Gravity is not a version of the truth. It is the truth. Anyone who doubts it is invited to jump out a tenth-storey window.
Interpretation
Gravity is an undeniable truth; questioning it is futile and dangerous.
In this quote, Richard Dawkins emphasizes the fundamental nature of gravity as an absolute truth in the realm of science. He dismisses any doubts about gravity's existence by suggesting a drastic demonstration that reveals the certainty of its effects, thereby highlighting the importance of accepting scientific truths over personal skepticism.
In practice
This quote can be used in a science class to illustrate the concept of gravity.
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.
The universe has really never made things in ones. The Earth is special and everything else is different? No, weβve got seven other planets. The sun? No, the sun is one of those dots in the night sky. The Milky Way? No, itβs one of a hundred billion galaxies. And the universe - maybe itβs countless other universes.
Language is only the instrument of science, and words are but the signs of ideas.
Development of Western science is based on two great achievements: the invention of the formal logical system (in Euclidean geometry) by the Greek philosophers, and the discovery of the possibility to find out causal relationships by systematic experiment (during the Renaissance). In my opinion, one has not to be astonished that the Chinese sages have not made these steps. The astonishing thing is that these discoveries were made at all.
If there is anything more frightening than the threat of global nuclear war, it is the certainty that humans not only stand on the verge of producing new life forms but may soon be able to tinker with them as if they were vintage convertibles or bonsai trees.
In science it often happens that scientists say, 'You know that's a really good argument; my position is mistaken,' and then they would actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn't happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time something like that happened in politics or religion.
If numbers aren't beautiful, I don't know what is.
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