“Evolution is so creative. That's how we got giraffes.”

— Kurt Vonnegut , book A Man Without a Country

A Man Without a Country (2005)

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Kurt Vonnegut 318

American writer 1922–2007

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Kurt Vonnegut (1922–2007) American writer

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“The giraffe's neck supposedly supplies a crucial example for preferring natural selection over Lamarckism as a cause of evolution. But Darwin himself (however wrongly by later judgement) did not deny the Lamarckian principle of inheritance for characters acquired by use or lost by disuse. He regarded the Lamarckian mechanism as weak, infrequent, and entirely subsidiary to natural selection, but he accepted the validity of evolution by use and disuse. Darwin does speculate about the adaptive advantage of giraffe's necks, but he cites both natural selection and Lamarckism as probable causes of elongation.”

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“Does the giraffe know what he's for? Or care? Or even think about his place in things? A giraffe has a black tongue twenty-seven inches long and no vocal cords. A giraffe has nothing to say. He just goes on giraffing.”

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“A giraffe has a black tongue twenty-seven inches long and no vocal cords. A giraffe has nothing to say. He just goes on giraffing.”

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“How old do I think the earth is? You know what? I don't have any idea. I know it's pretty old, so it goes back a long, long way. I'm not sure anybody actually knows completely and absolutely how long, how old the earth is. I hear your mom was asking about evolution. You know, it's a theory that's out there. It's got some gaps in it, but in Texas we teach both creationism and evolution in our public schools, because I figured you're smart enough to figure out which one is right.”

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“The human brain is evolution’s most magnificent disaster, a beautiful and glorious cesspool of brilliant analytical powers, infinite creativity, and pure madness.”

Guy P. Harrison (1963) American skeptic author

“We don’t need fossils – the case for evolution is watertight without them; so it is paradoxical to use gaps in the fossil record as though they were evidence against evolution”

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“Evolution is so creative. That's how we got giraffes.”

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