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The following are unclassified quotes posted in my email messages of January-March, 2003.
The date format is dd/mm/yy. See copyright conditions at end.
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January
3/01/2003
"Once forged, a major body plan becomes a limiting determinant of body form for descendants of that
ancestral line. Molluscs beget only molluscs and birds beget only birds, nothing else. Despite the
appearance of structural and functional adaptations for distinctive ways of life, the evolution of new forms
always develops within the architectural constraints of the phylum's ancestral pattern. This is why we shall
never see molluscs that fly or birds confined within a protective shell." (Hickman, C.P., Jr, Roberts, L.S. &
Larson, A., "Animal Diversity," [1995], McGraw-Hill: Boston MA, Second Edition, 2000, p.36)
3/01/2003
"A more important argument in the opinion of Darwin himself was the possibility of classifying organisms.
All true classification, he said, is genealogical. Community of descent 'is the hidden bond which naturalists
have been unconsciously seeking.' The arrangement of the groups within each class, 'in due subordination
and relation to the other groups, must be strictly genealogical in order to be natural.' And again, 'the natural
system is genealogical in its arrangement, like a pedigree; but the degrees of modification which the different
groups have undergone have to be expressed by ranking them under so-called different genera, sub-
families, sections, orders, and classes.' What we call the natural system of classification is a proof of
evolution since it can only be explained as a result of evolution. The plausibility of this argument is obvious.
Yet it is not so convincing as it may appear at first sight. On the Darwinian theory, evolution is essentially
undirected, being the result of natural selection, acting on small fortuitous variations. The argument
specifically implies that nothing is exempt from this evolutionary process. Therefore, the last thing we
should expect on Darwinian principles is the persistence of a few common fundamental structural plans. Yet
this is what we find." (Thompson, W.R.*, "Introduction," in Darwin, C.R., "The Origin of Species by Means
of Natural Selection," [1872], Everyman's Library, J.M. Dent & Sons: London, 6th Edition, 1967, reprint,
pp.xvi-xvii)
3/01/2003
"Evolution: At the Core of Molecular Change. The interplay of events played out over billions of years, in
the historical process called evolution, dictates the form and structure of the living world today.
Thus biology, which is the study of the results of these historical events, differs fundamentally from
physics and chemistry, which deal with the essential and unchanging properties of matter. The great
insights of Charles Darwin was that all organisms are related in a great chain of being extending from the
distant past to the present. The Darwinian principle that organisms vary randomly and the fittest are then
selected by the forces of their environment guides biological thinking to this day." (Lodish, H., et al.,
"Molecular Cell Biology," [1986], W.H. Freeman & Co: New York, Fourth Edition, 2002, Fifth Printing, p.3.
Emphasis in original. [The term "natural selection" is not mentioned at all in a 1084 page book on the
actual molecular and cellular machinery level of life!])
4/01/2003
"In fact, as he averred himself on several occasions, Wallace differed from Darwin on various points. ... The
most important topic upon which he differed from Darwin was the evolution of the human mind. Darwin
envisaged a gradual advance in the mental and moral characteristics from the lower mammals over the
primates and 'savages' to civilised man. Wallace, from his logical vantage point, could see that certain
mathematical, musical, artistic and other mental faculties could not possibly have arisen through natural
selection, for the simple reason that, as amply evidenced by history, their possession had at no time been an
asset in the struggle for existence. And therefore he concluded: 'The special faculties we have been
discussing clearly point to the existence in man of something which he has not derived from his animal
progenitors - something which we may best refer to as being of a spiritual essence or nature, capable of
progressive development under favourable conditions.'" (Wallace, A.R., "Darwinism: An Exposition of the
Theory of Natural Selection with Some of its Applications," Macmillan: London, 1890, p.474, in Løvtrup, S.,
"Darwinism: The Refutation of a Myth," Croom Helm: London, 1987, pp.224-225)
4/01/2003
"Wallace said: 'It seems to me that if we once admit the necessity of any action beyond "natural selection"
in developing man, we have no reason whatever for confining that action to his brain. On the mere doctrine
of chances, it seems to me in the highest degree improbable that so many points of structure all tending to
favour his mental development should concur in man, and in man alone of all animals. If the erect posture,
the freedom of the anterior limbs for purposes of locomotion, the powerful and opposable thumb, the naked
skin, and the great symmetry of force, the perfect organs of speech, and his mental faculties, calculation of
numbers, ideas of symmetry, of justice, of abstract reasoning, of the infinite, of a future state, and many
others, cannot be shown to be each and all useful to man in the very lowest state of civilisation, how are we
to explain their coexistence in him alone of the whole series of organized beings?'" (Wallace, A.R., Letter
1869 to Sir Charles Lyell, in "Life, Letters and Journals of Sir Charles Lyell," John Murray: London, 1881, Vol.
2, pp.442-443, in Løvtrup, S., "Darwinism: The Refutation of a Myth," Croom Helm: London, 1987, pp.227-228)
4/01/2003
"Finally, the pervasive pattern of geologic succession is systematically backwards from that predicted by
the theory. Darwinian theory predicts that the gradual accumulation of minor evolutionary change and the
increasing diversity of the lower taxa should ultimately produce the profound differences among the major
body plans and the disparity of the higher taxa. Diversity should precede disparity. Geologic succession
reveals the opposite: disparity precedes diversity. The major themes or body plans appear suddenly in the
history of life only to be followed by variations on these pre-existing themes. The natural history of life on
earth is systematically top to bottom, not bottom to top as Darwinian theory predicts. ...The initial
appearance of virtually all phyla occurs with very low species diversity. The origin of the major body plans
is not the result of the increasing diversity of the lower taxa; the general pattern is not bottom to top. Rather,
the dominant pattern is top to bottom, contrary to theory. As paleontologists Douglas Erwin, James
Valentine, and John Sepkoski describe the situation: `The fossil record suggests that the major pulse of
diversification of phyla occurs before that of classes, classes before that of orders, and orders before
families. This is not to say that each higher taxon originated before species (each phylum, class, or order
contained at least one species, genus, family, etc. upon appearance), but the higher taxa do not seem to
have diverged through an accumulation of lower taxa (Erwin, Valentine, and Sepkoski, 1988). .... If large
populations have gradually evolved there should be unmistakable evidence in the fossil record, yet it is
simply not found. ... many of the large populations should have been preserved, yet we simply do not find
them. Small populations are called for, then, but there are difficulties here also. The populations must remain
small (and undetected) and evolve steadily and consistently toward the body plan that comprises the basis
of a new phylum (or class). This is asking a lot. Deleterious mutations would tend to accumulate in small
populations to form genetic loads that selection might not be able to handle. Stable intermediate adaptive
modes cannot be invoked as a regular feature, since we are then again faced with the problem of just where
their remains are. We might imagine vast arrays of such small populations fanning continually and
incessantly into adaptive space. Vast arrays should have produced at least some fossil remains also.
Perhaps an even greater difficulty is the requirement that these arrays of lineages change along a rather
straight and true course - morphological side trips or detours of any frequency should lengthen the time of
origin of higher taxa beyond what appears to be available. Why should an opportunistic, tinkering process
set on such a course and hold it for so long successfully among so many lineages? We conclude that the
extrapolation of microevolutionary rates to explain the origin of new body plans is possible, but does not
accord with the primary evidence' (Valentine and Erwin, 1985, pp. 95, 96)'." (Battson, A.*, "On the Origin of
Stasis," Access Research Network, Revised, February 9, 1998. http://www.arn.org/docs/abstasis.htm)
5/01/2003
"Let us now turn to the other side of the scales, and the greatest example of liberal vandalism, at the hands
of the most brilliant of the offspring of Descartes and Newton, Charles Darwin. For Marx the world is ruled
by economics and the iron logic of History. For Darwin it is Nature that rules, through the mechanism of
natural selection. Biology replaces theology, and indeed it also replaces the Humanities. Once upon a time it
was God who created the earth and the species that dwell upon it. Now it is evolution which is the creative
agent. Its principle is functional: if it works, it will survive. The existence of things on earth has nothing to
do with either their beauty or their goodness. It has to do simply with their power. It is the strongest within a
given environment which survive. Weakness means extinction. If it is powerful it is good. The new god,
Biology, recognizes only this one quality." (Carroll, J., "Humanism: The Wreck of Western Culture",
Fontana: London, 1993, p.144)
5/01/2003
"Science is not a neutral or innocent commodity which can be employed as a convenience by people
wishing to partake only of the West's material power. Rather it is spiritually corrosive, burning away ancient
authorities and traditions. It cannot really co-exist with anything. Scientists inevitably take on the mantle of
the wizards, sorcerers and witch-doctors. Their miracle cures are our spells, their experiments our rituals. ...
For, as I said, science cannot co-exist. This is not just true when it is being exported from one nation to
another, but also when it competes with other systems within a single nation. The science-based liberal
democracies, therefore, tend towards a unity of unbelief." (Appleyard, B., "Understanding the Present:
Science and the Soul of Modern Man," Picador: London, 1992, pp.9-10)
6/01/2003
"I note that Luther, although he believed in a recent creation, did not take this passage [Romans 8:19-22] to
imply a re-creation of the universe at the Fall. Instead, in his commentary on Romans 8:20, he states that the
`vanity' of the created order comes entirely from the change in man's attitude toward these things: `For all
that God made "was very good" (Genesis 1:31) and is good to this day, as the apostle says in 1 Timothy 4,
"Every creature of God is good," and in Titus 1:15, "To the pure all things are pure." It therefore becomes
vain, evil and noxious, etc., without its fault and from the outside, namely, in this way: because man does
not judge and evaluate it rightly and because he enjoys it in a wrong way.... It is to this vanity, therefore (i.e.
to this wrong enjoyment), that the creature is subjected.' (Luther M., "Lectures on Romans," W. Pauck,
trans., Westminster Press: Philadelphia PA, 1961). Luther clearly affirms here that even today all created
things are `very good' in and of themselves, including carnivorous beasts. This is a far cry from the view
that every dangerous animal and even the Second Law of thermodynamics is a warped, `bad' version of an
earlier goodness. As Luther notes, 1 Timothy 4:4 says that the pronouncement by God of all things as
`good' is still true; never in Scripture does God revoke this pronouncement." (Snoke, D.W.*, "A Biblical
Case for an Old Earth," Interdisciplinary Biblical Research Institute: Hatfield PA, 1998, p.38)
7/01/2003
"Hitler and Stalin between them murdered more innocent victims than had died in all the religious wars in
mankind's history. They murdered these victims not with the misguided intentions of saving their souls or
punishing their sins, but because they were competitors for food and obstacles to `evolutionary progress.'
Many humanitarians, Christian, Jewish, or agnostic, have understood the relationship between Nietzsche's
ideas and Hitler's mass murder teams and crematoria. Few have traced the linkage back one step further to
Darwin, the `scientist' who directly inspired Nietzsche's superman theory and the Nazi corollary that some
people were subhuman. The evidence was all there-the term neo-Darwinism was openly used to describe
Nazi racial theories. The expression `natural selection,' as applied to human beings, turns up at the Wannsee
Conference in the prime document of the Holocaust." (Koster, J.P.*, "The Atheist Syndrome," Wolgemuth
& Hyatt: Brentwood TN, 1989, p.187)
8/01/2003
"Luther Burbank who, though no theoretician, was the most competent breeder of all time, looked at this
problem. He eloquently endorsed the limited charter: `There is a law ... of the Reversion to the Average. I
know from my experience that I can develop a plum half an inch long or one 2 1/2 inches long, with every
possible length in between, but I am willing to admit that it is hopeless to try to get a plum the size of a small
pea, or one as big as a grapefruit. I have daisies on my farms little larger than my fingernail and some that
measure six inches across, but I have none as big as a sunflower, and never expect to have. I have roses that
bloom pretty steadily for six months in the year, but I have none that will bloom twelve, and I will not have.
In short, there are limits to the development possible, and these limits follow a law. But what law, and why?
It is the law that I have referred to above. Experiments carried on extensively have given us scientific proof
of what we had already guessed by observation; namely, that plants and animals all tend to revert, in
successive generations, toward a given mean or average. Men grow to be seven feet tall, and over, but
never to ten; there are dwarfs not higher than 24 inches, but none that you can carry in your hand. ... In
short, there is undoubtedly a pull toward the mean which keeps all living things within some more or less
fixed limitations." (Burbank, L., in Hall, W., ed., "Partner of Nature," Appleton-Century, 1939, pp.98-99, in
Macbeth, N., "Darwin Retried: An Appeal to Reason," Gambit: Boston MA, 1971, p.36. Ellipses Macbeth's)
8/01/2003
"All through the earlier portion of the nineteenth century, and indeed the latter portion of the eighteenth
century as well, evolutionists had had recourse to domesticated animals and plants as suggesting the
mutability of biological form. Special creationists, even, had had to recognize a certain degree of plasticity in
life whether wild or tame, but they had regarded this plasticity as being confined and demarcated. ... The
evolutionists, by contrast, had insisted that the species barrier was an illusion, that given time and
opportunity the species, in Wallace's convenient phrase, would `depart indefinitely' from its original
appearance. ... Darwin used the whole process of artificial selection from which to develop, by analogy, his
principle of natural selection. ... We come now, however, to a peculiar fact. It would appear that careful
domestic breeding, whatever it may do to improve the quality of race horses and cabbages, is not actually in
itself the road to the endless biological deviation which is evolution. There is great irony in this situation,
for more than almost any other single factor, domestic breeding had been used as an argument for the reality
of evolution. Its significance, however, is some what deceptive and capable of misinterpretation." (Eiseley,
L.C., "Darwin's Century: Evolution and the Men Who Discovered It," [1958], Anchor Books: Doubleday &
Co: Garden City NY, 1961, reprint, p.221-223. Ellipses mine)
8/01/2003
"Here, as everywhere else, Darwin proceeds on the analogy between the work of the plant-and-animal
breeder and the work of nature. The breeder selects the variations he wants, breeds only from them, and
destroys the rest. So natural selection, personified as `the paramount power", `preserves' beneficial
variations and ` rigorously destroys' those even slightly injurious, and so on. But `selection' is only a
metaphor transferred from the conscious, purposive activity of the human breeder to the unconscious,
purposeless activity of nature. It would be less misleading to describe nature's process as a sort of sieve
which automatically sorts out the different constituents in a mixture. It does not justify Darwin's
terminology. It does not justify the title of his chief work: The Origin of Species by Means of Natural
Selection or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life. There are no favoured races and no
selection. These phrases belong to the vocabulary of conscious design, which is precisely what Darwin
wishes to exclude." (Farrington, B., "What Darwin Really Said," Macdonald: London, 1966, pp.99-100)
9/01/2003
"Evolutionary biologists have failed to realize that they work with two more or less incommensurable
domains: that of information and that of matter. ... These two domains will never be brought together in any
kind of the sense usually implied by the term `reductionism.' You can speak of galaxies and particles of dust
in the same terms, because they both have mass and charge and length and width. You can't do that with
information and matter. Information doesn't have mass or charge or length in millimeters. Likewise, matter
doesn't have bytes. You can't measure so much gold in so many bytes. It doesn't have redundancy, or
fidelity, or any of the other descriptors we apply to information. This dearth of shared descriptors makes
matter and information two separate domains of existence, which have to be discussed separately, in their
own terms. The gene is a package of information, not an object. The pattern of base pairs in a DNA molecule
specifies the gene. But the DNA molecule is the medium, it's not the message. Maintaining this distinction
between the medium and the message is absolutely indispensable to clarity of thought about evolution."
(Williams, G.C., "A Package of Information," in Brockman, J., "The Third Culture," [1995], Touchstone: New
York, Reprinted, 1996, p.43. http://www.edge.org/documents/ThirdCulture/h-Ch.1.html)
9/01/2003
"B[rain]: You honestly believe that it was you who made me - and that it was not the other way
round?
M: Is that not self-evident to you?
B: `In the beginning was the Word - the logos - and the Word was made flesh' - you really
believe that?
M: How else could it be? You yourself called me your inventor and master, and kept blaming me for
your blemishes.
B: That was just to stop you asking me silly questions.
M: So you believe that the flesh was first and the Word came later?
B: It stands to reason. You did not create me. I created you. I wish I hadn't.
M: I would be interested to know how you achieved this remarkable feat.
B: It was quite unintentional, believe me. You are a kind of side effect, an epiphenomenon, as we call
it, the hot fumes given out by my chemical reactions. I get a headache whenever you breathe into my
nostrils.
M: If I did not create you, how do you think you came into being?
B: It stands to reason. By pure chance, or accident, or rather a series of accidents.
M: A remarkable theory. In the beginning was the Accident, and the Accident was made Flesh."
