Quote:A far-right writer and activist shot himself dead in front of the altar of Paris’s famed Notre Dame Cathedral on Tuesday, shortly after calling for “spectacular” action to protect France’s identity.
He got the "spectacular" part right, I'll give him that much.
"Well, evolution is a theory. It is also a fact. And facts and theories are different things, not rungs in a hierarchy of increasing certainty. Facts are the world's data. Theories are structures of ideas that explain and interpret facts. Facts don't go away when scientists debate rival theories to explain them. Einstein's theory of gravitation replaced Newton's in this century, but apples didn't suspend themselves in midair, pending the outcome. And humans evolved from ape- like ancestors whether they did so by Darwin's proposed mechanism or by some other yet to be discovered."
-Stephen Jay Gould
-Stephen Jay Gould