Every fossil that we find, every DNA molecule that we sequence, every organ system that we dissect, supports the idea that species evolved from common ancestors. Despite innumerable possible observations that could prove evolution untrue, we don't have a single one. We don't find mammals in Precambrian rocks, humans in the same layers as dinosaurs, or any other fossils out of evolutionary order. DNA sequencing supports the evolutionary relationships of species originally deduced from the fossil record. And, as natural selection predicts, we find no species with adaptations that only benefit a different species. We do find dead genes and vestigial organs, incomprehensible under the idea of special creation. Despite a million chances to be wrong, evolution always comes up right. That is as close as we can get to a scientific truth. "

― Jerry A. Coyne , Why Evolution Is True

4 " Many people require more than just evidence before they’ll accept evolution. To these folks,
evolution raises such profound questions of purpose, morality, and meaning that they just can’t accept it no matter how much evidence they see. It’s not that we evolved from apes that bothers them so much; it’s [[the emotional consequences of facing that fact.]] And unless we address those concerns, we won’t progress in making evolution a universally acknowledged truth. "

― Jerry A. Coyne , Why Evolution Is True

5 " Life on earth evolved gradually beginning with one primitive life form – perhaps a self-replicating molecule – that lived more than 3.5 billion years ago; it then branched out over time, throwing off many new and diverse species; and the mechanism for most (but not all) of evolutionary change is natural selection. "

― Jerry A. Coyne , Why Evolution Is True

6 " If the entire course of evolution were compressed into a single year, the earliest bacteria would appear at the end of March, but we wouldn't see the first human ancestors until 6 a.m. on December 31st. The golden age of Greece, about 500 BCE, would occur just thirty seconds before midnight. "

― Jerry A. Coyne , Why Evolution Is True

7 " There is an increasing (and disturbing) tendency of psychologists, biologists, and philosophers to Darwinize every aspect of human behavior, turning its study into a scientific parlor game. But imaginative reconstructions of how things might have evolved are not science; they are stories. Stephen Jay Gould satirized them as ‘Just-So Stories,’ after Kipling’s eponymous book that gave delightful but fanciful explanations for various traits of animals (‘How the Leopard Got His Spots,’ and so on). "

― Jerry A. Coyne , Why Evolution Is True

8 " These mysteries about how we evolved should not distract us from the indisputable fact that we did evolve. "

― Jerry A. Coyne , Why Evolution Is True

9 " ...supernatural explanations always mean the end of inquiry: that’s the way God wants it, end of story. Science, on the other hand, is never satisfied: our studies of the universe will continue until humans go extinct. "

― Jerry A. Coyne , Why Evolution Is True

10 " Natural selection is not a master engineer, but a tinkerer. It doesn't produce the absolute perfection achievable by a designer starting from scratch, but merely the best it can do with what is has to work with. "

― Jerry A. Coyne , Why Evolution Is True

11 " We are the one creature to whom natural selection has bequeathed a brain complex enough to comprehend the laws that govern the universe. And we should be proud that we are the only species that has figured how we came to be. "

― Jerry A. Coyne , Why Evolution Is True

12 " Life on earth evolved gradually beginning with one primitive life form – perhaps a self-replicating molecule – that lived more than 3.5 billion years ago; it then branched out over time, throwing off many new and diverse species; and the mechanism for most (but not all) of evolutionary change is natural selection. "

― Jerry A. Coyne , Why Evolution Is True

13 " You can find religions without creationism, but you never find creationism without religion. "

― Jerry A. Coyne , Why Evolution Is True

14 " IDers argue that such traits, involving many parts that must cooperate for that trait to function at all, defy Darwinian explanation. Therefore, by default, they must have been designed by a supernatural agent. This is commonly called the "God of the gaps" argument, and it is an argument from ignorance. What it really says is that if we don't understand everything about how natural selection built a train, that lack of understanding itself is evidence for super-natural creation. "

― Jerry A. Coyne , Why Evolution Is True

15 " Selection is both revolutionary and disturbing for the same reason: it explains apparent design in nature by a purely materialistic process that doesn't require creation or guidance by supernatural forces. "

― Jerry A. Coyne , Why Evolution Is True

16 " To many, evolution gnaws at their sense of self. If evolution offers a lesson, it seems to be that we’re not only related to other creatures but, like them, are also the product of blind and impersonal evolutionary forces. If humans are just one of many outcomes of natural selection, maybe we aren’t so special after all. You can understand why this doesn’t sit well with many people who think that we came into being differently from other species, as the special goal of a divine intention. "

― Jerry A. Coyne , Why Evolution Is True

17 " As Darwin noted, “It is certain that with almost all animals there is a struggle between the males for the possession of the female.” When males of a species battle it out directly, be it through the clashing antlers of deer, the stabbing horns of the stag beetle, the head butting of stalk-eyed flies, or the bloody battles of massive elephant seals, they win access to females by driving off competitors. Selection will favor any trait that promotes such victories so long as the increased chance of getting mates more than offsets any reduced survival. This kind of selection produces armaments: stronger weapons, larger body size, or anything that helps a male win physical contests. "

― Jerry A. Coyne , Why Evolution Is True

18 " How can you derive meaning, purpose, or ethics from evolution? You can’t. Evolution is simply a theory about the process and patterns of life’s diversification, not a grand philosophical scheme about the meaning of life. It can’t tell us what to do, or how we should behave. And this is the big problem for many believers, who want to find in the story of our origins a reason for our existence, and a sense of how to behave. "

― Jerry A. Coyne , Why Evolution Is True

19 " This tells us that every species goes back to a single common ancestor, an ancestor who had those common traits and passed them on to its descendants. But if evolution meant only gradual genetic change within a species, we’d have only one species today—a single highly evolved descendant of the first species. Yet we have many: well over ten million species inhabit our planet today, "

― Jerry A. Coyne , Why Evolution Is True

20 " لو كان هناك زمان على الإطلاق عندما كان التطور فى "مجرد نظرية"، أو كانت "فى أزمة"، فهو النصف الأخير من القرن التاسع عشر، عندما كانت الأدلة على آليةالتطور غير واضحة، والوسائل التى تعمل بها الجينات كانت لا تزال مجهولة.هذا كله تم تسويته فى العقود الأولى من القرن العشرين، ومنذ ذلك استمرت الأدلة على كل من التطور والانتخاب الطبيعي فى الارتقاء، ساحقة المعارضة العلمية للتطور. "

― Jerry A. Coyne , Why Evolution Is True