"Are you one of those people who dislikes science because of what it does to the "mystery" of the world? Do you think that it somehow dimishes people to try to "explain" their behavior, or that it "takes away the beauty of the rainbow" to talk about light rays passing through water droplets?
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Ask yourself whether it enhances or diminishes your view of (Abraham Lincoln's) achievement when you remember that he was "nothing but" a country-born, self taught lawyer? Does it diminish the achievements of the ancient Egyptians to say that they built (the pyramids) with "nothing but" the crudest of tools and measuring instruments?
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If you look at a rainbow and then someone tells you how it came about, why should you say that "they have ruined it" by turning it into "nothing but" a trick of light and water? Why not say the opposite? Out of the utterly unpromising raw material of drops of water and the laws of refraction has come something so beautiful that it spans the sky and inspires poets to write about it."
- Nothing But or Anything But?
Marian Stamp Dawkins
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