Evolution 2001 Quotes

Now times had changed, and the inherited wisdom of the past had become folly.

As his body became more and more defenseless, so his means of offense became steadily more frightful.

At least two important conservative thinkers, Ayn Rand and Leo Strauss, were unbelievers or nonbelievers and in any case contemptuous of Christianity. I have my own differences with both of these savants, but is the Republican Party really prepared to disown such modern intellectuals as it can claim, in favor of a shallow, demagogic and above all sectarian religiosity? Perhaps one could phrase the same question in two further ways. At the last election, the GOP succeeded in increasing its vote among American Jews by an estimated five percentage points. Does it propose to welcome these new adherents or sympathizers by yelling in the tones of that great Democrat bigmouth William Jennings Bryan? By insisting that evolution is 'only a theory'? By demanding biblical literalism and by proclaiming that the Messiah has already shown himself? If so, it will deserve the punishment for hubris that is already coming its way. (The punishment, in other words, that Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson believed had struck America on Sept. 11, 2001. How can it be that such grotesque characters, calling down divine revenge on the workers in the World Trade Center, are allowed a respectful hearing, or a hearing at all, among patriotic Republicans?). [. . . And Why I'm Most Certainly Not! -- The Wall Street Journal, Commentary Column. May 5, 2005]

Human emotions have deep evolutionary roots, a fact that may explain their complexity and provide tools for clinical practice. The Nature of Emotions (2001)

There were other thinkers, Bowman also found, who held even more exotic views. They did not believe that really advanced beings would possess organic bodies at all. Sooner or later, as their scientific knowledge progressed, they would get rid of the fragile, disease-and-accident-prone homes that Nature had given them, and which doomed them to inevitable death. They would replace their natural bodies as they wore out—or perhaps even before that—by constructions of metal and plastic, and would thus achieve immortality. The brain might linger for a little while as the last remnant of the organic body, directing its mechanical limbs and observing the universe through its electronic senses—senses far finer and subtler than those that blind evolution could ever develop. Even

In their explorations, they encountered life in many forms and watched the workings of evolution on a thousand worlds. They saw how often the first faint sparks of intelligence flickered and died in the cosmic night. And because, in all the Galaxy, they had found nothing more precious than Mind, they encouraged its dawning everywhere. They became farmers in the fields of stars; they sowed, and sometimes they reaped. And

the importance of attractiveness has increased dramatically in the United States in the 20th century (Buss et al., 2001). For example, the importance attached to good looks in a marriage partner on a scale of 0 to 3 increased between 1939 and 1996 from 1.50 to 2.11 for men and from 0.94 to 1.67 for women, showing that mate preferences can change. Indeed, these changes point to the importance of cultural evolution and the impact of input from the social environment. The sex difference, however, so far remains invariant.

What does it take to use the life we already have in order to make us wiser rather than more stuck? What is the source of wisdom at a personal, individual level? To the degree that I've understood the teachings, the answer to these questions seems to have to do with bringing everything that we encounter to the path. Everything naturally has a ground, path and fruition. This is like saying that everything has a beginning, a middle and an end. But it is also said that the path itself is both the ground and the fruition. So, one sometimes reads, the path is the goal. This path has one very distinct characteristic, it is not prefabricated, it doesn't already exist. The path that we're talking about is the moment by moment evolution of our experience. The moment by moment evolution of the world of phenomena. The moment by moment evolution of our thoughts and our emotions. The path is not Route 66 destination Los Angeles. It's not as if we can take out a map and figure out that this year we might make it to Gallup, New Mexico and maybe by 2001 we'll be in LA. The path is uncharted. It comes into existence moment by moment and at the same time drops away behind us. It's like riding in a train sitting backwards. We can't see where we're headed, only where we've been. This is a very encouraging teaching because it says the source of wisdom is whatever is going to happen to us today. The source of wisdom is whatever is happening to us right at this very instant. We're always in some kind of mood. It might be sadness, it might be anger, it might be not much of anything, just a kind of blur. It might be humor or contentment. In any case, whatever it is, that's the path. When something hurts in life, we don't usually think of it as our path or as the source of wisdom. In fact we think that the reason we're on the path is to get rid of this painful feeling. When I get to LA I won't feel this way anymore. At that level of wanting to get rid of our feeling, we naively cultivate a subtle aggression against ourselves. However the fact is that anyone who has used the moments and days and years of his or her life to become wiser, kinder, and more at home in the world has learned from what has happened right now. We can aspire to be kind right in the moment, to relax and open our heart and mind to what is in front of us right in the moment. Now is the time. If there is any possibility for enlightenment, it's right now. Not at some future time. Now is the time. Now is the only time.

