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
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It is a shock to us in the twentieth century to discover, from observations science has made, that the fundamental mechanisms of life cannot be ascribed to natural selection, and therefore were designed. But we must deal with our shock as best we can and go on.
quote by Michael Behe
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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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
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The nineteenth century believed in science but the twentieth century does not.
quote by Gertrude Stein
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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
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Such an emphasis on the immanence of God as Creator in, with, and under the natural processes of the world unveiled by the sciences is certainly in accord with all that the sciences have revealed since those debates of the nineteenth century.
quote by Arthur Peacocke
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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
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Nowhere Fast
Id like to drop my trousers to the world
I am a man of means (of slender means)
Each household appliance
Is like a new science in my town
And if the day came when I felt a
Natural emotion
Id get such a shock Id probably jump
In the ocean
And when a train goes by
Its such a sad sound
No ...
Its such a sad thing
Id like to drop my trousers to the queen
Every sensible child will know what this means
The poor and the needy
Are selfish and greedy on her terms
And if the day came when I felt a
Natural emotion
Id get such a shock Id probably jump
In the ocean
And when a train goes by
Its such a sad sound
No ...
Its such a sad thing
And when Im lying in my bed
I think about life
And I think about death
And neither one particularly appeals to me
And if the day came when I felt a
Natural emotion
Id get such a shock Id probably lie
In the middle of the street and die
Id lie down and die ...
Oh, oh
song performed by by Smiths
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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The nineteenth century dislike of realism is the rage of Caliban seeing his own face in a glass. The nineteenth century dislike of romanticism is the rage of Caliban not seeing his own face in a glass.
Oscar Wilde in The Picture of Dorian Gray, Preface (1890)
Submitted by Dan Costinaş
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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
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If the nineteenth century was the age of the editorial chair, ours is the century of the psychiatrist's couch.
quote by Marshall McLuhan
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Now, being a science fiction writer, when I see a natural principle, I wonder if it could fail.
quote by Rudy Rucker
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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This Is The 21st Century
(...if you could only see what Ive seen with your eyes)
A wise man once said
A flower is only
A sexual organ
Beauty is cruelty
And evolution
A wise man once said
That everything could be explained with mathematics
He had denied
His feminine side
Now where is the wisdom in that?
I came just as fast as I could
Through the dirty air
Of your neighbourhood
Your name on a grain of rice
Hangin around my neck
And a head like lead
This is the 21st century
I heard everything they said
The universe demystified
Chemicals for god
This is the 21st century
I heard everything they said
A wise man once wrote
That love is only
An ancient instinct
For reproduction
Natural selection
A wise man once said
That everything could be explained
And its all in the brain
We lay on a velvet rug
By the open fire
She blew air on my eyelids
I cried whats it all about?
As she kissed my hair
She said there, there..
This is the 21st century
I heard everything you said
The universe demystified
Astronomy instead
This is the 21st century
Cant you get it through your head
This aint the way it was meant to be
Magic isnt dead
Come to bed
Come to bed
And rest your heavy head my love..
And slowly, from above,
She showed the answers something that cant be written down
This is the 21st century
Flash to crash and burn
Nobodys gonna give you anything
For nothing in return
Theres a man up in a mirrored building
And he just bought the world
Would you want
To have kids
Growing up
Into whats left of this?
She shook her head,
She said cant you see?
The world is you
The world is me.
song performed by by Marillion
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Few people at the beginning of the nineteenth century needed an adman to tell them what they wanted.
quote by John Kenneth Galbraith
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If I haven't made myself clear, this worrisome chain of events describes the game of the nineteenth century.
quote by John Thorn
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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
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20th Century Man
This is the age of machinery,
A mechanical nightmare,
The wonderful world of technology,
Napalm hydrogen bombs biological warfare,
This is the twentieth century,
But too much aggravation
Its the age of insanity,
What has become of the green pleasant fields of jerusalem.
Aint got no ambition, Im just disillusioned
Im a twentieth century man but I dont wanna be here.
My mama said she cant understand me
She cant see my motivation
Just give me some security,
Im a paranoid schizoid product of the twentieth century.
You keep all your smart modern writers
Give me william shakespeare
You keep all your smart modern painters
Ill take rembrandt, titian, da vinci and gainsborough,
Girl we gotta get out of here
We gotta find a solution
Im a twentieth century man but I dont want to die here.
I was born in a welfare state
Ruled by bureaucracy
Controlled by civil servants
And people dressed in grey
Got no privacy got no liberty
Cos the twentieth century people
Took it all away from me.
Dont wanna get myself shot down
By some trigger happy policeman,
Gotta keep a hold on my sanity
Im a twentieth century man but I dont wanna die here.
My mama says she cant understand me
She cant see my motivation
Aint got no security,
Im a twentieth century man but I dont wanna be here.
This is the twentieth century
But too much aggravation
This is the edge of insanity
Im a twentieth century man but I dont wanna be here.
song performed by by Kinks
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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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
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Conflicting Views On Who We Are
Who am I?
Science
A fortuitous concord of atoms are we
Appearing by chance and now you happen to be
You just evolved as evolution had its way
Such is mankind the modern scientists say
The Bible
Created by God and fashioned out of His love
With a designer label from the Lord above
Made in God's image is written for all to see
So fearfully and wonderfully made are we
What am I?
Science
You are composed of very complex chemistry
Another one of the mammals are you to me
A hominid formed by natural selection
made when evolution altered its direction
The Bible
You are a new creation we hear God say
Born again and no longer of earthly clay
A child of God cleansed and made anew
No more does Satan have any hold on you
Whose am I?
Science
You belong to no one and are all on your own
A member of the human race and all alone
Answerable only to yourself and society
And solely responsible for your destiny
The Bible
But The Almighty God says 'My child you are Mine
Made by Me and portraying My image divine
Moulded and fashioned by My tender, loving care
Part of My family and My kingdom you'll share'
Where am I?
Science
At the top of the evolutionary tree
On a planet in the Milky Way Galaxy
You will not always occupy that topmost space
As evolution continues to take its place
The Bible
'You are so precious and important to Me
So special that I gave My life to set you free
And Now You're walking along the heavenly way
On your journey home to Me', we hear our God say
Ireland is a peculiar society in the sense that it was a nineteenth century society up to about 1970 and then it almost bypassed the twentieth century.
quote by John McGahern
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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In war, science has proven itself an evil genius; it has made war more terrible than it ever was before. Man used to be content to slaughter his fellowmen on a single plane — the earth's surface. Science has taught him to go down into the water and shoot up from below and to go up into the clouds and shoot down from above, thus making the battlefield three times a bloody as it was before; but science does not teach brotherly love. Science has made war so hellish that civilization was about to commit suicide; and now we are told that newly discovered instruments of destruction will make the cruelties of the late war seem trivial in comparison with the cruelties of wars that may come in the future.
quote by William Jennings Bryan
Submitted by Veronica Serbanoiu
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