(Koestler, A., "An Intimate Dialogue," in "Kaleidoscope: Essays from Drinkers of Infinity, and
The Heel of Achilles
and Later Pieces and Stories," The Danube Edition, Hutchinson: London, 1981, pp.359-360)
9/01/2003
"Evolution is to the social sciences as statues are to birds: a convenient platform upon which to deposit
badly digested ideas. Humans are, of course, constrained by biological history, as pigs are limited in the
ability to fly by their ancestors' lack of wings. We are all branches on a common tree and share descent with
primates and, for that matter, with pigs. Biology tells us that we evolved, but when it comes to what makes
us human is largely beside the point. There might be inborn drives for rape or for greed, but Homo
sapiens, unique among animals, need not defer to them. This has not stopped those unable to explain
society by other means from pressing evolution into service. Darwinism has been debased since it began by
those who use it to support their own creed. It was not the first (and will probably not be the last) science to
be abused for political ends. (Jones, S., "Almost Like a Whale: The Origin of Species Updated," Doubleday:
London, 1999, pp.xxvii-xxviii)
9/01/2003
"Leibniz's argument ... transformed into what is called the argument from design. This argument contends
that, on a survey of the known world, we find things which cannot plausibly be explained as the product of
blind natural forces, but are much more reasonably to be regarded as evidences of a beneficent purpose.
This argument has no formal logical defect; its premisses are empirical, and its conclusion professes to be
reached in accordance with the usual canons of empirical inference. The question whether it is to be
accepted or not turns, therefore, not on general metaphysical questions, but on comparatively detailed
considerations. ... One of the most characteristic features of that philosophy is the doctrine of many
possible worlds. A world is 'possible' if it does not contradict the laws of logic. There are an infinite number
of possible worlds, all of which God contemplated before creating the actual world. Being good, God
decided to create the best of the possible worlds, and He considered that one to be the best which had the
greatest excess of good over evil. He could have created a world containing no evil, but it would not have
been so good as the actual world. That is because some great goods are logically bound up with certain
evils. ... Free will is a great good, but it was logically impossible for God bestow free will and at the same time
decree that there should no sin. God therefore decided to make man free, although he foresaw that Adam
would eat the apple, and although sin inevitability brought punishment. The world that resulted, although it
contains evil, has a greater surplus of good over evil than any other possible world, it is therefore the best
of all possible worlds, and the evil that it contains affords no argument against the goodness of God."
(Russell, B., "History of Western Philosophy," [1946], George Allen & Unwin: London, Second Edition, 1991,
reprint, 1993, pp.570-571)
10/01/2003
"Finally, we have the sudden appearance of groups of allied species in the lowest known fossiliferous
strata. This situation is a special case of the last, and one admitted by Darwin to be a serious difficulty for
his theory. From the beginning of the Cambrian up through the rest of the geological sequence we have an
abundant representation of animal life at every stage. even in Lower Cambrian formations marine
invertebrates are numerous and varied. Below this, there are vast thicknesses of sediments in which the
progenitors of the Cambrian forms would be expected. But we do not find them; these older beds are almost
barren of evidence of life, and the general picture is reasonably consistent with the idea of a special creation
at the beginning of Cambrian times." (Romer, A.S., "Darwin and the Fossil Record," in Barnett S.A., ed., "A
Century of Darwin," [1958], Mercury Books: London, 1962, p.148)
11/01/2003
"The modern scientific view of the universe can be described as naturalistic, using an adjective that has
its historical roots far back in philosophy, explaining all phenomena by strictly natural processes-as distinct
from explanations invoking supernatural forces. I could have just as easily used mechanistic as the
adjective, but that is a harsh word, suggesting the actions of a machine and the work of an inventor.
Another choice would have been materialistic, but for most persons that adjective carries a negative
association in terms of moral and religious values. The naturalistic view is that the particular universe we
observe came into existence and has operated through all time and in all its parts without the impetus or
guidance of any supernatural agency. The naturalistic view is espoused by science as its fundamental
assumption." (Strahler, A.N., "Understanding Science: An Introduction to Concepts and Issues,"
Prometheus Books: Buffalo NY, 1992, p.3. Emphasis original)
11/01/2003
"Christian theology had an answer for every question about the physical universe: it was created by God,
along with the natural laws that sustain it and govern all change. An omniscient and omnipotent God, acting
with a divine purpose, designed everything that is or has been. ... investigation and description of nature
was permitted and even encouraged to disclose the marvelous works of God, and in so doing, to glorify His
name. Under the name of `natural theology,' this license to seek new knowledge of nature was precisely
what was needed to permit a resurgence of science, budding during the Renaissance of learning in the
fourteenth and fifteenth centuries and blossoming in the scientific revolution of the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries. ... Theologians actually encouraged the pursuit of natural theology in the belief that
it would assist in revealing the true nature of true nature of God ... They took their warrant from the Apostle
Paul, who wrote that God has shown himself to humans through the creation of the world, being understood
by the things that are made" (Romans 1:20)." (Strahler, A.N., "Understanding Science: An Introduction to
Concepts and Issues," Prometheus Books: Buffalo NY, 1992, pp.3-4)
12/01/2003
"August Comte argued a century and a half ago that science could give us the 'positive' knowledge which
would allow us to displace the earlier more primitive and mythological attempts of religion and metaphysics
to provide systems of thought for coping with experience. ... Rather, I want to suggest that far from having
displaced mythology in our world, science itself has become a mythology, perhaps the prevailing mythology
of our time." (O'Hear, A., "Introduction to the Philosophy of Science," Clarendon Press: Oxford UK, 1989,
pp.202-203)
13/01/2003
"It is the consequences of Darwin that are grave. He joins the mockers with his reduction of man to a
plaything of Nature. Within evolution man is merely a passing part of a continuum between the amoeba and
some futuristic mutation. His ancestor is neither Adam nor Brutus, but the monkey. As much as Marx
profaned his own Jewish ancestors, Darwin went further, laughing at mankind and its veneration of the past,
saying if you really want to know where you come from, go to the zoo, and study that parody of yourself,
the great ape. He is your true father. Darwin's mockery is the more devastating in that it is not grounded on
personal prejudice, nor on a bogus science like dialectical materialism, but on the most powerful and
enduring theory produced by modern Reason, one which millions of subsequent studies and experiments
have only strengthened. It is a simple theory too." (Carroll, J., "Humanism: The Wreck of Western Culture",
Fontana: London, 1993, p.145)
13/01/2003
"Several writers have misapprehended or objected to the term Natural Selection. Some have even imagined
that natural selection induces variability, whereas it implies only the preservation of such variations as arise
and are beneficial to the being under its conditions of life. No one objects to agriculturists speaking of the
potent effects of man's selection; and in this case the individual differences given by nature, which man for
some object selects, must of necessity first occur. Others have objected that the term selection implies
conscious choice in the animals which become modified; and it has even been urged that, as plants have no
volition, natural selection is not applicable to them! In the literal sense of the word, no doubt, natural
selection is a false term ..." (Darwin, C.R., "The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection," [1872],
Everyman's Library, J.M. Dent & Sons: London, 6th Edition, 1928, reprint, p.81)
13/01/2003
"How has adaptation been brought about? Modern science must rule out special creation or divine
guidance. It cannot well avoid frowning upon entelechies and purposive vital urges ... Modern biology,
taken by and large, also repudiates lamarckism. ... Most biologists also look askance at orthogenesis ... This
is too much akin to vitalism and mysticism for their liking ... There remains natural selection." (Huxley J.S.,
"Evolution: The Modern Synthesis," [1942], George Allen & Unwin: London, 1945, reprint, pp.457-458, 465-
466)
13/01/2003
"Language is obviously as different from other animals' communication systems as the elephant's trunk is
different from other animals' nostrils. Nonhuman communication systems are based on one of three designs:
a finite repertory of calls ..., a continuous analog signal that registers the magnitude of some state ... or a
series of random variations on a theme .... As we have seen, human language has a very different design.
The discrete combinatorial system called `grammar' makes human language infinite ..., digital ..., and
compositional ... "Even the seat of human language in the brain is special. The vocal calls of primates are
controlled not by their cerebral cortex but by phylogenetically older neural structures in the brain stem and
limbic system ... Human vocalizations other than language, like sobbing, laughing, moaning, and shouting in
pain, are also controlled subcortically. ... Genuine language ... is seated in the cerebral cortex ..." (Pinker, S.,
"The Language Instinct: The New Science of Language and Mind," [1994], Penguin: London, 2000, reprint,
pp.365-366)
14/01/2003
"At the conclusion of his book A Brief History of Time, Stephen Hawking discusses the possibility of an
end to physics. This end would be a complete theory which unified all of space and time - a Theory of
Everything. ... 'Then,' Hawking writes, 'we shall all, philosophers, scientists, and just ordinary people, be able
to take part in the discussion of why it is that we and the universe exist. If we find the answer to that, it
would be the ultimate triumph of human reason - for then we should know the mind of God.' Hawking's tone
and his conception of the significance of his work are typical of a certain way of presenting science. Almost
all popularizers of science - notably, in recent years, Jacob Bronowski and Carl Sagan - say the same kind of
things. They say that science is a spectacle of majestic progression, that, in spite of its apparent obscurity,
it is a natural and inevitable product of the human imagination, it has fundamental human significance and it
is ultimately capable of answering every question. God is often evoked. Sagan in his introduction to
Hawking's book says: 'This is also a book about God ... or perhaps about the absence of God. The word God
fills these pages." Bringing God into the equations suggests both the importance and virtue of the scientific
enterprise - this, we are being told, is a continuation of the ancient religious quest to find Him and to do His
will." (Appleyard, B., "Understanding the Present: Science and the Soul of Modern Man," Picador: London,
1992, pp.1-2)
14/01/2003
"The message is that science is the human project. It is what we are intended to do. It is the only
adventure. Bronowski, in particular, presents science as that which has always made us distinctively human.
Science and technology accompany all human societies and distinguish us from the beasts. They are
continuous throughout history: relativity and microwave ovens are clearly the descendants of the first
plough or the first wheel; they spring from the same impulse, the same inspiration. Most persuasive of all,
ploughs and microwaves are unique in the known universe in that they are fashioned by reason. This is
propaganda, dangerously seductive propaganda. It is all misleading, even offensive, to the lives we actually
lead. We are diminished by this rhetoric. It is the rhetoric of what is sometimes called 'scientism' - the belief
that science is or can be the complete and only explanation. An important part of any case is that, whether
we or more modest scientists like it or not, science possesses an intrinsically domineering quality. This kind
of triumphant scientism is built into all science. Opposition tends to be subdued and demoralized to the
point where we can no longer identify the damage done by these popularizers." (Appleyard, B.,
"Understanding the Present: Science and the Soul of Modern Man," Picador: London, 1992, p.2. Emphasis in
original)
15/01/2003
"As Dr. Kaplan has explained, the immediate cause of this conference is a pretty widespread sense of
dissatisfaction about what has come to be thought of as the accepted evolutionary theory in the English-
speaking world, the so-called neo-Darwinian Theory. ... These objections to current neo-Darwinian theory
are very widely held among biologists generally; and we must on no account, I think, make light-of them.
The very fact that we are having this conference is evidence that we are not making light of them."
(Medawar, P.B., "Remarks by the Chairman," in Moorhead, P.S. & Kaplan, M.M., ed., "Mathematical
Challenges to the Neo-Darwinian Interpretation of Evolution: A Symposium Held at the Wistar Institute of
Anatomy and Biology, April 25 And 26, 1966," The Wistar Institute Symposium Monograph Number 5, The
Wistar Institute Press: Philadelphia PA, 1967, p.xi)
15/01/2003
"One of the most significant scientific developments within twentieth-century physics is the emergence of
irreducibly probabilistic laws-laws describing events whose occurrence is not the result of any deterministic
processes. According to contemporary physics, on the quantum level there are gaps not just in our
knowledge of causation but in the very causal fabric of the cosmos itself. ... those gaps provide space for
intervention that would still be wholly within the boundaries of natural law. ... Suppose that whether or not
some mutation arises depends on whether or not some radioactive atom incorporated into some organism's
DNA decays at a specific moment. And suppose that the mutation is essential to the next step in the
evolution of the species in question. The atom's decaying and not decaying are both consistent with
physical law. Thus, were God deliberately to intervene and decree the decay of the atom for the very
purpose of triggering the next evolutionary step, that purposeful intervention would be an instance of
divine guiding intervention and also would involve no violation or suspension of any law of nature."
(Ratzsch, D.L.*, "The Battle of Beginnings: Why Neither Side is Winning the Creation-Evolution Debate,"
InterVarsity Press: Downers Grove IL, 1996, pp.186-187)
16/01/2003
"It is therefore inaccurate to define a miracle as something that breaks the laws of Nature. It doesn't. If I
knock out my pipe I alter the position of a great many atoms: in the long run, and to an infinitesimal degree,
of all the atoms there are. Nature digests or assimilates this event with perfect ease and harmonises it in a
twinkling with all other events. It is one more bit of raw material for the laws to apply to and they apply. I
have simply thrown one event into the general cataract of events and it finds itself at home there and
conforms to all other events. If God annihilates or creates or deflects a unit of matter He has created a new
situation at that point. Immediately all Nature domiciles this new situation, makes it at home in her realm,
adapts all other events to it. It finds itself conforming to all the laws. If God creates a miraculous
spermatozoon in the body of a virgin, it does not proceed to break any laws. The laws at once take it over.
Nature is ready. Pregnancy follows, according to all the normal laws, and nine months later a child is born.
We see every day that physical nature is not in the least incommoded by the daily inrush of events from
biological nature or from psychological nature. If events ever come from beyond Nature altogether, she will
be no more incommoded by them. Be sure she will rush to the point where she is invaded, as the defensive
forces rush to a cut in our finger, and there hasten to accommodate the newcomer. The moment it enters her
realm it obeys all her laws. Miraculous wine will intoxicate, miraculous conception will lead to pregnancy,
inspired books will suffer all the ordinary processes of textual corruption, miraculous bread win be digested.
The divine art of miracle is not an art of suspending the pattern to which events conform but of feeding new
events into that pattern. It does not violate the law's proviso, `If A, then B ': it says, `But this time instead
of A, A2,' and Nature, speaking through all her laws, replies, `Then B2' and naturalises the immigrant, as
she well knows how. She is an accomplished hostess." (Lewis, C.S.*, "Miracles: A Preliminary Study," [1947],
Fontana: London, 1960, Revised edition, Reprinted, 1963, pp.63-64)
16/01/2003
"In this book I explore a variant of panspermia which Leslie Orgel and I suggested a few years ago. To avoid
damage, the microorganisms are supposed to have traveled in the head of an unmanned spaceship sent to
earth by a higher civilization which had developed elsewhere some billions of years ago. The spaceship was
unmanned so that its range would be as great as possible. Life started here when these organisms were
dropped into the primitive ocean and began to multiply. We called our idea Directed Panspermia, and
published it quietly in Icarus, a space journal edited by Carl Sagan (Crick, F. & Orgel, L., "Directed
Panspermia," Icarus, Vol. 19, 1973, pp.341-346). It is not entirely new. J.B.S. Haldane had made a passing
reference to it as early as 1954 and others have considered it since then, though not in as much detail as we
did." (Crick, F.H.C., "Life Itself: Its Origin and Nature," Simon & Schuster: New York NY, 1981, p.16)
16/01/2003
"Then, there are philosophical or methodological objections to evolutionary theory. They have been very
well voiced by Professor Karl Popper - that the current neo-Darwinian Theory has the methodological defect
of explaining too much. It is too difficult to imagine or envisage an evolutionary episode which could not be
explained by the formulae of neo-Darwinism." (Medawar, P.B., "Remarks by the Chairman," in Moorhead, P.S.
& Kaplan, M.M., ed., "Mathematical Challenges to the Neo-Darwinian Interpretation of Evolution: A
Symposium Held at the Wistar Institute of Anatomy and Biology, April 25 And 26, 1966," The Wistar
Institute Symposium Monograph Number 5, The Wistar Institute Press: Philadelphia PA, 1967, p.xi)
17/01/2003
"Hopping around their web world, one quickly gets the impression that there are two basic types of atheist.
The first is the sincere, scholarly atheist, the type who walked away from the Unitarians when they got too
evangelical. The Maine Atheists Union typifies this bunch. They want to `think freely' and `live free,' and
one of their main precepts reads: `Nobody has all of the answers and nobody ever will. Take the time to get
as close as possible to the truth.' The other group is like Orwell's embittered specimen from `Down and Out
in Paris and London,' `the sort of atheist who does not so much disbelieve in God as personally dislike Him.'
