J. Anderson Thomson > Quotes

“There is a massive, irreconcilable conflict between science and religion. Religion was humanity's original cosmology, biology and anthropology. It provided explanations for the origin of the world, life and humans. Science now gives us increasingly complete explanations for those big three. We know the origins of the universe, the physics of the big bang and how the basic chemical elements formed in supernovas. We know that life on this planet originated about 4 billion years ago, and we are all descendants of that original replicating molecule. Thanks to Darwin we know that natural selection is the only workable explanation for the design and variety of all life on this planet. Paleoanthropologists and geneticists have reconstructed much of the human tree of life. We are risen apes, not fallen angels. We are the most successful and last surviving African hominid. Every single person on this Earth, all 7 billion of us, arose 50,000 years ago from small bands of African hunter-gatherers, a total population of somewhere between 600 and 2,000 individuals.”
― J. Anderson Thomson Jr.

“To kill an error is as good a service as, and sometimes even better than, the establishing of a new truth or fact.”
― J. Anderson Thomson, Why We Believe in God(s): A Concise Guide to the Science of Faith

“Genuine morality is doing what is right regardless of what we may be told; religious morality is doing what we are told.”
― J. Anderson Thomson, Why We Believe in God(s): A Concise Guide to the Science of Faith

“How paramount the future is to the present when one is surrounded by children. —Charles Darwin”
― J. Anderson Thomson, Why We Believe in God(s): A Concise Guide to the Science of Faith

“The highest possible stage in moral culture is when we recognize that we ought to control our thoughts.”
― J. Anderson Thomson, Why We Believe in God(s): A Concise Guide to the Science of Faith

“A little girl came home from school after an early lesson in the evolution of humans. She asked her mother, “Do we come from apes?” The mother paused and said, “Well, in a sense. We arose from monkeys and apes.” The little girl asked, “Well, where do monkeys come from?” The mother thought for a moment and replied, “The Kansas State Board of Education.”
― J. Anderson Thomson, Why We Believe in God(s): A Concise Guide to the Science of Faith

“It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent…. It is the one that is the most adaptable to change.”
― J. Anderson Thomson, Why We Believe in God(s): A Concise Guide to the Science of Faith

“We are risen apes, not fallen angels—and we now have the evidence to prove it.”
― J. Anderson Thomson, Why We Believe in God(s): A Concise Guide to the Science of Faith