The piano is able to communicate the subtlest universal truths by means of wood, metal and vibrating air.
What evolution tells us is that we are part of a grand, dynamic, and ever-changing fabric of life that covers our planet. Even to a person of faith, in fact especially to a person of faith, an understanding of the evolutionary process should only deepen their appreciation of the scope and wisdom of the creator's work.
Most scientists who are religious look for God in what science does understand and has explained. So the way in which my view is different from the creationists or intelligent design proponents is that I find knowledge a compelling reason to believe in God. They find ignorance a compelling reason to believe in God.
America's got a Darwin problem - and it matters. According to a 2009 Gallup poll taken on the 200th anniversary of Charles Darwin's birth, fewer than 40% of Americans are willing to say that they 'believe in evolution.'
Evolution isn't just a story about where we came from. It's an epic at the center of life itself. Far from robbing our lives of meaning, it instills an appreciation for the beautiful, enduring, and ultimately triumphant fabric of life that covers our planet. Understanding that doesn't demean human life - it enhances it.
Our own genomes carry the story of evolution, written in DNA, the language of molecular genetics, and the narrative is unmistakable.
We know from astronomy that the universe had a beginning, from physics that the future is both open and unpredictable, from geology and paleontology that the whole of life has been a process of change and transformation. From biology we know that our tissues are not impenetrable reservoirs of vital magic, but a stunning matrix of complex wonders, ultimately explicable in terms of biochemistry and molecular biology. With such knowledge we can see, perhaps for the first time, why a Creator would have allowed our species to be fashioned by the process of evolution.
The American creationist movement has entirely bypassed the scientific forum and has concentrated instead on political lobbying and on taking its case to a fair-minded electorate... The reason for this strategy is overwhelmingly apparent: no scientific case can be made for the theories they advance.
Science is about nature. And God, if he exists, transcends nature.
From Roger Bacon, the 13th century Franciscan who pioneered the scientific method, to George Lemaitre, the 20th century Belgian priest who first developed a mathematical foundation for the 'Big Bang,' people of faith have played a key role in advancing scientific understanding.
We don't regard any scientific theory as the absolute truth
The scientific argument advanced for intelligent design at the Dover trial, those arguments collapsed, scientifically and intellectually
The argument for intelligent design basically depends on saying, 'You haven't answered every question with evolution,'... Well, guess what? Science can't answer every question
Being a Christian, I'm eager to introduce people to Jesus. I just don't think I should do it in the science classroom
Any suggestion that science and religion are incompatible flies in the face of history, logic, and common sense.
No other acoustic instrument can match the piano's expressive range, and no electric instrument can match its mystery.
The piano's world encompasses glass-nerved virtuos and stomping barrel-housers in fedoras; it is a world of pasture and storm, of perfumed smoke, of liquid mathematics.
I am always struck by the fact that human awareness of our place in nature, like so much of modern science, began with the Industrial Revolution.
Whether conservative or liberal, fundamentalist or agnostic, the more students learn of biology, the more they accept evolution.
There is no controversy within science over the core proposition of evolutionary theory.
I wouldn't want the federal government dictating how I use my cameras, every community has their own issues and their own dynamics.
The anti-evolution forces have been searching for a new strategy that would accomplish the same end. That purpose is, if not to get evolution out of the schools altogether, then at least undermine it as much as possible in the minds of students.
Evolution isn't just a take-it-or-leave-it story about where we came from. It's an epic at the centre of life itself. It tells us we are part of nature in every respect.
Once upon a time, growing up male gave little boys a sense of certainty about the natural order of things. We had short hair, wore pants, and played baseball. Girls had long hair, wore skirts, and, no matter how hard they tried, always threw a baseball just like a girl.
For much of history it was possible to believe that the great diversity of life on Earth was a fixed creation, that the living world had never changed. But when the first stirrings of industry demanded that fuel be dug from the earth and hillsides be leveled for roads and railways, the Earths true past was dug up in abundance.