These shrill types can be found in places like MSN's God is a Lie! chat community and, of all places, high
school. ... What do they all have in common? For one thing, a preoccupation with Christianity. Look around
the precincts of atheism and you'll see lots of slogans like `The Religious Right is neither,' but you'll never
see `Taoism is for dummies.' Or, for that matter, much anti-Judaism or anti-Islam sentiment ..." (Last, J.V.,
"You Gotta (Dis)Believe," Weekly Standard, 30 July 2002)
17/01/2003
"Concepts such as natural selection by the survival of the fittest are tautologous; that is, they simply
restate the fact that only the properties of organisms which survive to produce offspring, or to produce
more offspring than their cohorts, will appear in succeeding generations." (Eden, M., "Inadequacies of Neo-
Darwinian Evolution as a Scientific Theory," in Moorhead, P.S. & Kaplan, M.M., ed., "Mathematical
Challenges to the Neo-Darwinian Interpretation of Evolution: A Symposium Held at the Wistar Institute of
Anatomy and Biology, April 25 And 26, 1966," The Wistar Institute Symposium Monograph Number 5, The
Wistar Institute Press: Philadelphia PA, 1967, p.5)
19/01/2003
"Tradition holds that Charles Darwin glimpsed the signature of natural selection quite early in his career,
after observing the finches of the Galapagos Islands. He visited these teeming shores of the tropical East
Pacific in 1835, during his famous circumnavigation of the globe. One passage in his Journal of Researches
into the Geology and Natural History of the Various Countries Visited by H.M.S. Beagle (a work usually
published under the more compact title The Voyage of the Beagle) describes his reaction to the markedly
different beaks of the six species of Galapagos ground finches: `Seeing this gradation and diversity of
structure in one small, intimately related group of birds, one might really fancy that from an original paucity
of birds in this archipelago, one species had been taken and modified for different ends.' A woodcut
showing four finch heads in profile appears next to this statement, further suggesting that these birds were
key to the development of Darwin's ideas about biological evolution. But as Frank Sulloway of Harvard
University has shown, the familiar story of `Darwin's finches' that many people learned in school is mostly
just that-a story. In actuality Darwin gathered few examples of these supposedly crucial birds. He failed to
recognize the importance of the specimens that he did collect and neglected to so much as tag each one with
the name of the island from which it came. Indeed, Darwin did not even realize that some of these birds were
finches until six years later, when John Gould, an eminent British ornithologist, set him straight. One reads
gushing descriptions in The Voyage of the Beagle only because Darwin revised the text of his journal in
1845 to reflect what he had pieced together in the intervening years. His original account says very little
about the finches, reflecting the minimal attention he paid to these birds when he first saw them."
(Sanderson, J.G., "Testing Ecological Patterns," American Scientist, Vol. 88, No. 4, pp.332-339, July-August
2000, p.332)
19/01/2003
"The features that make the Earth uniquely suitable for the development of life are perhaps most
dramatically demonstrated by comparing the Earth with our twin planet, Venus. In contrast to our oceans,
lakes and rivers, there is only a trace of water in the atmosphere of Venus. While this atmosphere consists
mainly of carbon dioxide, on the Earth carbon dioxide is mostly locked up in lime stones. On the surface of
the Earth, the growth of great continental land masses allows for the development of mountains, broad
plains, extensive forests, sweeping savannas and major rivers. Large short-lived lakes appear following
episodes of continental glaciation. Continental drift provides many changing patterns, such as shifting
climatic zones, formation and destruction of mountain ranges, and extensive shallow seas as continental
shelves are flooded. All these produce a multitude of stimulating environments for land-based life. If the
continental crust had not provided the setting for the development of this diversity, evolution, restricted to
small islands, would have taken a different course." (Taylor ,S.R., "Destiny or Chance: Our Solar System and
its Place in the Cosmos," [1998], Cambridge University Press: Cambridge UK, 2000, reprint, p.184)
19/01/2003
"The principal difference in the surface conditions on Earth and Venus appears to be related to the presence
of abundant water on the Earth's surface. The operation of plate tectonics, continental drift and the
formation of the continents themselves is mostly due to the presence of water. The Earth is thus a very
dynamic planet. On the dry surface of Venus, as on Mars, Mercury and the Moon, plate tectonics does not
occur, and barren basaltic plains, pocked with craters like a Great War battlefield, are the common landscape.
So the surfaces of the other planets constitute a NoMan's-Land of planetary proportions, which is as
equally unfriendly to life as was the Western Front. The Earth is about the right distance from the Sun to
make this an agreeable and habitable planet. This question is often referred as the Goldilocks problem after
the girl in the fable who tasted the porridge of the three bears. Venus is too hot, Mars is too cold, but the
Earth, like Baby Bear's porridge, is just right. This, however, is a bit simplistic, since much more than
distance is involved. The surface temperature of the Earth that we find so agreeable, is maintained by a
'greenhouse' effect, which traps heat. Without water and carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, the surface
temperature would average 18 degrees below zero Centigrade, and the world would resemble Siberia in the
depths of winter. Venus is too hot mainly because of the 'greenhouse' effect of its thick atmosphere of
carbon dioxide, not because it is so much closer to the Sun. Were it not for the greenhouse effect that traps
the heat, the surface of that roasted planet would be below freezing. Its clouds reflect so much of the energy
coming from the Sun that Venus absorbs only a little more solar radiation than Mars. Even the thin
atmosphere of Mars adds a few degrees to the surface temperature of that frozen desert. The width of the
zone around the Sun in which a habitable planet can reside in our solar system is quite narrow. Various
estimates range from about a tenth of an AU to about half an AU around the orbit of the Earth. But making a
habitable planet depends on a complex set of factors, of which distance from the Sun is only one. The
amount and composition of the atmosphere and the nature of the cloud cover are critical. So it's not just a
matter of getting an earth-sized planet at the right distance from a star. A host of other factors are involved."
(Taylor, S.R., "Destiny or Chance: Our Solar System and its Place in the Cosmos," [1998], Cambridge
University Press: Cambridge UK, 2000, reprint, p.185)
20/01/2003
"Socrates, Sartre and Hume can be rendered consonant with Darwin. Kant, and most religious orthodoxies,
cannot. But common sense is still largely religious and Kantian. The notion of an inbuilt and infallible
conscience, which only a non-banal form of evil - a diabolical will - could ignore, is still pretty central to most
Westerners' ideas of man and the universe. So is the notion that observation, experimentation and clear,
precise, "logical" thinking will, sooner or later, lead us to what Kuhn calls "one full, objective, true account
of nature." As Kuhn points out, however, such a notion, too, is hard to reconcile with Darwin. The idea that
one species of organism is, unlike all the others, oriented not just toward its own increased prosperity but
toward Truth, is as un-Darwinian as the idea that every human being has a built-in moral compass - a
conscience that swings free of both social history and individual luck." (Rorty, R., "Untruth and
Consequences," review of "Killing Time: The Autobiography of Paul Feyerabend," University of Chicago
Press, in The New Republic, July 31, 1995, pp.32-36, p.35)
21/01/2003
"Job, for example, saw species as created imperfectly by a sovereign God. [Job 39:13-17: `The wings of the
ostrich flap joyfully, but they cannot compare with the pinions and feathers of the stork. She lays her eggs
on the ground and lets them warm in the sand, unmindful that a foot may crush them, that some wild animal
may trample them. She treats her young harshly, as if they were not hers; she cares not that her labor was in
vain, for God did not endow her with wisdom or give her a share of good sense.']" (Hunter, C.G.*, "Darwin's
God Evolution and the Problem of Evil," Brazos Press: Grand Rapids MI, 2001, pp.93, 183n)
22/01/2003
"It has sometimes been said that the success of the Origin proved `that the subject was in the air,' or `that
men's minds were prepared for it.' I do not think that this is strictly true, for I occasionally sounded not a few
naturalists, and never happened to come across a single one who seemed to doubt about the permanence of
species." (Darwin, C.R., in Barlow, N., ed., "The Autobiography of Charles Darwin, 1809-1882: With Original
Omissions Restored," [1958], W.W. Norton & Co: New York NY, 1969, reprint, pp.123-124)
23/01/2003
"According to anthropologist Loren Eiseley, Darwin appropriated the work of Edward Blyth, a little-known
British zoologist who wrote on natural selection and evolution in two papers published in 1835 and 1837.
Eiseley points to similarities in phrasing, the use of rare words, and the choice of examples. While Darwin in
his opus quotes Blyth on a few points, notes Eiseley, he does not cite the papers that deal directly with
natural selection, even though it is clear he read them. The thesis has been disputed by paleontologist
Stephen J. Gould. But Eiseley is not the only critic of Darwin's acknowledgment practices. He was accused
by a contemporary, the acerbic man of letters Samuel Butler, of passing over in silence those who had
developed similar ideas. Indeed, when Darwin's On the Origin of Species first appeared in 1859, he
made little mention of predecessors. Later, in an 1861 "historical sketch" added to the third edition of the
Origin, he delineated some of the previous work, but still gave few details. Under continued attack, he added
to the historical sketch in three subsequent editions. It was still not enough to satisfy all his critics. In 1879,
Butler published a book entitled Evolution Old and New in which he accused Darwin of slighting the
evolutionary speculations of Buffon, Lamarck, and Darwin's own grandfather Erasmus." (Broad, W. & Wade,
N., "Betrayers of the Truth: Fraud and Deceit in the Halls of Science," Simon and Schuster: New York NY,
1982, pp.30-31)
23/01/2003
"Darwin's theory of evolution dealt only with the laws governing the ongoing operation of the organic
world; he had expunged the question of origins from his theory, which in its developed form said nothing
about the origin of life or of matter and energy and the universe. Consequently, his theory could not be
affected either favorably or adversely by the introduction of a supernatural Creator as First Cause. On the
other hand, the idea of either a Planful or an Intervening Providence taking part in the day-to-day operations
of the universe was in effect a competing theory. If one believed that there was a God who had originally
designed the world exactly as it has come to be, the theory of evolution through natural selection could be
seen as superfluous. Likewise, if one believed in a God who intervened from time to time to create some of
the organisms, organs, or functions found in the living world, Darwin's theory could be seen as superfluous.
Any introduction of intelligent planning or decision-making reduces natural selection from the position of a
necessary and universal principle to a mere possibility." (Gruber, H.E., "Darwin on Man: A Psychological
Study of Scientific Creativity," together with Barrett, P.H., "Darwin's Early and Unpublished
Notebooks," Wildwood House: London, 1974, p.211)
23/01/2003
"As Claude Levi-Strauss pointed out with obvious satisfaction, the accounts that science ultimately resorts
to are as removed from common sense as the products of mythological thought. When we think about the
origin of life, we have to accept that, over the course of some eight or nine hundred million years, thousands
of events, each highly improbable, followed one after the other to permit the transformation of an earth
without life to life in an RNA world, and then to life in a DNA world. Clearly, such a history might appear as
incomprehensible to noninitiates as do the stories of Creation in the Theogony of Hesiod, the Upanishads,
or the Bible. Indeed, mythological tales seem closer to common sense than does the discourse of
biochemists and molecular biologists." (Jacob, F., "Of Flies, Mice, and Men," [1997], Weiss G., transl.,
Harvard University Press: Cambridge MA, 1998, pp.22-23)
24/01/2003
"Edward Blyth ... made many contributions to the natural history of Southeastern Asia; yet he could have
been largely unknown today had he not been saved from oblivion by Loren Eiseley, who has suggested that
Blyth was Darwin's main, but unquoted, source of inspiration with respect to the notion of 'natural
selection'. Eiseley arrived at this conclusion through a literary investigation. The material thus brought
forward is of varying credibility, but still I think one must be a very orthodox Darwinian to be left completely
untouched by Eiseley's accusation." (Løvtrup, S., "Darwinism: The Refutation of a Myth," Croom Helm:
London, 1987, p.27)
25/01/2003
"Gnosticism ... a modern term generally used to describe the syncretistic theological and theosophical
systems and movements which usually included many Christian motifs - in the Greco-Roman world in the
2nd century AD and attacked by leading early Christian theologians. Deriving its name from the Greek word
gnosis (knowledge of an esoteric nature), Gnosticism received renewed scholarly interest as a result of a
large Gnostic library discovered near Chenoboskion (Naj Hammadi) in Egypt in the mid-20th century, about
the same time as the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls, which have been important in the study of biblical
literature. Gnosticism has sometimes been referred to as the one heresy that continues to arise at various
times in the history of Christianity." ("Gnosticism," Encyclopaedia Britannica, Benton: Chicago IL, 15th
Edition, 1984, Vol. iv, pp.587-588)
25/01/2003
"The influence of Gnostic thought today is not often acknowledged or understood. It is, according to
Harold Bloom, the most common thread of religious thought in America. He calls it the American Religion
and finds it "pervasive and overwhelming, however it is masked, and even our secularists, indeed even our
professed atheists, are more Gnostic than humanist in their ultimate presuppositions." (Bloom H., "The
American Religion," Simon & Schuster: New York, 1992, p.22). It is perhaps one of the great ironies in
religious thought that one can profess to be an agnostic, skeptic, or even atheist regarding belief in God yet
still hold strong opinions about God. Evolution may breed skepticism, but its adherents have continued to
make religious proclamations. And those proclamations are really no different from those made by Darwin
and his fellow Victorians." (Hunter, C.G.*, "Darwin's God Evolution and the Problem of Evil," Brazos Press:
Grand Rapids MI, 2001, pp.151, 187n)
25/01/2003
"In trying to explain the origin of life, biologists for their part must call on all their imaginative resources. It is
obvious that, for the living world and its evolution, the role of history is of the utmost importance. Life
seems to have appeared fairly quickly, probably less than a billion years after the formation of the earth, in
the form of some thing we might call a `protobacterium.' Life means reproduction. But the apparatus of
reproduction that we observe today in the simplest organism, the humblest bacterium, already features a
formidable complexity. The duplication of DNA alone brings into play an enormous number of proteins, the
synthesis of any one of which demands an even more considerable number and diversity of
macromolecules. It is unthinkable that such a system would have emerged fully formed from Zeus's head,
hence it is necessary to imagine more or less plausible scenarios that might account for a progressive
buildup of complexity. According to one scenario, which has become fashionable over the past several
years, the living world as we know it, dominated by DNA, was preceded by a world in which RNA
functioned both as a catalyst and in replication. It goes without saying that the emergence of this RNA
world and the transition to a DNA world imply an impressive number of stages, each more improbable than
the previous one. Moreover, most of the hypotheses required for such scenarios lend themselves neither to
reconstruction nor to experimental verification. In other words, although it seems clear that humans, animals,
plants, fungi, and microbes-in short, we living beings-are, all descended from an initial protobacterium, we
are not even close to knowing the true face of our common ancestor." (Jacob, F., "Of Flies, Mice, and Men,"
[1997], Weiss G., transl., Harvard University Press: Cambridge MA, 1998, pp.20-21)
26/01/2003
"The molecular biologists, faced with a difficult problem they are unlikely to solve for a long time, have
recourse to three possible solutions. Some biologists, including some of the greatest, consider the
appearance of life on earth so improbable that they prefer, half jokingly, half seriously, to invoke a kind of
panspermia. The seeds of life would have arrived on earth aboard a spaceship sent from a faraway planet by
a civilization more evolved than our own! Which, of course, only reduces the problem a notch. .... Others
consider that the appearance of life on earth was so improbable that almost certainly it happened only once.
It resulted from such an unlikely series of events-any one of which might not have happened-that there
might well never have been life on earth. These same scientists also tend to believe that very probably no
other conscious life exists in the universe. A third group of scientists has an entirely different attitude. For
them, the stages implied by the advent of an RNA world and passage to a DNA world were the result of
ordinary chemical reactions that could not help but occur given sufficient opportunity, that is, time. These
scientists reason that it would be impossible for life not to have formed on earth. ... they maintain that there
must be many places in the universe that support life, probably even conscious life. ... Until now, however,
no one has managed to detect a trace of a signal suggesting life and coming from the galaxy or beyond the
galaxy. ... Everything we learn about even the most varied organisms living on earth shows that, in all
likelihood, they are all descended from one and the same ancestor. Thus it does indeed seem to be the case
that life appeared once and only once on earth; that it resulted from a series of events, each highly
improbable; and that if any of these events had not occurred, life as we know it would not exist." (Jacob, F.,
"Of Flies, Mice, and Men," [1997], Weiss G., transl., Harvard University Press: Cambridge MA, 1998, pp.22-
23)
27/01/2003
"The Creation Hypothesis received a remarkably respectful review in Creation/Evolution, a strongly
anticreationist journal. Reviewer Arthur Shapiro, professor of zoology at the Davis campus of the University
of California, concluded with this paragraph: `I can see Science in the year 2000 running a major feature
article on the spread of theistic science as a parallel scientific culture. I can see interviews with the leading
figures in history and philosophy of science about how and why this happened. For the moment, the
authors of The Creation Hypothesis are realistically defensive. They know their way of looking at the world
will not be generally accepted and that they will be restricted for a while to their own journals. They also
know that they will be under intense pressure to demonstrate respectability by weeding out crackpots,
kooks and purveyors of young- earth snake oil. If they are successful, the day will come when the editorial
board of Science will convene in emergency session to decide what to do about a paper which is of the
highest quality and utterly unexceptionable, of great and broad interest, and which proceeds from the prior
assumption of intelligent design. For a preview of that crisis, you should read this book. Of course, if you
are smug enough to think "theistic science" is an oxymoron, you won't.'" (Shapiro, A., Review of Moreland,
J.P., ed., "The Creation Hypothesis," InterVarsity Press, 1994. Creation/Evolution, 1994, in Johnson, P.E.*,
"Reason in the Balance: The Case Against Naturalism in Science, Law, and Education," InterVarsity Press:
Downers Grove IL, 1995, p.239)
27/01/2003
"It is a feature of the known fossil record that most taxa appear abruptly. They are not, as a rule, led up to by
a sequence of almost imperceptibly changing forerunners such as Darwin believed should be usual in
evolution. A great many sequences of two or a few temporally intergrading species are known, but even at
this level most species appear without known immediate ancestors, and really long, perfectly complete
sequences of numerous species are exceedingly rare. Sequences of genera, immediately successive or nearly
so at that level (not necessarily represented by the exact populations involved in the transition from one
genus to the next), are more common and may be longer than known sequences of species. But the
appearance of a new genus in the record is usually more abrupt than the appearance of a new species: the
gaps involved are generally larger, that is, when a new genus appears in the record it is usually well
separated morphologically from the most nearly similar other known genera. This phenomenon becomes
more universal and more intense as the hierarchy of categories is ascended. Gaps among known species are
sporadic and often small. Gaps among known orders, classes, and phyla are systematic and almost always
large." (Simpson, G.G., "The History of Life," in Tax, S., ed., "Evolution After Darwin," Vol. I, "The Evolution
of Life: Its Origin, History and Future," University of Chicago Press: Chicago IL, 1960, p.117)
28/01/2003
"But, subliminally, our vague awareness of and gratitude for the ease and ubiquity of technology prepares
us to accept the larger claim of science that it alone can lead us to God. For we can see all about us how
much science can do; perhaps it can do this as well. It has solved so many of our little problems, maybe it
can solve the big one. After all, both flying and electrically boiling water are miraculous in their different
ways and our idea of God is usually accompanied by miracles. This unarguable and spectacular
effectiveness is the ace up science's sleeve. Whatever else we may think of it, we have to accept that
science works. Penicillin cures disease, aircraft fly, crops grow more intensively because of fertilizers, and so
on. ... This is the heart of the matter. We know science is effective and we know that it tells us that it is in
pursuit of the truth of a real world. But is it the Truth? Is it our Truth? Do its awesome powers mean that
science must be far more than a way of doing things? Hawking, by invoking God, says it is. He says it is a
potentially conclusive way of knowing everything - that it is the Truth." (Appleyard, B., "Understanding the
Present: Science and the Soul of Modern Man," Picador: London, 1992, pp.3,16)
28/01/2003
"Similarly, without Einstein, there would still have been something like the theory of relativity; without
Darwin, something close to the theory of evolution. But they wouldn't have been the same theories. They
wouldn't have been formulated in the same way or presented with the same vigor, the same force of
persuasion. They wouldn't have had the same influence or the same consequences." (Jacob, F., "Of Flies,
Mice, and Men," [1997], Weiss G., transl., Harvard University Press: Cambridge MA, 1998, pp.140-141)
29/01/2003
"We speak of the evolution of the stars, of the evolution of the horse, of the evolution of the steam engine,
as though they were all part of the same process. What have they in common? Only this, that each concerns
itself with the history of something. When the astronomer thinks of the evolution of the earth, the
moon, the sun and the stars, he has a picture of diffuse matter that has slowly condensed. With
condensation came heat; with heat, action and reaction within the mass until the chemical sub stances that
we know today were produced. This is the nebular hypothesis of the astronomer. The astronomer explains,
or tries to explain, how this evolution took place, by an appeal to the physical processes that have been
worked out in the laboratory, processes which he thinks have existed through all the eons during which this
evolution was going on and which were its immediate causes. When the biologist thinks of the evolution of
animals and plants, a different picture presents itself. He thinks of series of animals that have lived in the
past, whose bones and shells have been preserved in the rocks. He thinks of these animals as having in the
past given birth, through an unbroken succession of individuals, to the living inhabitants of the earth today.
