An interesting contrast between the geology of the present day and that of half a century ago, is presented by the complete emancipation of the modern geologist from the controlling and perverting influence of theology,...

A physicist that I know commented that many other scientific disciplines, such as geology, anthropology, astronomy, are also challenged by biblical fundamentalism, but their people seem to be able to get on with their work...

A sound Physics of the Earth should include all the primary considerations of the earth’s atmosphere, of the characteristics and continual changes of the earth’s external crust, and finally of the origin and development of...

But recently I have learned from discussions with a variety of scientists and other non-philosophers (e.g., the scientists participating with me in the Sean Carroll workshop on the future of naturalism) that they lean the...

Our species is angry on a deep level. We know something has been wrong for a long time. We are tired of being thrown the scraps. This is primal, guttural; the scream of an exhausted...

Science is simply the classification of the common knowledge of the common people. It is bringing together the things we all know and putting them together so we can use them. This is creation and...

Even connoisseurship can have politics, Slow Food wagers, since an eater in closer touch with his senses will find less pleasure in a box of Chicken McNuggets than in a pastured chicken or a rare...

When it occurs to a man that nature does not regard him as important, and that she feels she would not maim the universe by disposing of him, he at first wishes to throw bricks...

copied” idea.

All the work of the crystallographers serves only to demonstrate that there is only variety everywhere where they suppose uniformity … that in nature there is nothing absolute, nothing perfectly regular.

The complexity of the simplest known type of cell is so great that it is impossible to accept that such an object could have been thrown together suddenly by some kind of freakish, vastly improbable,...

The universe, the whole mass of things that are, is corporeal, that is to say, body, and hath the dimensions of magnitude, length, breadth and depth. Every part of the universe is ‘body’ and that...

I observed on most collected stones the imprints of innumerable plant fragments which were so different from those which are growing in the Lyonnais, in the nearby provinces, and even in the rest of France,...

Logically, this kind of atheism did not prove that there was no God…. On the contrary, Southwell was typical in placing the onus probandi on those who affirmed the existence of God and Holyoake regarded...

First LawIn every animal which has not passed the limit of its development, a more frequent and continuous use of any organ gradually strengthens, develops and enlarges that organ, and gives it a power proportional...

I believe, said Austerlitz, they know they have lost their way, since if you do not put them out again carefully they will stay where they are, never moving, until the last bath is out...

Once the wounded child awakens to its human self, a primal scream emerges from the depths of denial like the Kraken released from its underwater prison.

Why is it that showers and even storms seem to come by chance, so that many people think it quite natural to pray for rain or fine weather, though they would consider it ridiculous to...

To Nature nothing can be added; from Nature nothing can be taken away; the sum of her energies is constant, and the utmost man can do in the pursuit of physical truth, or in the...

Nevertheless, he had, on a certain star-lit evening, said wonderingly and quite reverently: “Deh moon looks like hell, don’t it?

It is suspected, by some, that spiritual beings are extremely jealous of the natural world because they are nothing more than a figment of the imagination. This might explain their compulsive and obsessive behavior in...

Majestatis naturæ by ingenium (Genius equal to the majesty of nature.)[Inscribed ordered by King Louis XV for the base of a statue of Buffon placed at Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle de Paris.]

There is no separate supernatural realm: all phenomena are part of one natural process of evolution.

Modernist discourse […] incorporates semantic devices – such as the labeling of theism as ‘religion’ and naturalism as ‘science’ – that work to prevent a dangerous debate over fundamental assumptions from breaking out in the...

Saint John, in a moment of confusion, tells us not to love the world because “all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride...

The velocity of light is one of the most important of the fundamental constants of Nature. Its measurement by Foucault and Fizeau gave as the result a speed greater in air than in water, thus...

It is not the organs—that is, the character and form of the animal’s bodily parts—that have given rise to its habits and particular structures. It is the habits and manner of life and the conditions...

Naturalism is the view that the physical world is a self-contained system that works by blind, unbroken natural laws. Naturalism doesn’t come right out and say there’s nothing beyond nature. Rather, it says that nothing...

I believe religious indoctrination is child abuse.

The embryological record is almost always abbreviated in accordance with the tendency of nature (to be explained on the principle of survival of the fittest) to attain her needs by the easiest means.

Naturalistic atheism debunks itself. It has no power to explain even some of the most basic principles of the universe and existence. It cannot even explain how its own claims can be reasonably believed.

Shallow men believe in luck or in circumstance. Strong men believe in cause and effect.

Our unfathomable evolutionary past paints a picture vastly more immense than any spiritual story could ever create because it is raw and real, violent, dirty and beautiful—and because of that—it’s spectacular!

The great workman of nature is time.

Lyell and Poulett Scrope, in this country, resumed the work of the Italians and of Hutton; and the former, aided by a marvellous power of clear exposition, placed upon an irrefragable basis the truth that...

Materialism sets us free from sin-by proving that there is no such thing as sin. There’s just antisocial behavior, which we can control with measures like laws and educational programs.

Eat beautiful foods, which are nutritionally dense, wholesome and natural.

String theory is an attempt at a deeper description of nature by thinking of an elementary particle not as a little point but as a little loop of vibrating string.

The careful observations and the acute reasonings of the Italian geologists of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries; the speculations of Leibnitz in the ‘Protogaea’ and of Buffon in his ‘Théorie de la Terre;’ the sober...

The very comprehensibility of the world points to an intelligence behind the world. Indeed, science would be impossible if our intelligence were not adapted to the intelligibility of the world. The match between our intelligence...

The inner imaginary universe of the human primate is the battlefield of the ages

A miracle is a violation of the laws of nature; and because firm and unalterable experience has established these laws, the case against a miracle is—just because it is a miracle—as complete as any argument...

If it is the case that we are merely slaves to the natural processes computing our advanced fight and flight responses, then we are never truly thinking, which means that logic and reason – the...

In the woods is perpetual youth. In the woods we return to faith and reason.

We do not have bodies—we are bodies! What could possibly be wrong with that form of consciousness? It is all energy anyways.

The sublime can only be found in the great subjects. Poetry, history and philosophy all have the same object, and a very great object—Man and Nature. Philosophy describes and depicts Nature. Poetry paints and embellishes...

Priusquam autem ad creationem, hoc est ad finem omnis disputationis, veniamus: tentanda omnia existimo.However, before we come to [special] creation, which puts an end to all discussion: I think we should try everything else.

As students grow more and more accustomed to assuming materialism and naturalism in their academic work, the concept of creation by God gradually tends to become less real to them. It is not so much...

We must trust to nothing but facts: These are presented to us by Nature, and cannot deceive. We ought, in every instance, to submit our reasoning to the test of experiment, and never to search...

Yes, I’m a materialist. I’m willing to be shown wrong, but that has not happened — yet. And I admit that the reason I’m unable to accept the claims of psychic, occult, and/or supernatural wonders...