Since natural selection requires a function to select, an irreducibly complex biological system, if there is such a thing, would have to arise as an integrated unit for natural selection to have anything to act on.
quote by Michael Behe
Submitted by Lucian Velea
Vote! | Copy!
Related quotes
Animals can adapt to problems and make inventions, but often no faster than natural selection can do its work - the world acts as its own simulator in the case of natural selection.
quote by Vernor Vinge
Submitted by Lucian Velea
Vote! | Copy!
It was a shock to people of the nineteenth century when they discovered, from observations science had made, that many features of the biological world could be ascribed to the elegant principle of natural selection.
quote by Michael Behe
Submitted by Lucian Velea
Vote! | Copy!
By irreducibly complex I mean a single system composed of several well-matched, interacting parts that contribute to the basic function, wherein the removal of any one of the parts causes the system to effectively cease functioning.
quote by Michael Behe
Submitted by Lucian Velea
Vote! | Copy!
Owing to this struggle for life, any variation, however slight and from whatever cause proceeding, if it be in any degree profitable to an individual of any species, in its infinitely complex relations to other organic beings and to external nature, will tend to the preservation of that individual, and will generally be inherited by its offspring. The offspring, also, will thus have a better chance of surviving, for, of the many individuals of any species which are periodically born, but a small number can survive. I have called this principle, by which each slight variation, if useful, is preserved, by the term of Natural Selection, in order to mark its relation to man's power of selection.
quote by Charles Darwin
Submitted by Veronica Serbanoiu
Vote! | Copy!
Although I insist that God has always had the power to intervene directly in nature to create new forms, I am willing to be per-suaded that He chose not to do so and instead employed secondary natural causes like random mutation and natural selection.
quote by Phillip E. Johnson
Submitted by Lucian Velea
Vote! | Copy!
Lineage (in answer to Ted Hughes)
In the beginning was thought
in the mind of God
who begat sound
who begat word
who begat material formation
of light, air, water
and firm foundation
setting natural dimensions and laws,
forming biological living things,
going past natural selection,
where only the strongest survive
coming alive as mere man
begat from Mary
as a human being
who begat unsurpassable love
and self-sacrifice,
dying, shattered from the presence
of the Father
as a cast out being full of sin
and this linage begun and ended with Him.
[Reference: Lineage by Ted Hughes.]
poem by Gert Strydom
Submitted by Poetry Lover
Vote! | Copy!
What's natural and right is to go with the energy of how it all has to work together. What's natural and right is interconnectedness, not individualism. What is natural and right is respect for the system, not killing the system. What's natural and right is love.
quote by Susan Powter
Submitted by Lucian Velea
Vote! | Copy!
Natural selection is not evolution.
quote by Ronald Fisher
Submitted by Lucian Velea
Vote! | Copy!
Natural selection, as it has operated in human history, favors not only the clever but the murderous.
quote by Barbara Ehrenreich
Submitted by Lucian Velea
Vote! | Copy! | In Romanian
Natural selection is a mechanism for generating an exceedingly high degree of improbability.
quote by Ronald Fisher
Submitted by Lucian Velea
Vote! | Copy!
If we continue to accumulate only power and not wisdom, we will surely destroy ourselves. Our very existence in that distant time requires that we will have changed our institutions and ourselves. How can I dare to guess about humans in the far future? It is, I think, only a matter of natural selection. If we become even slightly more violent, shortsighted, ignorant, and selfish than we are now, almost certainly we will have no future.
Carl Sagan in Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space
Submitted by Catalin Popescu
Vote! | Copy! | In Romanian
I have called this principle, by which each slight variation, if useful, is preserved, by the term of Natural Selection.
quote by Charles Robert Darwin
Submitted by Lucian Velea
Vote! | Copy!
Darwin's idea of natural selection makes people uncomfortable because it reverses the direction of tradition.
quote by Daniel Dennett
Submitted by Lucian Velea
Vote! | Copy!
Simple Observation #192 - Natural Selection seems to be......
Natural selection seems to be another term for the will of God operating in creation
and evolution is the overall process through which It maintains this vital relation.
poem by George Krokos
Submitted by Poetry Lover
Vote! | Copy!
Historians will have to face the fact that natural selection determined the evolution of cultures in the same manner as it did that of species.
quote by Konrad Lorenz
Submitted by Lucian Velea
Vote! | Copy!
Jesus And Magdalene
Archetypes of human perfection
Completion of the Yin and Yang
Capstones of natural selection
Betrothed, while Angels sang
ROTMS
poem by Ray Lucero
Submitted by Poetry Lover
Vote! | Copy!
Thus the genetic basis to the origin of bird species is to be sought in the inheritance of adult traits that are subject to natural and sexual selection.
quote by Peter R. Grant
Submitted by Lucian Velea
Vote! | Copy!
I see humanity now as one vast plant, needing for its highest fulfillment only love, the natural blessings of the great outdoors, and intelligent crossing and selection.
quote by Luther Burbank
Submitted by Lucian Velea
Vote! | Copy!
It is essential for genetic material to be able to make exact copies of itself; otherwise growth would produce disorder, life could not originate, and favourable forms would not be perpetuated by natural selection.
quote by Maurice Wilkins
Submitted by Lucian Velea
Vote! | Copy!
The theory of evolution by cumulative natural selection is the only theory we know of that is in principle capable of explaining the existence of organized complexity.
quote by Richard Dawkins
Submitted by Lucian Velea
Vote! | Copy!