Quotes About Science

If you are trying to explain something improbable, it can never suffice to invoke an entity that is, in itself, at least as improbable.

My dear fellow, I wish to thank you. I have been wrong these fifteen years.' We clapped our hands red. No fundamentalist would ever say that. In practice, not all scientists would.

But if science cannot answer some ultimate question, what makes anybody think that religion can? I suspect that neither the Cambridge nor the Oxford astronomer really believed that theologians have any expertise that enables them to answer questions that are too deep for science.

Darwin's 'survival of the fittest' is really a special case of a more general law of survival of the stable. The universe is populated by stable things. A stable thing is a collection of atoms that is permanent enough or common enough to deserve a name.

We don't have to invent wildly implausible stories: we have the joy and excitement of real scientific investigation and discovery to keep our imaginations in line. And in the end that is more exciting than fantasy.

Obviously, the vast majority of evolutionary change is invisible to direct eye-witness observation. Most of it happened before we were born, and in any case, it is usually too slow to be seen during an individual's lifetime.

The word replicator is purposely defined in a general way, so that it does not even have to refer to DNA.

Unweaving the Rainbow

on page 96 of my hero Peter Medawar's book The Limits of Science: 'I regret my disbelief in God and religious answers generally, for I believe it would give satisfaction and comfort to many in need of it if it were possible to discover good scientific and philosophic reasons to believe in God.

somebody who thinks natural selection is a theory of chance whereas—in the relevant sense of chance—it is the opposite.

Real science can be hard but, like classical literature or playing the violin, worth the struggle.

There is mystery but never magic, and mysteries are all the more beautiful for being eventually explained. Things are explicable and it is our privilege to explain them.

Half a wing could save your life by easing your fall from a tree of a certain height. And 51 per cent of a wing could save you if you fall from a slightly taller tree.

Richard Dawkins

Root of All Evil?

The priests of the different religious sects . . . dread the advance of science as witches do the approach of daylight, and scowl on the fatal harbinger announcing the subdivision of the duperies on which they live. —THOMAS JEFFERSON

Yet the mathematical calculations that would be necessary to explain the principles of vision are just as complex and difficult, and nobody has ever had any difficulty in believing

The priests of the different religious sects . . . dread the advance of science as witches do the approach of daylight, and scowl on the fatal harbinger announcing the subdivision of the duperies on which they live. THOMAS JEFFERSON

The presence or absence of a creative super-intelligence is unequivocally a scientific question, even if it is not in practice - or not yet- a decided one. So also is the truth or falsehood of every one of the miracle stories that religions rely upon to impress multitudes of the faithful.

Evolution is within us, around us, between us, and its workings are embedded in the rocks of eons past.

I asked Watson whether he knew many religious scientists today. He replied: 'Virtually none. Occasionally I meet them, and I'm a bit embarrassed [laughs] because, you know, I can't believe anyone accepts truth by revelation.

tried to impose 'intelligent design' creationism on the science curriculum of a local public school—a move of 'breathtaking inanity', to quote Judge Jones

A more systematic study by Benjamin Beit-Hallahmi 'found that among Nobel Prize laureates in the sciences, as well as those in literature, there was a remarkable degree of irreligiosity, as compared to the populations they came from'.51

As the Nobel Prize-winning American physicist Steven Weinberg said, 'Religion is an insult to human dignity.