{"quotes":[{"text":"Human nature has nevertheless been changed by the ever new appearance of these teachers of the purpose of existence: It now has one additional need—the need for the ever new appearance of such teachers and teachings of a “purpose.” Gradually, man has become a fantastic animal that has to fulfill one more condition of existence than any other animal: man has to believe, to know, from time to time why he exists; his race cannot flourish without a periodic trust in life—without faith in reason in life.","author":"Friedrich Nietzsche","tags":["anthropocentrism","meaning","meaning-of-life","self"],"id":6699,"author_id":"Friedrich+Nietzsche"},{"text":"It necessarily follows that chance alone is at the source of every innovation, and of all creation in the biosphere. Pure chance, absolutely free but blind, at the very root of the stupendous edifice of evolution: this central concept of modern biology is no longer one among many other possible or even conceivable hypotheses. It is today the sole conceivable hypothesis, the only one that squares with observed and tested fact. And nothing warrants the supposition - or the hope - that on this score our position is ever likely to be revised. There is no scientific concept, in any of the sciences, more destructive of anthropocentrism than this one.","author":"Jacques Monod","tags":["anthropocentrism","biology","biosphere","central-concept","chance","evidence","fact","facts","hope","hypothesis","innovation","observation","science","tests"],"id":19574,"author_id":"Jacques+Monod"},{"text":"Is any man skillful enough to have fashioned himself?","author":"Augustine of Hippo","tags":["anthropocentrism","artifex","atheism","christianity","church-fathers","converts","theology"],"id":46687,"author_id":"Augustine+of+Hippo"},{"text":"Nobody enjoys the company of others as intensely as someone who usually avoids the company of others.","author":"Mokokoma Mokhonoana","tags":["affable","alone","amicable","anchoress","anchorite","anthropocentric","anthropocentrism","antisocial","approachable","ascetic","by-oneself","chummy","cloistered","clubby","communicative","companionable","companionless","convivial","cordial","eremite","extrovert","forthcoming","friendless","friendly","genial","gregarious","hail-fellow-well-met","hermit","hermitic","incommunicado","introvert","isolate","isolation","lone-wolf","lonely","loner","lonesome","marabout","misanthrope","misanthropy","on-one-s-own","open","outgoing","recluse","reclusive","responsive","seclude","secluded","sociable","solitarian","solitary","solitudinarian","troglodyte","unaccompanied","unsociable","warm","withdrawn"],"id":125070,"author_id":"Mokokoma+Mokhonoana"},{"text":"We owe a huge debt to Galileo for emancipating us all from the stupid belief in an Earth-centered or man-centered (let alone God-centered) system. He quite literally taught us our place and allowed us to go on to make extraordinary advances in knowledge.","author":"Christopher Hitchens","tags":["anthropocentrism","atheism","enlightenment","galileo","geocentricism","god","heliocentricism","nature","reason","religion","science","souls"],"id":174004,"author_id":"Christopher+Hitchens"},{"text":"You all know the argument from design: everything in the world is made just so that we can manage to live in the world, and if the world was ever so little different, we could not manage to live in it. That is the argument from design. It sometimes takes a rather curious form; for instance, it is argued that rabbits have white tails in order to be easy to shoot. I do not know how rabbits would view that application.","author":"Bertrand Russell","tags":["anthropocentrism","design","god","rabbits"],"id":197870,"author_id":"Bertrand+Russell"},{"text":"We human beings regard ourselves as (or compare ourselves to) animals only when it suits us.","author":"Mokokoma Mokhonoana","tags":["animal","animals","anthropocentric","anthropocentrism","aphorism","aphorisms","aphorist","aphorists","barbarian","barbaric","barbarism","barbarous","brutish","civilization","civilize","civilized","compare","compare-to","convenience","convenient","creature","creatures","expedience","expedient","funny","heathen","homo-sapiens","human","human-beings","human-race","humanity","humans","humor","humour","ignorant","joke","jokes","liken","liken-to","neanderthal","people","persons","primitive","religion","satire","savage","species","suit","uncivilized","uncultivated","vulgar","wild"],"id":265085,"author_id":"Mokokoma+Mokhonoana"},{"text":"You cannot be truly humble, unless you truly believe that life can and will go on without you.","author":"Mokokoma Mokhonoana","tags":["adage","adages","anthropocentric","anthropocentrism","aphorism","aphorisms","arrogance","arrogant","axiom","axioms","belief","beliefs","believe","deep","dictum","dictums","epigram","epigrams","gnome","gnomes","humble","humility","humor","humour","importance","important","insightful","life","life-goes-on","made-me-think","make-you-think","maxim","maxims","modest","modesty","profound","proverb","proverbs","provoke-thought","quotation","quotations","quote","quotes","really","satire","satirical","saying","sayings","sincere","sincerely","thought-provoking","thoughtful","truly"],"id":299516,"author_id":"Mokokoma+Mokhonoana"},{"text":"In the discoveries of science the harmony of the spheres is also now the harmony of life. And as the eerie illumination of science penetrates evermore deeply into the order of nature, the cosmos appears increasingly to be a vast system finely tuned to generate life and organisms of biology very similar, perhaps identical, to ourselves. All the evidence available in the biological sciences supports the core proposition of traditional natural theology - that the cosmos is a specially designed whole with life and mankind as a fundamental goal and purpose, a whole in which all facets of reality, from the size of galaxies to the thermal capacity of water, have their meaning and explanation in this central fact.Four centuries after the scientific revolution apparently destroyed irretrievably man's special place in the universe, banished Aristotle, and rendered teleological speculation obsolete, the relentless stream of discovery has turned dramatically in favor of teleology and design, and the doctrine of the microcosm is reborn. As I hope the evidence presented in this book has shown, science, which has been for centuries the great ally of atheism and skepticism, has become at last, in the final days of the second millennium, what Newton and many of its early advocates had so fervently wished - the 'defender of the anthropocentric faith.","author":"Michael Denton","tags":["anthropic-principle","anthropocentrism","fine-tuning","id","intelligent-design","isaac-newton","newton","purpose","science","teleology","theism"],"id":350253,"author_id":"Michael+Denton"},{"text":"Contrary to popular belief, some animals would not have each chosen to be a human being, if they were given the choice between being what they are and being human.","author":"Mokokoma Mokhonoana","tags":["animal","animal-kingdom","animals","anthropocentric","anthropocentrism","bible","creation","creature","creatures","culture","human","human-being","human-beings","humans","people","peoples","person","religion","the-bible"],"id":394572,"author_id":"Mokokoma+Mokhonoana"}],"pagination":{"page":1,"page_size":10,"total":12,"pages":2,"next":"?page=2\u0026page_size=10"}}