He thinks that the old, simpler types of the past have in part changed over into the more complex forms of
today. He is thinking as the historian thinks, but he sometimes gets confused and thinks that he is
explaining evolution when he is only describing it." (Morgan, T.H., "A Critique of the Theory of Evolution,"
[1916], Louis Clark Vanuxem Foundation Lectures, Columbia University, February 24- March 15, 1916,
Princeton University Press: Princeton NJ, 1917, Second Printing, pp.1-2. Emphasis in original)
29/01/2003
"Evolution is now found to be capable of creating just about anything. We might say that evolution is a
closed metaphysical system. It not only supplies its own creation story but also supplies its own source of
morality. Both were products of the evolutionary process. Furthermore, having rejected divine creation and
its Creator, evolution even becomes its own authority. This story is true for those who believe it, but it
cannot be demonstrated by strictly scientific argument, for it requires metaphysical premises." (Hunter,
C.G.*, "Darwin's God Evolution and the Problem of Evil," Brazos Press: Grand Rapids MI, 2001, p.155)
30/01/2003
"The most obvious alternative to this view is to hold that evolution has throughout been guided by divine
power. There are two objections to this hypothesis. Most lines of descent end in extinction, and commonly
the end is reached by a number of different lines evolving in parallel. This does not suggest the work of an
intelligent designer, still less of an almighty one. But the moral objection is perhaps more serious. A very
large number of originally free-living Crustacea, worms, and so on, have evolved into parasites. In so doing
they have lost to a greater or less extent, their legs, eyes, and brains, and have become in many cases the
source of considerable and prolonged pain to other animals and to man. If we are going to take an ethical
point of view at all (and we must do so when discussing theological questions), we are, I think, bound to
place this loss of faculties coupled with increased infliction of suffering in the same class as moral
breakdown in a human being, which can often be traced to genetical causes. To put the matter in a more
concrete way, Blake expressed some doubt as to whether God had made the tiger. But the tiger is in many
ways an admirable animal. We have now to ask whether God made the tape-worm. And it is questionable
whether an affirmative answer fits in either with what we know about the process of evolution or what many
of us believe about the moral perfection of God. We can answer the question in three ways. We can regard
the dark as well as the bright side of evolution as a manifestation of divine ingenuity. `I make peace, and
create evil: I the Lord do all these things' (Isaiah). Secondly, we can go for our answer to Plato. Socrates in
the `Republic' says, `God therefore, since He is good, cannot be responsible for all things, as the many say,
but only for good things.' This answer, however, leads us into Manichaeanism, for the tapeworm presents
just as much ingenuity in construction (if we regard it as designed) as does the rose. We should have to
give the Devil credit for a large share in evolution. Or, finally, we can say that at present it does not seem
necessary to postulate divine or diabolical intervention in the course of the evolutionary process. The
question whether we can draw theological conclusions from the fact that the universe is such that evolution
has occurred in it is quite different, and very interesting." (Haldane, J.B.S., "The Causes of Evolution,"
[1990], Princeton University Press: Princeton NJ, 1993, Second Printing, pp.85-86)
31/01/2003
"As physicists tell the tale, a thousand-billionth of a second after the big explosion, when the temperature of
the universe "fell" to a million billion degrees, particles and antiparticles were rapidly created and
annihilated. Then, with the expansion and cooling of the universe, annihilation began to outpace creation.
Almost all the particles disappeared. And if there had not been a slight excess of electrons over electrons
and of quarks over antiquarks, ordinary particles, those that form the very basis of matter, would today be
absent from the universe. It was this slight excess of matter over antimatter-an excess estimated at one ten-
billionth-that survived to form, three minutes later, the light atomic nuclei; then, after a million years, the
atoms; much later, the heavy elements in the stars; and finally, the stuff out of which the living world arose.
If there had not been that excess of a ten-billionth of some particles over other particles, our universe would
not exist, at least not in the form in which we know it." (Jacob, F., "Of Flies, Mice, and Men," [1997], Weiss
G., transl., Harvard University Press: Cambridge MA, 1998, pp.19-20)
[top]
February
1/02/2003
"However, it is certain that Darwin listened to, and noted with care, the words of someone else who saw the
force of natural selection: Edward Blyth, a south London chemist a year younger than Darwin, whose
passion for natural history had led him to neglect his business, so that he had to sail for Calcutta at the age
of thirty-one and take up a poorly paid position as curator of vertebrate collections in the local museum.
Before leaving for India, Blyth spoke often at scientific meetings in London, some of them attended by
Darwin. Darwin's early notebooks on 'transmutation' (for years he avoided using the word evolution)
contain transcriptions of what Blyth said. In 1835 and 1837 Blyth's theories were published in the British
Magazine of Natural History. Darwin, according to a cryptic reference in a letter, seems to have read these
too." (Hitching, F., "The Neck of the Giraffe: Or Where Darwin Went Wrong," Pan: London, 1982, p.231)
2/02/2003
"Why do the cult leaders tell lies for God? A lie is a falsehood uttered or acted to deceive and, of course, a
liar can choose not to lie and knows the difference between a lie and the truth." (Plimer, I.R., "Telling Lies for
God: Reason vs Creationism," Random House: Sydney, Australia, 1994, pp.271-272)
2/02/2003
"Why isn't Edward Blyth's name a household word? Why isn't he buried in Westminster Abbey? Blyth
(1810-73), a creationist, first published essays on natural selection in 1835, 1836 and 1837, over twenty years
before Darwin published The Origin of Species. Loren Eiseley found evidences in Darwin's essays
that, between 1842 and 1844, he had studied Blyth's work. Later, after Blyth went to Calcutta, Darwin
corresponded with him, showing particular interest in his studies of animal variation. ... If Darwin did absorb
Blyth's ideas, he made no reference to him." (Pitman, M., "Adam and Evolution," Rider & Co: London, 1984, pp.75-76)
3/02/2003
"Of special relevance to this note are two of Blyth's many papers. The papers in question appeared in 1835
and 1837, both in The Magazine of Natural History, a leading journal of the day. The references are vol. 3
(1935), pp. 40-53, and vol. 1 (1937), pp. 1-9; pp. 77-85; pp. 131-141, the second paper appearing in three parts.
... His paper of 1835 describes conservative natural selection, the process whereby a species clearly adapted
to an environment does not lose that adaptation. ... So already in 1835-6, while Darwin is still away on the
Beagle, the crucial question has been asked. ... It was into this situation that Darwin returned from the
voyage of the Beagle. It is not only inconceivable in principle that Blyth's papers, published in a major
journal, would have escaped Darwin's notice, but as Eiseley points out at length there is ample evidence
from Darwin's essays of 1842 and 1844 that he had studied Blyth's work closely. ... Darwin by his own
account was a voracious reader of other men's work, obviously of Blyth's papers ... It was not in his
character, however, to make a return for what he received ... " (Hoyle, F. & Wickramasinghe, N.C., "Evolution
from Space," [1981], Paladin: London, 1983, reprint, pp.171-173,175)
4/02/2003
"Amid the flurry of preparations, a 22-year-old man picked his way. He moved awkwardly around the ship,
not only because his 6-foot frame was oversized for the cramped quarters, but also because he felt
profoundly out of place. He had no official position on the ship, having been invited to keep the captain
company during the voyage and act as an unofficial naturalist. It was usually up to a ship's surgeon to act
as the naturalist for a voyage, but this awkward young man had no such practical skill. He was a medical
school dropout who, for want of any other respectable line of work, was considering a career as a country
parson when the voyage was over. ... The name of this awkward young man was Charles Darwin." (Zimmer,
C., "Evolution: The Triumph of an Idea," HarperCollins: New York, 2001, p.4)
4/02/2003
"No scientific revolution can match Darwin's discovery in degree of upset to our previous comforts and
certainties. In the only conceivable challenge, Copernicus and Galileo moved our cosmic location from the
center of the universe to a small and peripheral body circling a central sun. But this cosmic reorganization
only fractured our concept of real estate; Darwinian evolution, on the other (and deeper) hand,
revolutionized our view of our own meaning and essence (insofar as science can address such questions at
all): Who are we? How did we get here? How are we related to other creatures, and in what manner?
Evolution substituted a naturalistic explanation of cold comfort for our former conviction that a benevolent
deity fashioned us directly in his own image, to have dominion over the entire earth and all other creatures-
and that all but the first five days of earthly history have been graced by our ruling presence." (Gould, S.J.,
"Introduction," in Zimmer, C., "Evolution: The Triumph of an Idea," HarperCollins: New York, 2001, p.xi)
4/02/2003
"Why believe that there is a God at all? My answer is that to suppose that there is a God explains why there
is a world at all; why there are the scientific laws there are; why animals and then human beings have
evolved; why humans have the opportunity to mould their characters and those of their fellow humans for
good or ill and to change the environment in which we live; why we have the well-authenticated account of
Christ's life, death and resurrection; why throughout the centuries men have had the apparent experience of
being in touch with and guided by God; and so much else. In fact, the hypothesis of the existence of God
makes sense of the whole of our experience, and it does so better than any other explanation which can be
put forward, and that is the grounds for believing it to be true." (Swinburne, R.G., "The Justification of
Theism," Truth: An International, Inter-Disciplinary Journal of Christian Thought, Volume 3, 1991.
http://www.leaderu.com/truth/3truth09.html)
5/02/2003
"Duplication in the human genome is more extensive than it is in other primates, says Eichler. About 5% of
the human genome consists of copies longer than 1,000 bases. Some doublings are vast. Half of
chromosome 20 recurs, rearranged, on chromosome 18. A large block of chromosome 2's short arm appears
again as nearly three-quarters of chromosome 14, and a section of its long arm is also on chromosome 12.
The gene-packed yet diminutive chromosome 22 sports eight huge duplications. "Ten percent of the
chromosome is duplicated, and more than 90% of that is the same extremely large duplication. You don't
have to be a statistician to realize that the distribution of duplications is highly nonrandom," says Eichler."
(Lewis, R., "Genome Evolution: First, a Bang Then, a Shuffle," The Scientist, Vol. 17, No. 2, January 27, 2003)
5/02/2003
"Experiments showing there is self-recognition in mirrors by the great apes indicate that they have crossed
the threshold to self-awareness-it is me! In The Pinnacle of Life we will examine brain-mind functions in the
ascent of the evolutionary tree to this pinnacle. But it is obvious that there is a gaping void between an ape
examining otherwise -visually- inaccessible parts of its body with a mirror, or, with the aid of a mirror,
fingering a mark painted on its forehead while it was anaesthetised, and the soliloquy of Hamlet." (Denton,
D.A., "The Pinnacle of Life: Consciousness and Self-Awareness in Humans and Animals," Allen & Unwin:
St. Leonards NSW, Australia, 1993, p.xi)
6/02/2003
"In the event, CD's appointment was not official. Although CD lists himself on the title page of Journal of
researches as 'Naturalist to the Beagle' and in the Zoology as 'Naturalist to the Expedition' this is not to he
understood as an official title conferred by the Admiralty. The letters of the next month bear out the
contention of J.W. Gruber 1969 and Burstyn 1975 that CD's situation was that of guest of Captain FitzRoy,
who sought a 'well-educated and scientific person' as a companion (Narrative 2:18)." (Burkhardt, F. & Smith,
S., eds., "The Correspondence of Charles Darwin: Volume 1, 1821-1836," Cambridge University Press:
Cambridge UK, 1985, p.130, n.4)
6/02/2003
"Eiseley, although a supporter of Darwinism, devotes a great deal of his essay to a discussion of why
Darwin makes no reference in The Origin of Species to Blyth's critical papers of 1835 and 1837, although he
references Blyth in other much less important respects. The evidence does not permit of any conclusion
except that the omissions were deliberate. Eiseley also wonders why Blyth did not protest about the
omissions, but on this there seems no mystery to us, since it was in 1860 that Blyth was desperately trying
to secure his future. To have created a rumpus over priority with a man of Darwin's position would not have
seemed the best way to obtain the pension of £150 per year. There is no law which compels a scientist to
reference his sources. It is only protests from colleagues, and the fear of being treated similarly, which keep
the record straight. ... The failure of biologists to insist on this matter being set right is somewhat surprising,
especially as an attempt to plagiarize the work of Mendel at the beginning of the twentieth century did in
fact set off a major scandal. Aside, however, from the gentle remonstrances of Geldart in 1879 and Vickers in
1911, there was nothing in a hundred years up to Eiseley's courageous essay of 1959. It would seem to us
that a serious sin of omission remains to be redeemed by the world of professional biology." (Hoyle, F. &
Wickramasinghe, N.C., "Evolution from Space," [1981], Paladin: London, 1983, reprint, p.179)
7/02/2003
"After my return to England it appeared to me that by following the example of Lyell in Geology, and by
collecting all facts which bore in any way on the variation of animals and plants under domestication and
nature, some light might perhaps be thrown on the whole subject. My first note-book was opened in July
1837. I worked on true Baconian principles, and without any theory collected facts on a wholesale scale,
more especially with respect to domesticated productions, by printed enquiries, by conversation with skilful
breeders and gardeners, and by extensive reading. When I see the list of books of all kinds which I read and
abstracted, including whole series of journals and Transactions, I am surprised at my industry." (Darwin,
C.R., in Barlow, N., ed., "The Autobiography of Charles Darwin, 1809-1882: With Original Omissions
Restored," [1958], W.W. Norton & Co: New York, 1969, reprint, p.119)
7/02/2003
"Darwin did not work in a vacuum, no scientist ever does. By the time of that memorable day when he
journeyed down to Plymouth with his admired Captain Fitzroy to embark on the Beagle, there existed already
a nucleus of belief that some form of evolution was the true explanation of the variety of life upon the earth.
