We are here because one odd group of fishes had a peculiar fin anatomy that could transform into … - Stephen Jay Gould

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If you look in real life, it is very hard to describe people as good people, bad people, heroes or villains. People aren't bad people. They all have their justifications.

Stephen Jay Gould

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

Atheist, Exists, Ice, Small, Transform, Years

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If genius has any common denominator, I would propose breadth of interest and the ability to construct fruitful analogies between fields.

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Skepticism is the agent of reason against organized irrationalism--and is therefore one of the keys to human social and civic decency.

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Human life is the result of a glorious evolutionary accident.

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Nature is what she is - amoral and persistent.

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Darwin's principle of natural selection leads to the prediction that the proper way to analyze any evolutionary development is to see the new features as adaptive to environments. And that's a perfectly good principle. The problem is that there are many evolutionary biologists who view everything that happens in evolution as directly evolved for adaptive benefit. And that just doesn't work. Whenever you build a structure for adaptive reasons, the structure is going to exhibit properties that have nothing to do with adaptation. They're just side consequences.

Benefit, Development, Environment, Evolution, Happens, Problem