If you wonder about the world around you and attempt to explain it you are a scientist ~ so post here as frequently and as often as possible about what you observe in nature. ~ Micahel Piziak
Quotes by Michael Piziak (myself):
"I will always be a scientist. "The Universe is infinitely large, and large itself is a quantitative way of describing something using a measurement; however, just to
make most people understand I tell them 'The Universe if larger than life; therefore, the Earth must be smaller than life which reasoning tells one that perhaps we are all figments of each others imagination and none of us really exist." "There are 20 major religions in the world ~ what makes you think your religion is the right one." "The earth is so small in the Universe that it has been described as a spec of dust floating on another spec of dust, and even that gives us too much credit for how large we are." Preachers preach to their flock that Darwin said we all came from monkeys. He never said that. Imagine a primate tree and the base upwards to the branches is the missing link. Every branch on the primate tree, be a branch be humans, another branch is monkeys, another branch is gorillas, another branch chipms, and so forth. None of us evolved from the other or came from the other. We all came from the 'missing link' which is the base of the tree right up to before where the branches start to branch off." "People that don't understand what Darwin meant by the phrase 'Natural Selection' need to understand that artificial selection was first described by him as humans breeding pigeons or dogs and forcing it to occur. In nature, it occurs naturally, thus the phrase 'Natural Selection." "Scientists have recently discovered there is a correlation between Scientist that think too much about the Universe and then can't relate or socialize with people on Earth and end up insane. I have thought too much about the Universe and I too am nearly insane now." "Did you know that everything that has matter has a gravitational attraction with everything else that has matter. That pole you see over there and me sitting beside you, we both have an ever so slight gravitational attraction towards each other, and gravity is a force." "We went to the moon, and both NASA and the Japanese have photographed the evidence with their telescopes and satellites. Those that believe otherwise are just conspiratist theorists." "A scientific theory is supported by facts and evidence. For example, Gravity is a theory." "Every living thing on Earth, be it from the kingdom of Animals, Plants, Bacteria, or Fungi, all have the same 4 nucleotide bases. Human DNA and chimpanzee DNA 98 is percent identical. We may actually be able to mate with one another if it was ethically acceptable. So don't tell me that everything living is not related." "There is no conflict between religion, God, or Science. Perhaps God used evolution as a tool or mechanism to create all living things on Earth."
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Quotes of Charles Darwin:
"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is those who know little, not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science." "In the struggle for survival, the fittest win out at the expense of their rivals because they succeed in adapting themselves best to their environment." "Man with all his noble qualities, with sympathy which feels for the most debased, with benevolence which extends not only to other men but to the humblest living creature, with his god-like intellect which has penetrated into the movements and constitution of the solar system- with all these exalted powers- Man still bears in his bodily frame the indelible stamp of his lowly origin." "Nothing before had ever made me thoroughly realise, though I had read various scientific books, that science consists in grouping facts so that general laws or conclusions may be drawn from them." "But when on shore, & wandering in the sublime forests, surrounded by views more gorgeous than even Claude ever imagined, I enjoy a delight which none but those who have experienced it can understand - If it is to be done, it must be by studying Humboldt"
"I have called this principle, by which each slight variation, if useful, is preserved, by the term Natural Selection"
"I have no great quickness of apprehension or wit which is so remarkable in some clever men, for instance Huxley"
"We will now discuss in a little more detail the Struggle for Existence." "The expression often used by Mr. Herbert Spencer of the Survival of the Fittest is more accurate, and is sometimes equally convenient"
"Physiological experiment on animals is justifiable for real investigation, but not for mere damnable and detestable curiosity." "I love fools’ experiments. I am always making them." " As for a future life, every man must judge for himself between conflicting vague probabilities." " Believing as I do that man in the distant future will be a far more perfect creature than he now is, it is an intolerable thought that he and all other sentient beings are doomed to complete annihilation after such long-continued slow progress"
"doing what little one can to increase the general stock of knowledge is as respectable an object of life, as one can in any likelihood pursue"
"On seeing the marsupials in Australia for the first time and comparing them to placental mammals: "An unbeliever . . . might exclaim 'Surely two distinct Creators must have been at work'""
"we can allow satellites, planets, suns, universe, nay whole systems of universe[s,] to be governed by laws, but the smallest insect, we wish to be created at once by special act"
"a scientific man ought to have no wishes, no affections, -- a mere heart of stone"
"I cannot persuade myself that a beneficent and omnipotent God would have designedly created parasitic wasps with the express intention of their feeding within the living bodies of Caterpillars"
"I am turned into a sort of machine for observing facts & grinding out conclusions"
"I am a strong advocate for free thought on all subjects, yet it appears to me (whether rightly or wrongly) that direct arguments against christianity & theism produce hardly any effect on the public; & freedom of thought is best promoted by the gradual illumination of men's minds, which follow[s] from the advance of science. It has, therefore, been always my object to avoid writing on religion, & I have confined myself to science. I may, however, have been unduly biassed by the pain which it would give some members of my family, if I aided in any way direct attacks on religion"
"To suppose that the eye, with all its inimitable contrivances for adjusting the focus to different distances, for admitting different amounts of light, and for the correction of spherical and chromatic aberration, could have been formed by natural selection, seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest possible degree. Yet reason tells me, that if numerous gradations from a perfect and complex eye to one very imperfect and simple, each grade being useful to its possessor, can be shown to exist; if further, the eye does vary ever so slightly, and the variations be inherited, which is certainly the case; and if variation or modification in the organ be ever useful to an animal under changing conditions of life, then the difficulty of believing that a perfect and complex eye could be formed by natural selection, though insuperable by our imagination, can hardly be considered real"
"The fact of evolution is the backbone of biology, and biology is thus in the peculiar position of being a science founded on an improved theory, is it then a science or faith?"