... We come back to Charles Darwin. And the first thing we have to note is that though he asserted later that
when he set out on the voyage he was still an orthodox believer in the permanence of species, yet it is pretty
obvious that he had his contrary suspicions." (Mellersh H.E.L., "Appreciation," in Darwin, C.R., "The
Voyage of the 'Beagle'," [1845], Edito-Service: Geneva, n.d., reprint, pp.512,516)
7/02/2003
"Many historians have commented that the most curiously revealing statement in Darwin's autobiography
comes close to being an unconscious lie-his claim that he "worked on true Baconian principles, and without
any theory collected facts on a wholesale scale." For Darwin did no such thing. He tested theories from the
start and abandoned several of them before fixing on one that he derived by creative transference from such
disparate sources as the Scottish economists, the French positivist Comte, the Belgian statistician Quetelet,
and the grimly conservative parson Malthus, leavened by some turtles, toxodonts, birds and five years of
contrary argument from the devout Captain FitzRoy (Schweber 1977)." (Gould, S.J., "The promise of
paleobiology as a nomothetic, evolutionary discipline," Paleobiology, Vol. 6, No. 1, January 1980, pp.96-118,
p.97)
8/02/2003
"The remaining land-birds form a most singular group of finches, related to each other in the structure of
their beaks, short tails, form of body and plumage: there are thirteen species, which Mr. Gould has divided
into four subgroups. All these species are peculiar to this archipelago; and so is the whole group, with the
exception of one species of the sub-group Cactornis ... The most curious fact is the perfect gradation in the
size of the beaks in the different species of Geospiza, from one as large as that of a hawfinch to that of a
chaffinch, and (if Mr. Gould is right in including his sub-group, Certhidea, in the main group) even to that of
a warbler. The largest beak in the genus Geospiza is shown in Fig. 1, and the smallest in Fig. 3; but instead of
there being only one intermediate species, with a beak of the size shown in Fig. 2, there are no less than six
species with insensibly graduated beaks. The beak of the sub group Certhidea, is shown in Fig. 4. The beak
of Cactornis is somewhat like that of a starling; and that of the fourth sub-group, Camarhynchus, is slightly
parrot-shaped. Seeing this gradation and diversity of structure in one small, intimately related group of
birds, one might really fancy that from an original paucity of birds in this archipelago, one species had been
taken and modified for different ends. " (Darwin, C.R., "The Voyage of the Beagle: Journal of Researches Into
the Natural History and Geology of the Countries Visited During the Voyage of HMS, Beagle Round the
World," [1909], Modern Library: New York NY, 2001, reprint, pp.339-339)
8/02/2003
"FitzRoy's bird skins, given to the British Museum in 1836, were essential to Darwin after his return to
England when he discovered that the Galapagos Islands possessed different species of mockingbirds and
finches: Darwin had mostly ignored the precise geographic locale when gathering his own specimens."
(Browne, E.J., "Charles Darwin Voyaging: A Biography," [1995], Princeton University Press: Princeton NJ,
1996, reprint, p.225)
8/02/2003
"Darwin first questioned the mutability of species when actually in the Galapagos, through finding different
forms of the mocking bird and tortoise on different islands (Barlow, 1935). The finches, with several species
on each island, are more complex, and their influence was apparently retrospective. Thus, in Darwin's private
diary of the voyage, the finches are not mentioned (Barlow, 1933), and even in the first published edition of
the Journal, in 1839, they receive only brief notice, without particular comment. However, this paragraph was
considerably amplified in the second edition of 1845: 'The remaining land-birds form a most singular group
of finches, related to each other in the structure of their beaks, short tails, form of body and plumage. All
these species are peculiar to this archipelago.' Darwin went on to describe 'the perfect gradation in the size
of the beaks in the different species', and concluded: 'Seeing this gradation and diversity of structure in one
small, intimately related group of birds, one might really fancy that from an original paucity of birds in this
archipelago, one species had been taken and modified for different ends.' This last phrase is the most
significant in the whole book, and is Darwin's first public pronouncement on a subject the elaboration and
generalization of which was to occupy the next fifteen years of his life." (Lack, D., "Darwin's Finches: An
Essay on the General Biological Theory of Evolution," [1947], Harper Torchbooks: New York, 1961, pp.9-10)
8/02/2003
"Contrary to legend, Sulloway has shown, Darwin did not think the finches were very important. He did not
even think they were all finches. The cactus finch looked to him like some kind of blackbird; other finches
looked like wrens and warblers. Darwin assumed there were plenty more just like them on some part of the
coast of South America where the Beagle had failed to stop. In other words, the very quality that makes the
finches so interesting now made them look like nothing special to Darwin. Their diversity disguised their
uniqueness. Much to his later regret, Darwin stored the finch specimens from his first two islands in the
same bag, and he did not bother to label which bird came from where. Since conditions on the islands
seemed more or less identical, he assumed the specimens were identical too. He did notice that the
mockingbirds he shot on his second island were slightly different from the mockingbirds on the first. For
that reason he took the trouble to label these specimens, and all of the other mockingbirds he caught, by
place of origin. But when the vice governor of the islands told Darwin that the tortoises varied from island to
island as well (claiming he could tell which island a tortoise came from by its shell), Darwin more or less
ignored him. `I did not for some time pay sufficient attention to this statement,' he confessed later, `and I had
already partially mingled together the collections from two of the islands. I never dreamed that islands,
about fifty or sixty rules apart, and most of them in sight of each other, formed of precisely the same rocks,
placed under a quite similar climate, rising to a nearly equal height, would have been differently tenanted.'"
(Weiner, J., "The Beak of the Finch: A Story of Evolution in Our Time," Alfred A. Knopf: New York NY, 1994,
pp.22-23).
9/02/2003
"When the term evolution is used it will refer to the general theory of organic evolution, or the molecules-to-
man theory of evolution. According to this theory all living things have arisen by naturalistic, mechanistic,
evolutionary processes from a single living sources which itself had arisen by similar processes from
inanimate matter. These processes are attributable solely to properties inherent in matter and are therefore
still operative today." (Gish, D.T., "Creation, Evolution, and the Historical Evidence," The American Biology
Teacher, March 1973, Vol. 132, p.40, in Ruse, M.E., ed., "But is it Science?: The Philosophical Question in the
Creation/Evolution Controversy," Prometheus Books: Amherst NY, 1996, p.266)
9/02/2003
"But Huxley's mortal fears had moved closer to home. ... Spring 1892 was divided between the fruit trees in
his kitchen garden and devotions in his private chapel, his stained-glass study. Here he collected his
polemics against Gladstone, Wace and Argyll into what the Times described as a 'fugitive' volume of daring
opinions, Essays upon some Controverted Questions. Conscious of the last grains slipping through the
timer he took great pains over the Prologue. It was eloquent on the continuing exorcism of the ghosts of
medieval Christianity by a 'scientific Naturalism', and on the Victorian Reformation which illegitimated this
old 'Supernature'." (Desmond A., "Huxley: From Devil's Disciples to Evolution's High Priest," [1994],
Perseus: Reading MA, 1999, reprint, pp.590-591)
9/02/2003
"Arguments that beg the question are circular arguments. They make use of the capacity of our
language to say a thing in many different ways, ending where they began and beginning where they end.
They are like the proverbial three morons, each of whom tied his horse to another's horse, thinking that he
had in this way secured his own horse. Naturally, all three horses wandered away because they were
anchored to nothing but each other. ... Circular arguments reason that A is so because of B. But B turns out
to be true only if A is true. The question, Is A true? remains unanswered. The question is begged. ... We
have seen that a sound argument provides reasons for a conclusion. Because of the very fact that the
conclusion to be established is somehow in doubt, an attempt is made to support it by premises that are
more certain. But if the supporting premises merely repeat what is stated in the conclusion, as in all cases of
begging the question, the argument contains no premises and is therefore fallacious." (Engel S.M., "With
Good Reason: An Introduction to Informal Fallacies," St. Martin's Press: New York, Fourth Edition, 1990,
pp.135-136. Emphasis in original)
9/02/2003
"Creationists travel all over the United States, visiting college campuses and staging `debates' with
biologists, geologists, and anthropologists. The creationists nearly always win. The audience is frequently
loaded with the already converted and the faithful. And scientists, until recently, have been showing up at
the debates ill-prepared for what awaits them. Thinking the creationists are uneducated, Bible-thumping
clods, they are soon routed by a steady onslaught of: direct attacks on a wide variety of scientific topics. No
scientist has an expert's grasp of all the relevant points of astronomy, physics, chemistry, biology, geology,
and anthropology. Creationists today-at least the majority of their spokesmen-are highly educated,
intelligent people. Skilled debaters, they have always done their homework. And they nearly always seem
better informed than their opponents, who are reduced too often to a bewildered state of incoherence."
(Eldredge, N., "The Monkey Business: A Scientist Looks at Creationism," Washington Square: New York,
1982, p.17)
10/02/2003
"Fifteen thousand million years ago, the Universe that we inhabit erupted, literally, out of nothing. It
exploded in a titanic fireball called the big bang. Everything - all matter, energy, even space and time - came
into being at that precise instant." (Chown M., "The Big Bang," in Fifield R., ed., "The New Scientist Inside
Science," Penguin: London, 1992, p.3)
11/02/2003
"If it is always true that a biblical `day' with a number appended to it is 24 hours long, then the Genesis
`days' must all be 24-hour periods. But if this generalization is not always true, then we will have to find
another way to make this decision. In order to prove this generalization is false, we must find a number
appended to the word `day' in a special scriptural context where we can be certain that the `day' in question
lasted for more than 24 hours. Zechariah 14:7 contains the number `one' appended to `day' in a context
which certainly refers to a daylight period of indefinite length: `But it shall be one day which shall be
known to the Lord, not day, nor night; but it shall come to pass, that at evening time it shall be light.' - KJV,
EMPHASIS ADDED. This is a description of the new Jerusalem in which there is no night. The special
context of this verse makes it difficult to misunderstand; the same prophetic event is described in detail in
Revelation 22:5. In this verse, the one single "day' (period of daylight) is understood to last for a very long
(indefinite) period of time. The phrase `one day' (used here), and the phrase `the first day' (used in Genesis
1:5), are both translated from the exact same Hebrew phrase `yom echad,' literally `day one.' Because of the
special context of Zechariah 14:7, we can be certain that the `one day' is longer than 24 hours in length. The
theory that a number used with the word `day' always forces the 24-hour understanding is simply false."
(Stoner D.W., "A New Look at an Old Earth," [1985], Harvest House Publishers: Eugene OR, 1997, reprint,
pp.46-47).
11/02/2003
"With regard to the question of whether God has intervened miraculously in the history of the universe, we
now have a rather broad spectrum of views. At one end would be atheists who deny that God has
intervened because there is no God. Next to them are liberal theologians who deny that God has intervened
because their God is not the sort who would intervene. Then come the traditional deists, who admit that God
intervened in creation, but deny that he intervened thereafter in history. Somewhere in this area is Van Till,
who denies that God intervened in creation, but admits that he intervened in (redemptive) history. Then
come many theistic evolutionists and both old earth and young earth creationists, who believe that God
intervened miraculously both in creation and redemption, though they differ on the number of such
interventions. Finally, we have some charismatic and Reformed theologians who see God intervening in
everything, either by greatly multiplying the miraculous or by denying the distinction between providence
and miracle." (Newman R.C., "Progressive Creationism (Old Earth Creationism)," in Moreland, J.P. &
Reynolds J.M., eds., "Three Views on Creation and Evolution," Zondervan: Grand Rapids MI, 1999, pp.126-
127)
11/02/2003
"Public difficulty in grasping the Darwinian theory of natural selection cannot be attributed to any
conceptual complexity-for no great theory ever boasted such a simple structure of three undeniable facts
and an almost syllogistic inference therefrom. ... The difficulties lie not in this simple mechanism but in the
far-reaching and radical philosophical consequences-as Darwin himself well under stood-of postulating a
causal theory stripped of such conventional comforts as a guarantee of progress, a principle of natural
harmony, or any notion of an inherent goal or purpose. Darwin's mechanism can only generate local
adaptation to environments that change in a directionless way through time, thus imparting no goal or
progressive vector to life's history." (Gould, S.J., "Introduction," in Zimmer, C., "Evolution: The Triumph of
an Idea," HarperCollins: New York, 2001, pp.xii-xiii)
12/02/2003
"Progressive creationism accepts much of the scientific picture of the development of the universe,
assuming that for the most part it developed according to natural laws. However, especially with
regard to life on earth, PCs hold that God intervened supernaturally at strategic points along the way. On
their view, Creation was not a single six-day event but occurred in stages over millions of years. ... The PC
view tends to overlap with other views, particularly with old-earth creationism." (Pennock R.T., "Tower of
Babel: The Evidence Against the New Creationism," MIT Press: Cambridge MA, 1999, Fourth Printing,
pp.26-27. Emphasis in original)
12/02/2003
"On one point Huxley is, if not original then at least brave ... he insists on the Lamarckian distinction
between two kinds of evolution, which he calls progress and specialisation, respectively. The reason for
Huxley's braveness in this context is that, ignoring vector mathematics, one cannot go forwards and
sidewards at the same time, and analogously, the same force cannot drive evolution in two different
directions. And although it is glaringly true that evolution has been both progressive and divergent, it may
be logically correct to deny this fact when there is only one mechanism to propel the process. This was the
situation facing Darwin, and when he had to decide whether natural selection should be made responsible
for progressive or divergent (adaptive) evolution, he chose the latter. The same stand had been adopted by
many of Darwin's followers, but Huxley knew too much about biology to accept this view. However, he
might be braver than many other Darwinians, but perhaps less acute, for he did not resolve the dilemma, but
rather put his trust in the omnipotence of natural selection: 'We have now dealt with the fact of evolutionary
progress, and with the philosophical and biological difficulties inherent in the concept. What of its
mechanism? It should be clear that if natural selection can account for adaptation and for long-range trends
of specialization, it can account for progress too.'" (Huxley J.S., "Evolution: The Modern Synthesis," Allen
& Unwin: London, 1942, p. 568, in Løvtrup, S., "Darwinism: The Refutation of a Myth," Croom Helm: London,
1987, p.324)
12/02/2003
"Man in his arrogance thinks himself a great work worthy the interposition of a deity. More humble & I
believe truer to consider him created from animals." (Darwin, C.R., "C Notebook: Transmutation of Species,"
1838, in Gruber H.E., "Darwin on Man: A Psychological Study of Scientific Creativity," together with Gruber
H.E. & Barrett P.H., "Darwin's Early and Unpublished Notebooks," Wildwood House: London, 1974, p.452)
13/02/2003
"Gould also calls into question the adequacy of Darwin's theory to explain the observed data. While
orthodox Darwinists believe that natural selection, operating slowly and steadily over time, can account for
all the variations in living organisms from the earliest fossil records to the present, Gould denies that this is
the case. `In the last 20 years, the bottom has fallen out of this idea,' he said. The most dramatic piece of
evidence suggesting that other forces contribute to evolutionary change is the discovery that the extinction
of the dinosaurs was caused by a giant meteor striking the Earth, resulting in global dust clouds that
interrupted environmental cycles and caused many life forms to die out, Gould said. `If it weren't for that
event, the dinosaurs would still be in charge.'" (Gewertz K., "Gould reads from latest opus: New book
evolved steadily over two decades," Harvard University Gazette, April 04, 2002.
http://www.news.harvard.edu/gazette/2002/04.04/09-gould.html)
13/02/2003
"All I want to say is that most of this research dealt only with two factors, mutation and selection, in other
words, the original Darwinian model. Popper is right; this model is so good that it can explain every thing, as
Popper has rightly complained." (Mayr, E.W, "Evolutionary Challenges to the Mathematical Interpretation of
Evolution," in Moorhead, P.S. & Kaplan, M.M., ed., "Mathematical Challenges to the Neo-Darwinian
Interpretation of Evolution: A Symposium Held at the Wistar Institute of Anatomy and Biology, April 25
And 26, 1966," The Wistar Institute Symposium Monograph Number 5, The Wistar Institute Press:
Philadelphia PA, 1967, p.47)
13/02/2003
'Today, one hundred years after the work of men like Darwin and Boucher de Perthes, we can identify three
major groups in this category: first, there are creationists whom we have called hypertraditionalists, bound
to certain rigid interpretations of Scripture, who are loath to accept any new facts which seem to contradict
their interpretations, since these are seen not as interpretations but as the literal teachings of Scripture itself.
