Even if there were no actual evidence in favor of the Darwinian theory, we should still be justified in preferring it over all rival theories.
Interpretation
The quote expresses confidence in the Darwinian theory of evolution as the best explanation for biological diversity, even in the absence of direct evidence.
Richard Dawkins suggests that the Darwinian theory of evolution is so compelling and coherent that it should be chosen over competing theories, regardless of the availability of concrete evidence. He emphasizes the importance of theoretical frameworks that provide the most comprehensive understanding of complex phenomena, such as the origins of species, even when evidence may be lacking at times.
In practice
This quote can be used in scientific discussions about evolutionary biology.
No educated person believes the Adam and Eve myth nowadays, but it's surprising how many parents think that it's somehow fun to pass on this falsehood to their children...I would want to argue that the truth of evolution is more interesting and more poetic
If the history-deniers who doubt the fact of evolution are ignorant of biology, those who think the world began less than ten thousand years ago are worst than ignorant, they are the deluded to the point of perversity.
The population of the U.S. is nearly 300 million, including many of the best educated, most talented, most resourceful, humane people on earth. By almost any measure of civilised attainment, from Nobel prize-counts on down, the U.S. leads the world by miles.
When you make machines that are capable of obeying instructions slavishly, and among those instructions are 'duplicate me' instructions, then of course the system is wide open to exploitation by parasites.
Even if not a single fossil has ever been found, the evidence from surviving animals would still overwhelmingly force the conclusion that Darwin was right.
The bitter hatreds that now poison Middle Eastern politics are rooted in the real or perceived wrong of the setting up of a Jewish State in an Islamic region. In view of all that the Jews had been through, it must have seemed a fair and humane solution. Probably deep familiarity with the Old Testament had given the European and American decision-makers some sort of idea that this really was the historic homeland of the Jews.
Basic research is what I am doing when I don't know what I am doing.
Drug company payments to doctors are a small part of a much larger strategy by Big Pharma to clean our pockets.
So far as physics is concerned, time's arrow is a property of entropy alone.
It seems that if one is working from the point of view of getting beauty in one's equations, and if one has really a sound insight, one is on a sure line of progress.
As you kind of get over the anxiety about [science and evolution], it actually adds to your sense of awe about this amazing universe that we live in, it doesn't subtract from it at all.
But the beauty of Einstein's equations, for example, is just as real to anyone who's experienced it as the beauty of music. We've learned in the 20th century that the equations that work have inner harmony.
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