84 quotes
Bertrand Russell once pointed out that ‘People are more unwilling to give up the word “God” than to give up the idea for which the word has hitherto stood’. Evolutionary theory may not persuade everyone to give up the word. However, to the extent that it encourages people to alter its meaning beyond recognition, it could be argued that God has nonetheless been a casualty of Darwin’s theory.
Darwin, God and the Meaning of Life: How Evolutionary Theory Undermines Everything You Think You Know (2010)
Whether a trait is natural or unnatural is irrelevant to the question of whether it’s good. Moral worth should be judged not in terms of the naturalness of a trait, but rather in terms of how that trait impacts the wellbeing of everyone affected by it. Thus, violence is natural but bad, medicine unnatural but good.
The Ape That Understood the Universe: How the Mind and Culture Evolve (2018)
Of course, nothing can be said to argue that people are morally obliged to accept this ethic, for to do so would be inconsistent with the ideas that inspired it in the first place. It is an ethic that will be adopted – if at all – by those who find a certain stark beauty in kindness without reward, joy without purpose, and progress without lasting achievement.
Darwin, God and the Meaning of Life: How Evolutionary Theory Undermines Everything You Think You Know (2010)
People who object to the by-product hypothesis [for female orgasm] are doing something strange: They're saying that it's hugely important to them that female orgasm turns out to be an adaptation, like vomiting, cobra venom, and the scorpion's stinger, rather than a "mere" cultural invention, like science, medicine, and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
The Ape That Understood the Universe: How the Mind and Culture Evolve (2018)
Why should any individual woman today be advantaged over any individual man just because other men were advantaged over other women in the past? Reversing historical injustices does not erase them; it merely adds to the total number of injustices in the world. The question we face today, therefore, is this: Is the appropriate response to injustice to try to eliminate it, or to turn it on its head?
Men, Women and STEM: Why the Differences and What Should be Done? (2021)
Even in the healthiest of relationships, a spouse’s or lover’s happiness isn’t necessarily our own. It’s rarely the case, for example, that upon hearing about a partner’s infidelity, people say “Oh, that’s nice! I love my partner, and I’m sure they had fun – so this is great news!”
A Billion Years of Sex Differences: How Evolution Shaped the Minds of Men and Women (2026)
Certainly, the human-animal distinction is still workable; after all, we rarely make errors in assigning entities to one category or the other. But after Darwin, the distinction suddenly seems arbitrary – as arbitrary as the equally workable distinction between, say, turtles and non-turtles.
Darwin, God and the Meaning of Life: How Evolutionary Theory Undermines Everything You Think You Know (2010)
Albert Schweitzer once observed that “When people are free to do as they please, they usually imitate each other.” This was clearly not meant as a compliment. People quote Schweitzer’s statement to thumb their noses at the way we copy each other – which, when you think about it, is rather ironic.
The Ape That Understood the Universe: How the Mind and Culture Evolve (2018)
Although men and women are roughly equally represented in STEM overall, in certain fields, the sex ratios are somewhat unbalanced. More women than men are found in health-related fields, for instance, whereas more men than women are found in fields such as computer science, engineering, and physics.
Not Biology or Culture Alone: Response to El-Hout et al. (2021) (2021)
The amount of suffering and pain caused by the tyranny of human beings over other animals (particularly in food production) far exceeds that caused by sexism, racism, or any other existing form of discrimination, and for this reason, the animal liberation movement is the most important liberation movement on the face of the planet today.
Darwin, God and the Meaning of Life: How Evolutionary Theory Undermines Everything You Think You Know (2010)
The reproductive benefits of polygyny were so great for genes located in male bodies that the male mind might still have evolved to take advantage of those opportunities, if and when they did arise. As a result, men may harbor strong polygamous desires — much stronger than women’s — even if these desires are frustrated for most men throughout most of their lives.
The Ape that Kicked the Hornet's Nest (2013)
Gender-role traditionalists assume that sex differences are natural, and therefore that they’re good. Gender-role progressives assume that sex differences are bad, and therefore that they’re not natural – or they assume that the absence of sex differences is natural, and therefore that the absence of sex differences is good, and that that’s what we ought to strive for.
A Billion Years of Sex Differences: How Evolution Shaped the Minds of Men and Women (2026)
Most women do not want a career in STEM and nor do most men. Why should the small fraction of women who do want such a career be the same size as the small fraction of men? To put it another way, as long as everyone has the opportunity to pursue a STEM career, and as long as the selection process is fair, why would it be important to get as many women as men into jobs that fewer women want?
Men, Women and STEM: Why the Differences and What Should be Done? (2021)
Thus, a curious fact about natural selection is that, even though it’s a completely mindless process – a process without foresight or understanding – it has given rise to creatures that have minds, that have foresight, and that even have some basic understanding of the universe of which they’re a part.
The Ape That Understood the Universe: How the Mind and Culture Evolve (2018)
Real-world data going back to the 1980s suggest that, although fewer women apply for jobs in fields such as maths, physics, chemistry, biology, and engineering, those who do apply are no less likely to be interviewed and no less likely to be offered the job. On the contrary, they are generally more likely to be.
Men, Women and STEM: Why the Differences and What Should be Done? (2021)
"Once a suitable mate is located, humans engage in various peculiar mating rituals. The male, for example, may give the female a bundle of plant genitals (or “flowers”), or the pair may take turns making noises at each other while imbibing fermented plant juice." (Quote from an alien scientists report on our species.)
The Ape That Understood the Universe: How the Mind and Culture Evolve (2018)
If men in our evolutionary past did not invest in offspring, they would not have evolved strict mate preferences and thus women would be as drab as peahens. The fact that women are not as drab as peahens suggests a long history of male mate choice, which in turn suggests a long history of pair bonding and high male parental investment.
The Ape that Thought It Was a Peacock: Does Evolutionary Psychology Exaggerate Human Sex Differences? (2013)
It seems that the evolutionist must conclude, along with the writer Vladimir Nabokov, that ‘our existence is but a brief crack of light between two eternities of darkness’. Brains that think otherwise – brains that deny they are brains and believe instead that they are eternal souls - are brains that hold false beliefs about themselves.
Darwin, God and the Meaning of Life: How Evolutionary Theory Undermines Everything You Think You Know (2010)
Why would the omnipotent creator of the entire universe be so deeply attached to a bipedal, tropical ape? Why would He take on the bodily form of one of these peculiar tailless primates? Why would such a magnificent being be so obsessively, nit-pickingly preoccupied with trivial matters such as the dress code and sexual behaviour of one mammalian species, especially its female members?
Darwin, God and the Meaning of Life: How Evolutionary Theory Undermines Everything You Think You Know (2010)
Our claim is not that pair bonding is humanity’s singular mating pattern. Our claim instead is simply that the pair bond is the most common setting for sex and reproduction in our species, that it has been for a long time, and that this has left a deep imprint on our evolved nature.
The Ape that Thought It Was a Peacock: Does Evolutionary Psychology Exaggerate Human Sex Differences? (2013)