Second, there are creationists, many of whom have specialized in one field of science or another, or else, as
theologians, have either taken pains to keep abreast in some measure with scientific advance, or else have
sought the council of those who have, who constantly allow their interpretations to be open to the
acceptance of newly discovered facts, so that the reintegration of their
position has been free from the contradiction of embracing one body of facts, whether from Scripture or from
nature, and excluding the other. These creationists have been given different labels of varying degrees of
consistency. Carnell has called the position `threshold evolution"; Ramm, `progressive creationism"; others,
`micro-evolution' and even `theistic evolution.' Since it is not strictly an evolutionary position at all, perhaps
a more appropriate name would be, simply, scientific creationism. As for the third supernaturalistic position,
Roman Catholic theologians, although generally considered creationists, have with many Protestant
scholars, found it necessary to accept more of evolutionary theory than the facts seem to demand. Thus,
with theistic presuppositions postulated, their position is most accurately described as theistic evolution. In
presenting to the secular world of science an alternative to the evolutionary explanation of origins, it would
seem that the best position must be one which is equally objective and noncontradictory in facing the facts
of the natural world, and the facts of biblical truth. Such an alternative is best found in a position of
scientific creationism." (Buswell J.O., III., "A Creationist Interpretation of Prehistoric Man," in Mixter R.L.,
ed., "Evolution and Christian Thought Today," [1959], Eerdmans: Grand Rapids MI, Second Edition, 1960,
pp.188-189)
13/02/2003
"Future historians will perhaps take this Centennial week as epitomizing an important critical period in the
history of this earth of ours the period when the process of evolution, in the person of inquiring man, began
to be truly conscious of itself. ... This is one of the first public occasions on which it has been frankly faced
that all aspects of reality are subject to evolution, from atoms and stars to fish and flowers, from fish and
flowers to human societies and values-indeed, that all reality is a single process of evolution. And ours is
the first period in which we have acquired sufficient knowledge to begin to see the outline of this vast
process as a whole. Our evolutionary vision now includes the discovery that biological advance exists, and
that it takes place in a series of steps or grades, each grade occupied by a successful group of animals or
plants, each group sprung from a pre-existing one and characterized by a new and improved pattern of
organization. ... In 1859, Darwin opened the passage leading to a new psycho-social level, with a new pattern
of ideological organization-an evolution-centered organization of thought and belief. Through the telescope
of our scientific imagination, we can discern the existence of this new and improved ideological
organization; but its details are not clear, and we can also see that the necessary steps upward toward it are
many and hard to take." (Huxley J.S., "The Evolutionary Vision," in Tax S. & Callender C., eds., "Evolution
After Darwin: Issues in Evolution," University of Chicago Press: Chicago IL, Vol. IL, 1960, pp.249,251)
13/02/2003
"Even before there was life there was natural selection. The biochemistry we see today is the outcome of
those early struggles. ... Charles Darwin does not refer to the problem of the origins of life in the books he
published during his lifetime, probably because he wanted to avoid unnecessary controversy. However we
know that he gave serious thought to the problem from one of his letters. ... We do not yet understand even
the general-features of the origin of the genetic code. ... The code we have today is probably the code that
won an early Darwinian struggle between competing systems. ... Since the time of Louis Pasteur the origin of
optical activity in biological systems has attracted a great deal of attention. Two very-different questions
must be answered. First, why do all amino acids in proteins or all nucleotides in nucleic acids have the same
handedness? Secondly, why are the amino acids all left-handed (L-) and the nucleotides all right-handed (D-
)? ... The alternative view, ... which I favour, is that the success of the D-nucleotide, L-amino acid system
was an accident. The first great biological struggle set the D-polynucleotides in an equal contest against the
L-poly nucleotides, and the D-systems won. ... In fact, a major conceptual advance of the past several
decades is the realisation that natural selection in the Darwinian sense must have begun at the period of
molecular evolution, long before the appearance of the first "modern" organisms. " (Orgel, L.E., "Darwinism
at the very beginning of life," New Scientist, Vol. 94, 15 April 1982, pp.149-151, pp.149,151)
13/02/2003
"Nearly all peoples have developed their own creation myth, and the Genesis story is just the one that
happened to have been adopted by one particular tribe of Middle Eastern herders. It has no more special
status than the belief of a particular West African tribe that the world was created from the excrement of
ants. All these myths have in common that they depend upon the deliberate intentions of some kind of
supernatural being." (Dawkins R., "The Blind Watchmaker," [1986], Penguin: London, 1991, reprint, p.316)
13/02/2003
"A persistent problem in evolutionary biology has been the absence of intermediate forms in the fossil
record. Long-term gradual transformations of single lineages are rare and generally involve simple size
increase or trivial phenotypic effects. Typically, the record consists of successive ancestor-descendant
lineages, morphologically invariant through time and unconnected by intermediates." (Williamson P.G.,
"Palaeontological documentation of speciation in Cenozoic molluscs from Turkana Basin," in Maynard
Smith J., ed., "Evolution Now: A Century After Darwin," [1982], W.H. Freeman & Co: San Francisco CA,
1983, reprint, p.163)
13/02/2003
"Quadrupedalism characterises the overwhelming majority of ground dwelling mammalian species. It affords
stable equilibrium, is efficient in energy terms, lends itself readily to speed, and is easily learned by the
young, often within hours of birth. It allows for emergencies: a quadruped with one injured leg walks on the
other three while it heals. The gently arched and cantilevered spinal column has been perfected over millions
of years to combine maximum strength with flexibility. No animal could afford to sacrifice all these assets
without an overridingly powerful selective pressure. The cost of habitual plantigrade bipedalism is high. It is
the most unstable method of mammalian progress known to zoology. Growing bipeds only perfect the art
after years of practice and innumerable tumbles. Even in their prime, damage to one leg can cripple them;
once past it, equilibrium again becomes a problem. The bipedal posture, with viscera and male sex organs
exposed to attack, is ill designed for confronting an enemy or predator. In a biped the vertebrae and
intervertebral discs are subjected to weights and stresses which the spines of quadrupeds do not have to
sustain. The S-shaped curve of the human spine minimises direct downward pressure but creates an area of
instability in the lumbar region. The modified angle of the pelvis means that in childbirth the foetus has a
more tortuous exit path to negotiate than is the case in quadrupeds. In man, the change from a quadrupedal
to a bipedal stance raises the heart roughly twice as high above the ground, and the resultant pooling of the
blood in the lower limbs puts additional strain on the vascular system." (Morgan E., "Why a New Theory is
Needed," in Roede M., Wind J., Patrick J.M. & Reynolds V., eds, "The Aquatic Ape: Fact or Fiction?: The
First Scientific Evaluation of a Controversial Theory of Human Evolution," Souvenir Press: London, 1991,
pp.9-10)
13/02/2003
"In all land mammals, with the exception of man, the trachea extends from the lungs via the larynx into the
back of the nasal passages; they are known as obligatory nose breathers. The obligation is not absolute: the
epiglottis in many animals can, at need, be detached from the palate to afford temporary mouth breathing for
purposes of vocalisation or thermoregulatory panting. But as soon as these efforts are relaxed, nose
breathing resumes. This near-universal system is highly efficient. It facilitates olfaction; it ensures that all air
reaching the lungs has been filtered, warmed or cooled to near body temperature, and moistened by passing
over the mildly bactericidal mucous linings of the nasal passages. It enables an animal to drink and breathe
at the same time. It entirely rules out any possibility of an animal being inconvenienced by food and drink
entering the airways. In an adult human being these advantages and safeguards have been lost. The larynx
has lost contact with the palate and descended to a point well below the back of the tongue, adjacent to the
opening of the gullet. It is a development which mystified Darwin and Negus, among others. No one has
been able to suggest any advantage which this change would bestow on a terrestrial mammal. The effects
seem uniformly deleterious." (Morgan E., "Why a New Theory is Needed," in Roede M., Wind J., Patrick
J.M. & Reynolds V., eds, "The Aquatic Ape: Fact or Fiction?: The First Scientific Evaluation of a
Controversial Theory of Human Evolution," Souvenir Press: London, 1991, pp.14-15)
13/02/2003
"But if we come to the conclusion that natural selection is probably the main cause of change in a
population, we certainly need not go back completely to Darwin's point of view. In the first place, we have
every reason to believe that new species may arise quite suddenly, sometimes by hybridisation, sometimes
perhaps by other means. Such species do not arise, as Darwin thought, by natural selection. When they
have arisen they must justify their existence before the tribunal of natural selection, but that is a very
different matter." (Haldane, J.B.S., "The Causes of Evolution," [1932], Princeton University Press: Princeton
NJ, 1993, Second Printing, p.75)
14/02/2003
"For in the Myth, 'Evolution' (as the Myth understands it) is the formula of all existence. To exist
means to be moving from the status of 'almost zero' to the status of 'almost infinity'. To those brought up on
the Myth nothing seems more normal, more natural, more plausible, than that chaos should turn into order,
death into life, ignorance into knowledge. And with this we reach the full-blown Myth. It is one of the most
moving and satisfying world dramas which have ever been imagined. ... I grew up believing in this Myth and
I have felt-I still feel-its almost perfect grandeur. Let no one say we are an unimaginative age: neither the
Greeks nor the Norsemen ever invented a better story. Even to the present day, in certain moods, I could
almost find it in my heart to wish that it was not mythical, but true." (Lewis, C.S.*, "The Funeral of a Great
Myth", in "Christian Reflections," [1967], Fount: Glasgow UK, 1988, reprint, pp.115,117. Emphasis in
original)
14/02/2003
"Writing in Science in 1992, the Grants noted that the superior fitness of hybrids among populations of
Darwin's finches `calls into question their designation as species.' [Grant P.R. & Grant B.R, "Hybridization of
Bird Species," Science, Vol. 256, 1992, pp. 193-197] The following year, Peter Grant acknowledged
that if species were strictly defined by inability to interbreed then `we would recognize only two species of
Darwin's finch on Daphne,' instead of the usual four [Grant P.R., "Hybridization of Darwin's finches on Isla
Daphne Major, Galapagos," Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London B, Vol. 340,
1993, pp.127-139]. `The three populations of ground finches on Genovesa would similarly be reduced to one
species,' Grant continued. `At the extreme, six species would be recognized in place of the current 14, and
additional study might necessitate yet further reduction.'" (Wells J.*, "Icons of Evolution: Science or
Myth?: Why Much of What We Teach About Evolution is Wrong," Regnery: Washington DC, 2000,
pp.172, 312n)
15/02/2003
"At any street corner we may meet a man who utters the frantic and blasphemous statement that he may be
wrong. Every day one comes across somebody who says that of course his view may not be the right one.
Of course his view must be the right one, or it is not his view." (Chesterton G.K., "Orthodoxy," [1908],
Fontana: London, 1961, reprint, p.32)
17/02/2003
"`The audiences that come to hear me are, I often feel, seeking a kind of reassurance,' states the
distinguished paleontologist Richard Leakey in the prologue to his book Origins Reconsidered, referring to
the question and answer sessions that close his public lectures. And he is right. They do need
"reassurance' If the philosophical undercurrents of evolutionism are legitimate, this may be the escape
clause freeing us from any demands of God, and, of course, any penalties. If we are really nothing more than
clever, bipedal apes, a major premise of Leakey's books and lectures, then we can kick back and relax. As the
temporary end product of a long string of fortunate accidents, this could be cause to rejoice. We have a `Get
Out of Jail Free' card. We can sing `I Did It My Way' Sinatra-style without irritating repercussions. Shunning
the `narrow gate' (Matt. 13,14), we can sashay through that `wide gate' doing a soft shoe, wearing a top hat,
spats, and cane if the evolutionists are right. What if the evolutionists are wrong? The stakes are quite high.
The Bible is replete with ominous warnings. If we choose the wrong path, we face `weeping,' `wailing,' and
`gnashing of teeth' (Matt. 8:12; 13:42; 13:50; 22:13; 24:51; 25:30; Luke 13:28). And it only lasts for all eternity!
On the positive side, life is in the offing - eternal life, and although there are some conditions, it is available
to all." (Fischer D., "The Origins Solution: An Answer in the Creation-Evolution Debate," Fairway Press:
Lima OH, 1996, pp.15-16)
18/02/2003
"Astronomy provides another example where contemporary scientists assume an intelligent primary cause
of certain kinds of events. The search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) has raised the question as to
how one would recognize a signal received on a radio telescope. The well-known astronomer Carl Sagan
believes that even a single message from outer space would establish the existence of ETI. He wrote: `There
are others who believe that our problems are soluble, that humanity is still in its childhood, that one day
soon we will grow up. The receipt of single message from space would show that it is possible to live
through such technological adolescence: the transmitting civilization, after all, has survived. Such
knowledge, it seems to me, might be worth a great price.' (Sagan C., "Broca's Brain," 1979, p.275, emphasis
added, in Geisler N.L. & Anderson J.K., "Origin Science: A Proposal for the Creation-Evolution
Controversy," Baker: Grand Rapids MI, 1987, pp.143-144)
19/02/2003
"Although I did not think much about the existence of a personal God until a considerably later period of my
life, I will here give the vague conclusions to which I have been driven. The old argument of design in
nature, as given by Paley, which formerly seemed to me so conclusive, fails, now that the law of natural
selection has been discovered. We can no longer argue that, for instance, the beautiful hinge of a bivalve
shell must have been made by an intelligent being, like the hinge of a door by man. There seems to be no
more design in the variability of organic beings and in the action of natural selection, than in the course
which the wind blows. Everything in nature is the result of fixed laws." (Darwin, C.R., in Barlow, N., ed., "The
Autobiography of Charles Darwin, 1809-1882: With Original Omissions Restored," [1958], W.W. Norton &
Co: New York NY, 1969, reprint, p.87)
20/02/2003
"The abrupt appearance of the Cambrian fauna constituted a major biological problem. The various
organisms found in the Cambrian are life forms with organs and characteristics as complex and developed as
those of some found today. Furthermore, to compound the mystery, all phyla (divisions based on
fundamental anatomical features) known today are present in the Cambrian fossils." (Day W., "Genesis on
Planet Earth: The Search for Life's Beginning," [1979], Yale University Press: New Haven CT, Second
Edition, 1984, p.16)
20/02/2003
"An examination of the human DNA molecule, the genetic blueprint of man, shows that many of the same
sorts of genes and gene sequences are found in lower animals. Some creationists would say this is not
surprising. Since man has many of the same physiological functions as lower animals, our DNA naturally
would carry comparable information. Thus the argument has been made that any resemblances in DNA
mean only that God used similar gene sequences to order similar functions. Although there may be a
commonality of design, as the argument goes, that does not prove common descent. ... The case for
common design but no common descent becomes suspect when the entire human DNA sequence is
analyzed, and copying errors are found in the same places in the DNA of non-humans. In addition to genes
that function normally, we have nonfunctioning genes as well, called `pseudogenes.' Our DNA sequence is
a complicated set of instructions that appears to have a long history of replications, and therefore contains
an abundance of pseudogenes. Humans have pseudogenes incorporated along the entire DNA sequence
that can also be found in other animals, i.e., the chimpanzee and gorilla. It is one thing to suggest that God
may have modeled our DNA along the same lines as lower animals, such that similarities are due to like
genes ordering a protein sequence serving a like function. It is quite another to assert that God also
incorporated all the excess nonfunctioning baggage too." (Fischer D., "The Origins Solution: An Answer in
the Creation-Evolution Debate," Fairway Press: Lima OH, 1996, pp.64-65)
20/02/2003
"According to his Autobiography Darwin read Malthus' work An Essay on the Principle of
Population in October 1838, and this, he asserts, gave him the idea that if there is a struggle of existence,
then natural selection may be responsible for evolutionary change. Eiseley ... finds it unnecessary that
Darwin should resort to this author to hit upon the idea of 'the struggle for existence'. For besides the
articles by Blyth ... this notion had been dealt with in the works of his grandfather Erasmus, in Paley's
Natural Theology, in Lyell's Principles of Geology and even in Lamarck's Philosophie
Zoologique - all works well known to Darwin. His own son, Francis, was surprised that he needed
Malthus for inspiration, pointing out that Darwin had formulated the outlines of his theory in 1837 ... In fact
Eiseley [Eiseley L.C., "Darwin and the Mysterious Mr. X," E.P. Dutton: New York NY, 1979, pp.67-68]
pointed out that, considering the importance of Malthus conceded in the autobiography, it is remarkable
how little this author is mentioned in the 'Sketch' of 1842 and the 'Essay' of 1844, and even in the early
correspondence. For instance, in the letter to Gray in September 1857, read before the Linnean Society in
July 1858, Darwin mentions De Candolle, Herbert, and Lyell as authors on the struggle for life, but not
Malthus. Wallace later told how his inspiration came from reading Malthus' book, and this influence is
evident in Wallace's small paper from 1858, even if the name of Malthus does not occur in the text. The
passage from the 'Essay' of 1844, which was selected for the Darwin-Wallace contribution at the Linnean
Society, is the only one in which Malthus is mentioned, and it is possible that is was chosen 'because of its
correspondence with the subject matter of Wallace's essay'" (Løvtrup, S., "Darwinism: The Refutation of a
Myth," Croom Helm: London, 1987, pp.27-28)
21/02/2003
"[I JN. 2] 18 ... John refers to Antichrist and to many anti-Christs. You heard of him, John says: this was a
favorite topic in early Christian teaching. Our Lord had prophesied that false Christs would arise (Mt. 24:24)
and that they would be many in number, (Mt. 24:5), but the word which we have here does not mean a mock
Christ, but an opponent of Christ, or a rival Christ. It denotes one great enemy of and rival to Christ,
probably to be identified with the "man of sin" of 2 Thes. 2:3, who has yet to be revealed but who has many
fore-runners. The fore-runners of John's day were heretics like Cerinthus and others who had wrong views
of the Person of Christ, which is always the worst kind of heresy. They denied that He had come in the flesh
(4:3). 19 John now describes the relation of these anti-Christian teachers to the Church. They did not arise in
the heathen world; they were apostate Christians. They had at one time been members of the Church, but
only nominal members. They are now not members in any sense. Note the fivefold repetition of "us," as
indicating the Christian Church. It was God's will and purpose that these spurious members should be
known as such, that it should be made clear that they are not, any of them, of us." (Ross A., "The Epistles of
James and John,", Marshall, Morgan & Scott: London, 1954, Third Impression, 1964, pp.169-170)
22/02/2003
"2:18-19 `Many antichrists'. 18 There is no article with hour. John is saying 'this is last hour', by which he
probably means 'this is a last hour'. Human history proceeds by periods of slow unfolding until a crisis is
reached, an age is ended, a new age begins, and we say, 'It can never be the same again.' John is affirming
that such a last hour has come. He sees evidence in the appearance not simply of `the antichrist', but of
`many antichrists'. The early church clearly expected that a mighty figure of evil, the `antichrist', would
appear at the end of time (cf 'the man of lawlessness', 2 Thes. 13). John uses the term four times (and once in
2 John) but he is not interested in the future evil individual. His concern is for his readers, and he stresses
for them the fact that the spirit of antichrist is already abroad. The situation is the same today. 19 These
many antichrists had been members of the church. They had belonged to the visible organization, but John
is quick to say `they did not really belong to us'. Their membership had been purely outward. This surely
implies the doctrine of 'the church invisible' though that terminology is centuries later." (Morris L.L, "1
John," in Carson D.A., et al., eds, "New Bible Commentary," [1953], Inter-Varsity Press, Leicester UK,
Fourth Edition, 1997, reprint, pp.1402-1403)
22/02/2003
"The idea that Darwinism's rapid triumph was solely scientific without regard to his and others' courting of
public opinion, is a historical myth that assures us of the power of science and its victory on the merits of
evidence regardless of ideology, religion, or social mores. It is the same with the myth of Huxley's triumph
over Wilberforce. The culture of science and science historians have created a myth which fits very well a
history that depicts the intellectual, even moral, superiority of science. ... Chapter 1 concerns the nature of
Darwin's "victory," the first myth, which, I argue, was not due solely to its scientific merit. Darwin actually
had quite a publicity machine at work, and the rapid triumph of his conception of the origin of species over
the idea of special creation is indebted substantially to the avalanche of reviews and popular lectures loosed
upon the public. When a small group of young scientists agreed in 1860 to help publish the Natural History
Review, their purpose was to enlist scientists in the Darwinian cause and to assail the opposition.' The
publication died after a only a few years, but a clique committed to Darwinism coalesced around it. Its
members understood public opinion and how to manipulate it." (Caudill E., "Darwinian Myths: The Legends
and Misuses of a Theory," The University of Tennessee Press: Knoxville TN, 1997, pp.xvi, 1)
22/02/2003
"Only nine per cent of Americans accept the central finding of modern biology that human beings (and all
the other species) have slowly evolved by natural processes from a succession of more ancient beings with
no divine intervention needed along the way." (Sagan C., "The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle
in the Dark," [1996], Headline: London, 1997, reprint, p.305)
22/02/2003
"The public has remained anti-evolution to this day. Science has accepted Darwin without, at this time,
respectable dissent. The more sophisticated churches no longer quarrel publicly with it. But the general
public, in what is probably the majority opinion if a vote were to be taken, stubbornly adheres to the tenets
of a lost and dead orthodoxy of a century and a quarter ago." (Asimov I., "The Role of the Heretic," in "The
Roving Mind," [1983], Oxford University Press: Oxford UK, 1987, reprint, p.50)
22/02/2003
"The fallacy of irrelevant thesis, therefore, is an argument in which an attempt is made to prove a
conclusion that is not the one at issue. This fallacy assumes the form of an argument that, while seeming to
refute another's argument, actually advances a conclusion different from the one at issue in the other's
argument. Of all the fallacies studied thus far none is potentially more deceptive-or, for that matter, more
interesting-than irrelevant thesis. This fallacy goes by a variety of names: irrelevant conclusion, ignoring
the issue, befogging the issue, diversion, and red herring. Red herring may seem a puzzling name. It
derives from the fact that escapees sometimes smear themselves with a herring (which turns brown or red
when it spoils) in order to throw dogs off their track. To sway a red herring in an argument is to try to throw
the audience off the right track onto something not relevant to the issue at hand. The fallacy of irrelevant
thesis derives its persuasive power from the fact that it often does prove a conclusion or thesis (though not
the one at issue)." (Engel S.M., "With Good Reason: An Introduction to Informal Fallacies," St. Martin's
Press: New York NY, Fourth Edition, 1990, pp.162-163.
