Craig Evans > Craig's Quotes

“In some remote corner of the universe, poured out and glittering among innumerable solar systems, there once was a star on which clever animals invented knowledge.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche

“Destroying rainforest for economic gain is like burning a Renaissance painting to cook a meal.”
― E.O. Wilson

“Pope Gregory I (in 601) laid the church’s strategy out quite plainly. As he wrote to Mellitus, his missionary in England, “[Do] not…stop such ancient pagan festivities…adapt them to the rites of the Church, only changing the reason of them from a heathen to a Christian impulse.”
― David Kyle Johnson, The Myths That Stole Christmas: Seven Misconceptions That hijacked the Holiday

“No matter how thin you slice it, there will always be two sides.”
― Spinoza

“Working in the hospital teaches you that there are only two kinds of people in the world: the sick and the not sick. If you are not sick, shut up and help. Twenty-five years later, I still cannot reject this as an inaccurate worldview.”
― Hope Jahren, Lab Girl

“I condemn false prophets, I condemn the effort to take away the power of rational decision, to drain people of their free will -- and a hell of a lot of money in the bargain. Religions vary in their degree of idiocy, but I reject them all. For most people, religion is nothing more than a substitute for a malfunctioning brain.
Gene Roddenberry”
― Gene Roddenberry

“Still, if history and science have taught us anything, it is that passion and desire are not the same as truth. The human mind evolved to believe in the gods. It did not evolve to believe in biology. Acceptance of the supernatural conveyed a great advantage throughout prehistory when the brain was evolving. Thus it is in sharp contrast to biology, which was developed as a product of the modern age and is not underwritten by genetic algorithms. The uncomfortable truth is that the two beliefs are not factually compatible. As a result those who hunger for both intellectual and religious truth will never acquire both in full measure.”
― Edward O. Wilson, Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge

“Science, its imperfections notwithstanding, is the sword in the stone that humanity finally pulled. The question it poses, of universal and orderly materialism, is the most important that can be asked in philosophy and religion.”
― Edward O. Wilson, Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge

“All that is very well," answered Candide, "but let us cultivate our garden.”
― Voltaire, Candide

“(Man) fancied that by masquerading in leaves and flowers he helped the bare earth to clothe herself with verdure, and that by playing the death and burial of winter he drove that gloomy season away, and made smooth the path for the footsteps of returning spring. We may smile at his vain endeavours if we please, but it was only by making a long series of experiments, of which some were almost inevitably doomed to failure, that mane learned from experience the futility of some of his attempted methods and the fruitfulness of others. After all, magical ceremonies are nothing but experiments which have failed and which continue to be repeated merely because the operator is unaware of their failure.”
― James George Frazer

“Generally speaking, the errors in religion are dangerous; those in philosophy only ridiculous.”
― David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature

“Epicurus's old questions are still unanswered: Is he (God) willing to prevent evil, but not able? then he is impotent. Is he able, but not willing? then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? then whence evil?”
― David Hume

“The stubborn inequalities in the Unites States are not the result of some people living in a physical environment. Their environment is built by social forces, and those forces last for centuries because they are regenerated across the generations.”
― Carl Zimmer, She Has Her Mother's Laugh: The Powers, Perversions, and Potential of Heredity

“Two hallmarks of Homo Sapiens are decoration and self-identification.”
― Carl Zimmer, Science Ink: Tattoos of the Science Obsessed

“Prejudice is by definition unreasonable and illogical. A reasoned dislike or a logical objection is not a prejudice, although false reasoning and pseudo logic are often found in the service of prejudice. Prejudice is invariably a symptom of a character defect, but tragically it is one that is shared in some degree by us all. Race, national and cultural prejudice is being recognized by thinking men as the great evil which as brought us to the brink of destruction. Prejudice which finds its focus in the accents,manners and styles of others is passed off as comparatively innocuous, but even this brand of prejudice does more to divide men than does any real differences in ideals and aspirations.”
― Euell Gibbons, Stalking the Wild Asparagus

“Human beings do not live forever, Reuven. We live less than the time it takes to blink an eye, if we measure our lives against eternity. So it may be asked what value is there to a human life. There is so much pain in the world. What does it mean to have to suffer so much if our lives are nothing more than the blink of an eye?

I learned a long time ago, Reuven, that a blink of an eye in itself is nothing. But the eye that blinks, that is something. A span of life is nothing. But the man who lives that span, he is something. He can fill that tiny span with meaning, so its quality is immeasurable though its quantity may be insignificant. Do you understand what I am saying? A man must fill his life with meaning, meaning is not automatically given to life.

It is hard work to fill one's life with meaning. That I do not think you understand yet. A life filled with meaning is worthy of rest. I want to be worthy of rest when I am no longer here.”
― Chaim Potok, The Chosen

“Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent.
Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent.
Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil?
Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?”
― Epicurus

“Being a Humanist means trying to behave decently without expectation of rewards or punishment after you are dead.”
― Kurt Vonnegut

“We are all atheists about most of the gods that humanity has ever believed in. Some of us just go one god further.”
― Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion

“Owners of dogs will have noticed that, if you provide them with food and water and shelter and affection, they will think you are god. Whereas owners of cats are compelled to realize that, if you provide them with food and water and shelter and affection, they draw the conclusion that they are gods.”
― Christopher Hitchens, The Portable Atheist: Essential Readings for the Nonbeliever

“All religions are founded on the fear of the many and the cleverness of the few.”
― Stendhal

“Life may be chemistry, but it's a special circumstance of chemistry. Organisms exist not because of reactions that are possible, but because of reactions that are barely possible. Too much reactivity and we would spontaneously combust. Too little, and we would turn cold and die. Proteins enable these barely possible reactions, allowing us to live on the edges of chemical entropy-skating perilously, but never falling in.”
― Siddhartha Mukherjee, The Gene: An Intimate History

“The genetic code is universal... there is nothing particularly special about human genes.”
― Siddhartha Mukherjee (author), The Gene

“Treating different things the same can generate as much inequality as treating the same things differently.”
― Kimberlé Crenshaw