Dr. Ervin's Home Page

DR. ERVIN'S HOME PAGE

Professor Emeritus, CSU, Fresno

General Information

I am a retired professor of ornithology and zoology at CSU, Fresno.

Married to Ali for 24 years.

Click Here for Photos of Ali

Four kids: black, white, furry.

I now spend my time gardening and in my greenhouse, reading, modeling trains, and travel.

SCOTTIES

A tribute to Hayley Blackmon.

Official Mascot of Warm Springs, GA.

She crossed the Rainbow Bridge, July 15, 2011, after giving to so many.

I cry for her as much as I cry for my own.

She lost her life to canine cancer as have so many

Scotties including two of mine. I will always remember you Hayley.

Our Girls:

Click on the Thumbnails

AMBER AND HER DAUGHTER MAGGIE

MACKENZIE AND CEILIDH ARRIVED MAY 14, 2011

Click Here for More Photos

Click on Thumbnail

Left to right: MacKenzie, Me, Ceilidh, Amber, Maggie, Ali.

(Click on thumbnail for others)

WALKING AND ROLLING

TRAVEL

Newest: North and South Island of New Zealand, Sept. 2010

Traveltown (Griffith Park) November 2005
The Outer Hebrides (Isle of Lewis) of Scotland July 2005
Northern Scotland August 2005
London, York (National Rail Museum of Britain), Tring (Rothschild Collection of the Natural History Museum) April 2004
Russian River, Calistoga Nov. 2003
London/Down House Spring 2003
London/Edinburgh 2002
London/Paris 2000
England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland 1998
Arizona 1995
Victoria, BC 1994
Costa Rica 1992
Galapagos Islands/Mainland Ecuador 1990
Fiji/Tonga/Samoa 1989
Hawaii 1988
Galapagos Islands 1987
Galapagos Islands 1982-83
Western US, Mexico 1976-1979
Santa Cruz Island, CA 1960's and 70's

Contact Information

Email

stephen.ervin@comcast.net

alice.cover@comcast.net

FAVORITE QUOTES

"No one wants to die, even people who want to go to heaven don't want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because death is very likely the single best invention of life. It is life's change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new."

Steve Jobs (1955-2011)

“Skepticism is the highest duty and blind faith the one unpardonable sin.”

— Thomas Henry Huxley, Essays on Controversial Questions (1889)

“The bible was written at a time when people thought the Earth was flat, when the wheelbarrow was high tech. Are its teachings applicable to the challenges we now face as a civilization?. . .”

Sam Harris (1967-)

"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is those who know little, and not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science."
(Charles Darwin)

"The Church says that the Earth is flat, but I know that it is round. For I have seen the shadow on the moon and I have more faith in the Shadow than in the Church".

(Ferdinand Magellan Circa 1520)

"Those of us who believe in the right of any human being to belong to whatever church he sees fit, and to worship God in his own way, cannot be accused of prejudice when we do not want to see public education connected with religious control of the schools, which are paid for by taxpayers' money."

(Eleanor Roosevelt)

I believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute--where no Catholic prelate would tell the President (should he be Catholic) how to act, and no Protestant minister would tell his parishioners for whom to vote--where no church or church school is granted any public funds or political preference--and where no man is denied public office merely because his religion differs from the President who might appoint him or the people who might elect him.

(John F Kennedy September 12, 1960)

"The known is finite, the unknown infinite; intellectually we stand on an islet in the midst of an illimitable ocean of inexplicability. Our business in every generation is to reclaim a little more land."

(T. H. Huxley, 1887).

"My own view is that it is far better to understand the Universe as it really is than to pretend to a Universe as we might wish it to be"

(Carl Sagan, 1996)

"We can help make the world safe for diversity. For in the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children's future. And we are all mortal."

(John F. Kennedy, June 10, 1963)

Evolution is a vital, well-supported, unifying principle of the biological sciences, and the scientific evidence is overwhelmingly in favor of the idea that all living things share a common ancestry. Although there are legitimate debates about the patterns and processes of evolution, there is no serious scientific doubt that evolution occurred or that natural selection is a major mechanism in its occurrence. It is scientifically inappropriate and pedagogically irresponsible for creationist pseudoscience, including but not limited to "intelligent design," to be introduced into the science curricula of our nation's public schools.

"Both of these world views, God-centered religion and atheistic communism, are opposed by a third and in some ways more radical world view, scientific humanism. Still held by only a tiny minority of the world's population, it considers humanity to be a biological species that evolved over millions of years in a biological world, acquiring unprecedented intelligence yet still guided by complex inherited emotions and biased channels of learning. Human nature exists, and it was self-assembled. Having arisen by evolution during the far simpler conditions in which humanity lived during more than 99 per cent of its existence, it forms the behavioural part of what, in The Descent of Man, Darwin called "the indelible stamp of [our] lowly origin".

So, will science and religion find common ground, or at least agree to divide the fundamentals into mutually exclusive domains? A great many well-meaning scholars believe that such rapprochement is both possible and desirable. A few disagree, and I am one of them. I think Darwin would have held to the same position. The battle line is, as it has ever been, in biology. The inexorable growth of this science continues to widen, not to close, the tectonic gap between science and faithbased religion."

(E. O. Wilson, November 2005)

There are two visions of America. One precedes our founding fathers and finds its roots in the harshness of our puritan past. It is very suspicious of freedom, uncomfortable with diversity, hostile to science, unfriendly to reason, contemptuous of personal autonomy. It sees America as a religious nation. It views patriotism as allegiance to God. It secretly adores coercion and conformity. Despite our constitution, despite the legacy of the Enlightenment, it appeals to millions of Americans and threatens our freedom.

The other vision finds its roots in the spirit of our founding revolution and in the leaders of this nation who embraced the age of reason. It loves freedom, encourages diversity, embraces science and affirms the dignity and rights of every individual. It sees America as a moral nation, neither completely religious nor completely secular. It defines patriotism as love of country and of the people who make it strong. It defends all citizens against unjust coercion and irrational conformity.

This second vision is our vision. It is the vision of a free society. We must be bold enough to proclaim it and strong enough to defend it against all its enemies.

(Rabbi Sherwin Wine)