Emphasis original)
22/02/2003
"This suggests that, in an argument, a man who maintains an extreme position (such as "All Xs are Y") is in
a very unfavourable position for successful controversy. Many people consciously or unconsciously adopt
a trick based on this principle. This is the trick of driving their opponents to defend a more extreme position
than is really necessary for their purpose. Against an incautious opponent this can often be done simply by
contradicting his more moderate assertions until in the heat of controversy he boldly puts forward more and
more extreme ones. ... A person cautious in argument will not, however, be so easily led to court defeat. He
will constantly reaffirm the moderate and defensible position with which he started, and the extreme
statements of his opponent will be rebutted by evidence instead of leading him on to equally extreme
statements on the other side. ... Let us call this device the 'extension' of one's opponent's proposition. It can
be used either by luring him on to extend it himself in the heat of argument or, more impudently, by
misrepresenting what he said. It is a very common trick, often done involuntarily. The remedy is always to
refuse to accept any extension, but to reaffirm what one originally said." (Thouless R.H., "Straight and
Crooked Thinking," [1930], Pan: London, Revised Edition, 1973, 15th Printing, pp.35-36)
22/02/2003
"1 JOHN 2:18 ... `the antichrist ... many antichrists'. John assumed his readers knew that a great enemy of
God and his people will arise before Christ's return. That person is called "antichrist" (v. 18), "the man of
lawlessness" (2Th 2:3; but see note there) and "the beast" (Rev 13:1-10). But prior to him, there will be many
antichrists. These are characterized by the following: (1) They deny the incarnation (4:2; 2Jn 7) and that
Jesus is the divine Christ (v. 22); (2) they deny the Father (v. 22); (3) they do not have the Father (v. 23); (4)
they are liars (v. 22) and deceivers (2Jn 7); (5) they are many (v. 18); (6) in John's day they left the church
because they had nothing in common with believers (v. 19). The antichrists referred to in John's letter were
the early Gnostics. The "anti" in antichrist means "against" (cf. 2Th 2:4; Rev 13:6-7)" (Barker K., ed., "The
NIV Study Bible," Zondervan: Grand Rapids MI, 1985, pp.1909-1910)
23/02/2003
"The prestigious British journal Nature published this statement from physicist John Gribbin: `The
biggest problem with the Big Bang theory of the origin of the Universe is philosophical-perhaps even
theological-what was there before the bang? This problem alone was sufficient to give a great initial impetus
to the Steady State theory; but with that theory now sadly in conflict with the observations, the best way
round this initial difficulty is provided by a model in which the universe expands from a singularity [that is, a
beginning], collapses back again, and repeats the cycle indefinitely.'" (Gribbin J., "Oscillating Universe
Bounces Back," Nature, Vol. 259, 1976, pp.15-16, in Ross H.N., "The Creator and the Cosmos: How the
Greatest Scientific Discoveries of the Century Reveal God," [1993], NavPress: Colorado Springs CO., 1994,
Third Printing, pp.55-56, 163n)
23/02/2003
"As Darwin remarked in the second edition of his Journal of Researches. `Seeing this gradation and
diversity of structure in one small, intimately related group of birds, one might really fancy that from an
original paucity of birds in this archipelago, one species had been taken and modified for different ends'
(1845:380). ... Given the remarkable nature of these birds, it is (if considerable historical interest to
reconstruct the role they played in Darwin's intellectual development. This problem really involves three
separate questions. First, how did Darwin initially interpret the morphology and behavior of the various
species of this unusual avian group while he was in the Galapagos Archipelago? Second, to what extent did
he appreciate the striking correlation between geographic isolation and the diversity of endemic finch forms
and thus take steps to separate his collections according to the different islands he visited? Third what
aspects of Darwin's understanding of this avian group were retrospective, that is, developed after he had
left the Galapagos and had returned to England? Given the fame of this episode in Darwin's life, there has
been a surprising degree of misunderstanding and misinformation regarding these three questions. In fact,
over the years Darwin's finches have become the focus for a considerable legend in the history of science,
one that ranks alongside other famous stories that celebrate the great triumphs of modern science."
(Sulloway F.J., "Darwin and His Finches: The Evolution of a Legend," Journal of the History of Biology, Vol.
15, No. 1, 1982, pp.1-53, pp.3,5)
25/02/2003
"The reason why the Bible teaches that the final judgment will be according to works, even though
salvation comes through faith in Christ and is never earned by works, is the intimate connection between
faith and works. Faith must reveal itself in works, and works, in turn, are the evidence of true faith. As John
Calvin once put it, `It is ... faith alone which justifies, and yet the faith which justifies is not alone.' That this
is so will be clear from a consideration of such Scripture passages as James 2:26 ("For as the body apart
from the spirit is dead, so faith apart from works is dead") and Galatians 5:6 ("For in Christ Jesus neither
circumcision nor uncircumcision is of any avail, but faith working through love'). Note also Jesus' words in
Matthew 7:21, `Not everyone who says to me, 'Lord, Lord,' shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who
does the will of my Father who is in heaven.' The judgment according to works, in other words, will really be
a judgment about faith-that is, faith as revealed in its evidence. If the faith was genuine, the works will be
there; if the works are not there, the faith was not real. James puts it very strikingly: `But someone will say,
'You have faith and I have works.' Show me your faith apart from your works, and I by my works will show
you my faith' (2:18)." (Hoekema A.A., "The Bible and the Future," [1978], Paternoster Press Exeter, Devon
UK, 1979, p.261)
25/02/2003
"There is, however, a specific New Testament passage which points unambiguously to a final apostasy
which will occur just before the Parousia. We turn now to Paul's second epistle to the Thessalonians:
`Now concerning the coming (parousia) of our Lord Jesus Christ and our assembling to meet him, we
beg you, brethren, not to be quickly shaken in mind or excited, either by spirit or by word, or by letter
purporting to be from us, to the effect that the day of the Lord has come. Let no one deceive you in any
way; for that day will not come, unless the rebellion [or apostasy; Greek, apostasia] comes first, and the
man of lawlessness is revealed.. ." (2:1-3). ... The word apostasia is derived from the verb aphistemi
which when it is used intransitively means `to fall away' or `to become apostate.' As used in II
Thessalonians 2:3, apostasia is preceded by a definite article: the apostasy or the rebellion. Both the
definite article and the statement that this happening must precede the Parousia indicate that what is
predicted here is a final, climactic apostasy just before the end-time. It should be noted, however, that
this apostasy will be an intensification and culmination of a rebellion which has already begun, since in
verse 7 Paul says, `For the mystery of lawlessness is already at work.' We may see a parallel, therefore,
between this sign and the sign of tribulation: both are evident throughout the present age but come to
a climactic and final form just before Christ returns. The fact that this sign is called a `falling away' or
`apostasy' implies that this will be a rebellion against the Christian faith as it has been heard or
professed. We may therefore assume that those who fall away will be at least outwardly associated
with the people of God. The apostasy will occur within the ranks of the members of the visible church.
Those who are true believers will not fall away (John 10:27-29; I Pet. 1:3-5); but many who have made an
outward profession of the faith will do so." (Hoekema, A.A., "The Bible and the Future," [1978],
Paternoster Press: Exeter UK, British edition, 1979, p.153)
26/02/2003
"If the term "macro-evolution" is applied to the rise of taxonomic groups that are at or near the minimum
level of genetic discontinuity (species and genera), the large-scale evolution studied by the paleontologist
might be called "mega-evolution" (a hybrid word, but so is "macro-evolution"). The assumption, as in
Goldschmidt's work, that mega-evolution and macroevolution are the same in all respects is no more justified
than the assumption, so violently attacked by Goldschmidt and others, that microevolution and macro-
evolution differ only in degree. As will be shown, the paleontologist has more reason to believe in a
qualitative distinction between macro-evolution and mega-evolution than in one between microevolution
and macro-evolution." (Simpson, G.G., "Tempo and Mode in Evolution," [1944], Columbia University Press:
New York, Third Printing, 1949, p.98)
26/02/2003
"The facts are that many species and genera, indeed the majority, do appear suddenly in the record,
differing sharply and in many ways from any earlier group, and that this appearance of discontinuity
becomes more common the higher the level, until it is virtually universal as regards orders and all higher
steps in the taxonomic hierarchy. The face of the record thus does really suggest normal discontinuity at all
levels, most particularly at high levels, and some paleontologists (e.g., Spath and Schindewolf) insist on
taking the record at this face value. " (Simpson, G.G., "Tempo and Mode in Evolution," [1944], Columbia
University Press: New York, Third Printing, 1949, p.99)
26/02/2003
"From the facts already discussed, one notices that the `maneuvering space' of evolution has never stopped
decreasing. The genesis of the phyla stopped in the Ordovician; of the classes, in the Jurassic; of the
orders, in the Paleocene-Eocene. After the Eocene, the evolutionary `sap' still flowed through a few orders,
since mammals and birds continued to specialize in various directions and invaded all the terrestrial and
marine biotopes previously occupied by reptiles. The extent of evolutionary novelties gradually changed.
They no longer affected the structural plan but only involved details. The only form which evolution took
was speciation: in insects since the Oligocene, in mollusks since the Miocene, in birds and simians since the
Pliocene, and in some glirines and hominids since the Holocene; Homo sapiens, the last in line, is
probably 100,000 years old. Evolution has not only slowed down, but with the aging of the biosphere, it has
also decreased in scope and in extent. We are certain that it does not operate today as it did in the remote
past. Something has changed. It is of the utmost importance to determine what has changed; this should
shed light upon the internal mechanisms of the phenomena. The structural plans no longer undergo
complete reorganization; novelties are no longer plentiful. Evolution, after its last enormous effort to form
the mammalian orders and man, seems to be out of breath and drowsing off." (Grasse P.-P., "Evolution of
Living Organisms: Evidence for a New Theory of Transformation," Academic Press: New York, 1977, pp.70-
71)
27/02/2003
"We distinguish three possible theories of the history of life. In this chapter, we will be asking whether,
according to the scientific evidence, one species has evolved into another in the past, or whether each
species had a separate origin and has remained fixed in form ever since that origin. For purposes of
argument, it is useful to have some articulate alternatives. We can discuss three theories (Figure 3.1): (a)
evolution, (b) transformism, in which species change, but the number of origins of species matches the
number of species, and (c) separate creation, in which species originate separately and remain fixed. We will,
therefore, consider the evidence for two evolutionary claims: (1) that species have changed in Darwin's
sense of "descent with modification," and (2) that all species share a common ancestor, and that change
occurs through a tree like history." (Ridley, Mark, "Evolution," [1993], Blackwell: Cambridge MA, Second
Edition, 1996, Third Printing, 1999, p.40)
27/02/2003
"Creationism offers no explanation for adaptation. Another powerful reason why evolutionary biologists do
not take creationism seriously is that creationism offers no explanation for adaptation. Living things are well
designed, in innumerable respects, for life in their natural environments. They have sensory systems to find
their way around, feeding systems to catch and digest food, and nervous systems to coordinate their
actions. The theory of evolution offers a mechanical, scientific theory for adaptation: natural selection.
Creationism, by contrast, provides no explanation for adaptation. When each species originated, it must
have already been equipped with adaptations for life, because the theory holds that species are fixed in form
after their origin. An unabashedly religious version of creationism would attribute the adaptiveness of living
things to the genius of God. Even this theory does not actually explain the origin of the adaptation, but
simply pushes the problem back one stage (section 13.1, p. 338). In the scientific version of creationism
(Figure 3.1c), supernatural events do not take place, and we are left with no theory of adaptation at all.
Without a theory of adaptation, as Darwin realized (section 1.3.2), any theory of the origin of living things
fails." (Ridley, Mark, "Evolution," [1993], Blackwell: Cambridge MA, Second Edition, 1996, Third Printing,
1999, p.65)
27/02/2003
"Dr. Gray endeavours to vindicate Darwin's theory from the charge of atheism. His arguments, however,
only go to prove that the doctrine of development, or derivation of species, may be held in a form consistent
with theism. This is no one denies. They do not prove that Mr. Darwin presents it in that form. Dr. Gray
himself admits all that those who regard the Darwinian theory as atheistic contend for. He says, `The
proposition that things and events in nature were not designed to be so, if logically- carried out, is
doubtless tantamount to atheism.' Again, he says, `To us, a fortuitous Cosmos is simply inconceivable. The
alternative is a designed Cosmos ... If Mr. Darwin believes that the events which he supposes to have
occurred and the results we behold were undirected and undesigned, or if the physicist believes that the
natural forces to which he refers phenomena are uncaused and undirected, no argument is needed to show
that such belief is atheistic.' No argument, after what has been said above, can be needed to show that Mr.
Darwin does teach that natural causes are `undirected,' and that they act without design or reference to an
end. This is not only explicitly and repeatedly asserted, but argued for, and the opposite view ridiculed and
rejected. His book was hailed as the death-blow of teleology. Darwin, therefore, does each precisely what
Dr. Gray pronounces - atheism. A man, it seems, may believe-in God, and yet teach atheism." (Hodge, C.,
"Systematic Theology," [1892], James Clark & Co: London, Vol. II, 1960, reprint, pp.18-19)
[top]
March
1/03/03
"On the botanical side of biology we are greatly mistaken if we think that a scientist of the calibre of Joseph
Hooker was a fool not to recognize and accept evolution as an explanation of so many of his problems long
before he did. It is not entirely wild to say even today that to accept a general theory of evolution by
mutations with natural selection (a more or less orthodox position in 1962) requires as much faith as to
accept some theory of special creation. There are still innumerable problems concerning the course of
evolution, of how and when changes occurred in this and that group of plants (and, one supposes, of
animals), that remain unsolved, and proposed solutions are sometimes absurd." (Turrill W.B., "Joseph
Dalton Hooker: Botanist, Explorer, and Administrator," Thomas Nelson & Sons: London, 1963, p.91)
1/03/03
"PJ: Clearly if you have a question, the answer yes and the answer no to the question are still in the same
subject area. So if the affirmation `Yes, natural selection can create as much as is needed,' is science, then
the no answer -- `No, the evidence does not support that' -- is science, too. I vigorously assert that this is
not two subjects but one subject: what does the evidence show and not show about natural processes?