I remember just after 9/11/2001 people were putting up American flags-- stand with America against its enemies was the prevailing feeling-- and all I could think was "that's the feeling that got us here." It seemed to me that empathy for our ostensible enemies was the only way we could move forward to something better. I know that's true now.

Philipose’s lines, “Lucky you can judge yourself in this water,” and later, “Lucky you can be purified over and over,” are lines from the 1977 poem “Lucky Life” by the late poet (and my Iowa teacher and friend) Gerald Stern. The degree “MRVR” after the wart doctor’s name is based on an anecdote in Evolution of Modern Medicine in Kerala by K. Rajasekharan Nair (TBS Publishers’ Distributors, 2001). The line that references “the round world and its imagined corners” is after John Donne’s Holy Sonnet 7.

In their explorations, they encountered life in many forms, and watched the workings of evolution on a thousand worlds. They saw how often the first faint sparks of intelligence flickered and died in the cosmic night. And because, in all the galaxy, they had found nothing more precious than Mind, they encouraged its dawning everywhere. They became farmers in the fields of stars; they sowed, and sometimes they reaped. And sometimes, dispassionately, they had to weed.

In sum, the great apes arguably man1 ifest at least some aspects of teleomechanical agency and mentalistic agency (Suddendorf and Whiten 2001); however, there is no convincing evidence that any animals other than humans possess metarepresentational agency (Heyes 1998; C. Wynne 2001).

published in 2001, concentrates on tracing our ancestry using the maternally inherited mitochondrial DNA, which also features heavily in The Nature of the Beast. Other books focus on the paternally inherited Y-chromosome and the evolution of sex (Adam’s Curse, 2003), on genealogy and the genetic history of Britain and Ireland (Blood of the Isles, 2006) and America (DNA USA, 2012).

For most of the Western world, September 11, 2001, signaled the commencement of a worldwide struggle between Islam and the West—the ultimate manifestation of the clash of civilizations. From the Islamic perspective, however, the attacks on New York and Washington were part of an ongoing clash between those Muslims who strive to reconcile their religious values with the realities of the modern world, and those who react to modernism and reform by reverting—sometimes fanatically—to the “fundamentals” of their faith.

This is only a work of fiction , The Truth as always will be far stranger

Scriptural determinism” sounds like an arcane academic paradigm, but it is deployed by nonacademics in a consequential way. After the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, as Americans tried to fathom the forces at work, sales of several kinds of books rose. Some people bought books about Islam, some bought books about the recent history of the Middle East, and some bought translations of the Koran. And of course some bought more than one kind of book. But people who bought only translations of the Koran were showing signs of scriptural determinism. They seemed to think that you could understand the terrorists’ motivation simply by reading their ancient scriptures—just search the Koran for passages advocating violence against infidels and, having succeeded, end the analysis, content that you’d found the essential cause of 9/11.

In 2001 Science featured an article, “The Soft Science of Dietary Fat,” that argued a low-fat diet is not necessarily healthful and that the public had been misled about the relative merits of fat and starch.16 A few years ago Scientific American declared: “It’s time to end the war on salt: the zealous drive by politicians to limit our salt intake has little basis in science.”17 About the same time the Department of Agriculture tossed out its iconic food pyramid for a food plate and juggled several of its recommendations.18 Recently the USDA was reported to be poised to recommend that Americans eat less meat—not because it’s better for individuals, but because it may be better for the environment, which indirectly could affect our health too.19

Darwinists once widely taught that women were at a “lower level of development” than men because an “earlier arrest of individual evolution” had occurred in human females (Gilmore 2001, 124). Furthermore, women had smaller, less-developed brains, and were believed to be “eternally primitive” and childlike. Otto Weininger even argued that women were “social parasites,” who “must be repressed for the good of the race.” Women not only were considered less evolved than men, but also were regarded by many sociologists as less spiritual, more materialistic, less normal, and “a real danger to contemporary civilization