David Von Drehle: I think there are two subjects. There is a scientific debate about what the
evidence shows or doesn't show. And there is a religious debate, with two different religions making claims
about a topic they can't fully understand. PJ: I wouldn't fight you if you wanted to say that there is only one
subject on both sides, and it is religion. They should either teach evolution in religion class and not in
science, or teach it in science and present both sides. It can't be that the yes answer is science and the no
answer is religion." (Johnson P.E.*, "Evolution and the Curriculum: A Conversation with Phillip Johnson
and Gregg Easterbrook," Center Conversations No. 4, September 1999, Ethics and Public Policy Center,
Washington DC. http://www.eppc.org/publications/xq/ASP/pubsID.25/qx/pubs_viewdetail.htm)
1/03/03
"This phenomenon the separate and independent acquisition of similar features-is known as 'convergence'.
The claim of convergence is the most important objection to the bird-dinosaur link. Convergence is an
extremely difficult problem. When confronted by two superficially similar organisms, it is not al ways easy to
spot whether their similarity is a result of shared common ancestry, or an adaptive response to similar
pressures in otherwise unrelated animals. Ornithologists are very sensitive to this problem, because many
otherwise distantly related birds look deceptively similar because of a common response to the pressures of
flight. In a sense, claims of convergence are unanswerable, as one can always make a case, based on
adaptation, that any feature thought indicative of common ancestry really represents a common response to
similar adaptive pressures in unrelated species. Cladistics has a way of addressing the problem: the
invocation of the principle of parsimony. ... Of course, there is no law that says that evolution is always
parsimonious." (Gee H., "In Search of Deep Time: Beyond the Fossil Record to a New History of Life," The
Free Press: New York, 1999, pp.184-185)
2/03/03
"The role of chromosomal rearrangements in speciation has been considered in Chapters 3 and 6. More and
more, it appears as if such rearrangements, of many different types, have played the primary role in
the majority of speciation events. It by no means follows, however, that their significance in
speciation is always of the same type. In fact, each chromosomal rearrangement-whether fusion or
dissociation, translocation, inversion, gain or loss of heterochromatin-must be regarded as a unique
event whose consequences will be almost impossible to predict in the present stage of our knowledge. It is
thus extremely difficult to incorporate chromosomal rearrangements into mathematical models of speciation
and phyletic evolution, which may be one reason why they have been relatively neglected by many
evolutionary geneticists." (White M.J.D., "Modes of Speciation," W.H. Freeman & Co: San Francisco CA,
1978, p.336. Emphasis
mine)
2/03/03
"But the precise sequence of ideas and arguments by which Darwin was persuaded to put evolution and
natural selection together has not been clear. The finishing stroke has recently been accomplished by Loren
Eiseley. It depends on Eiseley's discovery of the use Darwin made of another unacknowledged and hitherto
almost unsuspected source. This is in the work of a young contemporary, the Londoner, Edward Blyth.
What was the work of Blyth? This remarkable naturalist from his chemist's shop in Lower Tooting wrote
three articles on heredity, variation and selection in nature and in domestication. They appeared in the
Magazine of Natural History, between 1835 and 1837. His argument consists in an examination of the great
ideas of selection, artificial, natural and sexual, and the struggle for existence, which he might have picked
up from Erasmus Darwin or any of his successors, such as Lawrence and Prichard (whom he cites). Blyth
attempts to show how these ideas can be used to explain, not the change of species which he was anxious
to discredit, but the stability of species in which he ardently believed. In the course of his argument Blyth
closely examines each of the problems which was to occupy Darwin's mind during the following forty years:
blending inheritance as against mutation, the inheritance of acquired characters, geographical isolation,
geological successions, island faunas, the origin of instinct and so on. In all these relations Blyth quotes a
wealth of examples from his own observations of nature. These afterwards appear repeated, or indeed
copied, by Darwin in his preliminary essays Of 1842 and 1844. The evidence quoted by Eiseley shows us
that in the Origin Darwin is arguing against an invisible and absent opponent. Blyth, whom he does not cite,
was employed far away in Calcutta from 1841 to 1862. Further it also shows us that when Darwin refers to
Malthus as his inspiration in his essay of 1858 and later in his autobiography, he is choosing to avoid
mentioning his significant inspiration which was Blyth." (Darlington C.D., "Darwin's Place in History," Basil
Blackwell: Oxford UK, 1959, pp.34-35)
3/03/03
"In fact, Darwin [by his own account] did not become an evolutionist until many months after his return to
England. Only years later did he look back at the finches and reinterpret them in the light of his new theory.
In 1845 he wrote in the second edition of his journal of Researches: `The most curious fact is the perfect
gradation in the size of the beaks of the different species of [finches]. Seeing this gradation and diversity of
structure in one small, intimately related group of birds, one might really fancy that from an original paucity
of birds in this archipelago, one species had been taken and modified for different ends.' But this was a
speculative afterthought, not an inference from evidence he collected. Indeed, the confusion surrounding
the geographical labeling of Darwin's specimens made it impossible for him to use them as evidence for his
theory. Nor did Darwin have a clear idea of the finches' ancestry. We now know that the thirteen species
resemble each other more than they resemble any birds in Central or South America, suggesting that they
may be descendants of a common ancestor that colonized the islands in the distant past. But Darwin did not
visit the western coast of South America north of Lima, Peru, so for all he knew the finches were identical to
species still living on the mainland." (Wells J.*, "Icons of Evolution: Science or Myth?: Why Much of What
We Teach About Evolution is Wrong," Regnery: Washington DC, 2000, p.162. Parenthesis mine)
3/03/03
"If Dawkins played the role of point man for late-twentieth-century naturalistic evolutionists, Daniel C.
Dennett gladly served as their hatchet man. In a book called Darwin's Dangerous Idea (1995), which
Dawkins warmly endorsed, Dennett portrayed Darwinism as `a universal solvent, capable of cutting right to
the heart of everything in sight"-and particularly effective in dissolving religious beliefs. The most ardent
creationist could not have said it with more conviction, but Dennett's agreement with them ended there. He
despised creationists, arguing that `there are no forces on this planet more dangerous to us all than the
fanaticisms of fundamentalism.' Displaying a degree of intolerance more characteristic of a fanatic
Fundamentalist than an academic philosopher, he called for `caging' those who would deliberately misinform
children about the natural world, just as one would cage a threatening wild animal. `The message is clear,' he
wrote: `those who will not accommodate, who will not temper, who insist on keeping only the purest and
wildest strain of their heritage alive, we will be obliged, reluctantly, to cage or disarm, and we will do our best
to disable the memes [traditions] they fight for.' With the bravado of a man unmindful that only 11 percent
of the public shared his enthusiasm for naturalistic evolution, he warned parents that if they insisted on
teaching their children `falsehoods-that, the Earth is flat, that 'Man' is not a product of evolution by natural
selection-then you must expect, at the very least, that those of us who have freedom of speech will feel free
to describe your teachings as the spreading of false hoods, and will attempt to demonstrate this to your
children at our earliest opportunity.' Those who resisted conversion to Dennett's scientific fundamentalism
would be subject to `quarantine.'" (Numbers, R.L., "Darwinism Comes to America," Harvard University Press:
Cambridge MA, 1998, p.13)
4/03/03
"If all the information possessed about the fossil record readily formed the kind of pattern that could have
been produced by the operation of the mechanisms of evolutionary change that are well known and
understood from living organisms, there would be no problem; the perceived pattern would be immediately
compatible with the proposed process. If, for example, all fossils fell into finely graded sequences exhibiting
gradual changes in characters up the stratigraphic column, and if simple neo-Darwinian natural selection
was the only known cause of evolutionary change, then the explanatory theory that would no doubt emerge
would be that these various lineages of species form a series of named groups, within each of which the
members are evolutionarily related to one another, having been produced by natural selection. The groups
would form an evolutionary classification that offered an explanation for the existence and nature of those
particular fossils. Unfortunately the situation is not so simple, for the observed fossil pattern is invariably
not compatible with a gradualistic evolutionary process. (Kemp T.S., "Fossils and Evolution," Oxford
University Press: Oxford UK, 1999, pp.15-16) 4/03/03
"According to Darwin, his recognition of the principle of natural selection came in October of 1838 when he
chanced to read Thomas Malthus on population and perceived that the geometric increase of living forms
would create a struggle in nature which would in turn promote the survival of advantageous variations.
Actually, however, this statement now appears open to some doubt. In the first place, it was not necessary
for Darwin to read Malthus in order to realize the intensity of the struggle for existence. Leaving aside
Blyth's contribution, mention of it occurs in the writings of Darwin's grandfather Erasmus, in Paley's Natural
Theology, and in the Principles of Geology by Sir Charles Lyell. Even Lamarck mentions it in the Philosophie
Zoologique. All of these were works Darwin had read when he was young and impressionable. His own son
Francis expressed surprise that he should have had to turn to Malthus for inspiration. Furthermore, Francis
pointed out what we know to be true, that in 1837 he had already given vent to the essential aspects of the
principle." (Darwin F., ed., "Foundations of the Origin of Species," Cambridge University Press: Cambridge,
1909, pp.xvi, 242n)". (Eiseley L.C., "Charles Darwin, Edward Blyth, and the Theory of Natural Selection," in
"Darwin and the Mysterious Mr. X," E.P. Dutton: New York, 1979, p.67)
5/03/03
"As for David Hume himself, it is sometimes said that that great Scottish philosopher disposed of the
Argument from Design a century before Darwin. But what Hume did was criticize the logic of using apparent
design in nature as positive evidence for the existence of a God. He did not offer any alternative explanation
for apparent design, but left the question open. An atheist before Darwin could have said, following Hume:
'I have no explanation for complex biological design. All I know is that God isn't a good explanation, so we
must wait and hope that somebody comes up with a better one.' I can't help feeling that such a position,
though logically sound, would have left one feeling pretty unsatisfied, and that although atheism might
have been logically tenable before Darwin, Darwin made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist."
(Dawkins R., "The Blind Watchmaker," [1986], Penguin: London, 1991, reprint, p.6)
5/03/03
"My colleague and former student, Dr. Gerald Henderson of Brooklyn College, has raised an interesting
point in this connection. He maintains that after Darwin had received Wallace's sketch of 1858 and
preparations were made for the joint papers to be given before the Linnean Society, the passage from the
essay of 1844 which was selected by Hooker, Lyell and Darwin to be incorporated into Darwin's
announcement was the only one in which Malthus was mentioned. Dr. Henderson points out that the
famous letter to Gray of 1857 contains no reference to Malthus. Instead, de Candolle, Lyell and Herbert are
extolled as Darwin's authorities. It is Dr. Henderson's considered opinion that the passage referring to
Malthus was deliberately chosen for presentation to the Linnean Society `because of its correspondence
with the subject matter of Wallace's essay.' From the time of Wallace's appearance on the scene, Dr.
Henderson contends, the significance of Malthus began to bulk larger in Darwin's public declarations about
the origin of his views on species. As I have pointed out, to have referred to Lyell, for example, as the direct
source of one's ideas upon evolutionary struggle in nature would have been to quote a man publicly
opposed to evolution in support of that doctrine. Since Malthus was active in a quite different field, and
was, in addition, the basic source of much of the thinking on the struggle for existence in early nineteenth-
century England, it was convenient to have recourse to him as the `authority.' It is also possible that Darwin
found it easy to fall in with Wallace's use of Malthus partly because a natural rivalry dictated his desire to
show he was no less aware of Malthus than Wallace was. This curious chain of events had, in any event,
the effect of obscuring ever more deeply the real origin of Darwin's evolutionary system. Some of Darwin's
hesitations, long delays over publishing, and almost neurotic anxiety can now perhaps be better
understood. He had his secrets, and, as I hope to show a little later, he had his justification for them."
(Eiseley L.C., "Charles Darwin, Edward Blyth, and the Theory of Natural Selection," in "Darwin and the
Mysterious Mr. X," E.P. Dutton: New York, 1979, pp.67-68)
6/03/03
"The final fallacy of this sort that we will consider is known as poisoning the well. In such arguments an
attempt is made to place the opponent in a position from which he or she is unable to reply. This form of the
fallacy received its name from John Henry Cardinal Newman, a nineteenth-century British churchman, in one
of his frequent controversies with the clergyman and novelist Charles Kingsley. During the course of their
dispute, Kingsley suggested that Newman, as a Roman Catholic priest, did not place the highest value on
truth. Newman protested that such an accusation made it impossible for him, or for any other Catholic, to
state his case. For how could he prove to Kingsley that he had more regard for truth than for anything else if
Kingsley presupposed that he did not? Kingsley had automatically ruled out anything that Newman might
offer in defense. Kingsley, in other words, had poisoned the well of discourse, making it impossible for
anyone to partake of it. ... Anyone attempting to rebut these arguments would be hard pressed to do so, for
anything he or she said would only seem to strengthen the accusation against the person saying it. The
very attempt to reply succeeds only in placing someone in an even more impossible position. It is as if,
being accused of talking too much, one cannot argue against the accusation without condemning one self;
the more one talks the more one helps establish the truth of the accusation. And that is perhaps what such
unfair tactics are ultimately designed to do: by discrediting in advance the only source from which evidence
either for or against a particular position can arise, they seek to avoid opposition by precluding discussion."
(Engel S.M., "With Good Reason: An Introduction to Informal Fallacies," St. Martin's Press: New York,
Fourth Edition, 1990, pp.195-196)
7/03/03
"The theory of punctuated equilibrium is a minor gloss on Darwinism, one which Darwin himself might well
have approved if the issue had been discussed in his time. As a minor gloss, it does not deserve a
particularly large measure of publicity. The reason it has in fact received such publicity, and why I have felt
obliged to devote a whole chapter of this book to it, is simply that the theory has been sold - oversold by
some journalists - as if it were radically opposed to the views of Darwin and his successors. (Dawkins R.,
"The Blind Watchmaker," [1986], Penguin: London, 1991, reprint, p.250)
7/03/03
"Any definition of the category 'higher taxon' is bound to be rather subjective, and will be along the lines of:
a monophyletic group of organisms that is sufficiently distinctive and morphologically discontinuous from
other contemporaneous taxa." (Kemp T.S., "Fossils and Evolution," Oxford University Press: Oxford UK,
1999, p.217)
8/03/03
"Many biological ideas proposed during the past 150 years stood in stark conflict with what everybody
assumed to be true. The acceptance of these ideas required an ideological revolution. And no biologist has
been responsible for more-and for more drastic-modifications of the average person's worldview than
Charles Darwin. ... Remember that in 1850 virtually all leading scientists and philosophers were Christian
men. The world they inhabited had been created by God, and as the natural theologians claimed, He had
instituted wise laws that brought about the perfect adaptation of all organisms to one another and to their
environment. ... Such was the thinking of Western man prior to the 1859 publication of on the Origin of
Species. The basic principles proposed by Darwin would stand in total conflict with these prevailing
ideas. First, Darwinism rejects all supernatural phenomena and causations. The theory of evolution by
natural selection explains the adaptedness and diversity of the world solely materialistically. It no longer
requires God as creator or designer .... Darwin pointed out that creation, as described in the Bible ... was
contradicted by almost any aspect of the natural world. Every aspect of the `wonderful design' so admired
by the natural theologians could be explained by natural selection. ... Eliminating God from science made
room for strictly scientific explanations of all natural phenomena; it gave rise to positivism; it produced a
powerful intellectual and spiritual revolution, the effects of which have lasted to this day." (Mayr, E.W,
"Darwin's Influence on Modern Thought," September 23, 1999, lecture in Stockholm on receiving the
Crafoord Prize from the Royal Swedish Academy of Science, Scientific American, Vol. 283, No. 1, pp.67-71,
July 2000, pp.67-69)
8/03/03
"After this step-wise elimination, only one possibility remains: the Darwinian theory of natural selection,
whether or not coupled with Mendelism, is false. I have already shown that the arguments advanced by the
early champions were not very compelling, and that there are now considerable numbers of empirical facts
which do not fit with the theory. Hence, to all intents and purposes the theory has been falsified, so why
has it not been abandoned? I think the answer to this question is that current Evolutionists follow Darwin's
example - they refuse to accept falsifying evidence. We have already seen how Darwin supplemented
natural selection with three other mechanisms to account for evolution, and furthermore invented several ad
hoe hypotheses to circumvent the deplorable fact that the testimony of Nature does not accord with his
theory. This expedient might work reasonably well with only one person involved, but reflecting on the case
of Darwin versus Wallace, we realise that already with two persons the situation becomes complicated. And
today the modern synthesis - neo Darwinism - is not a theory, but a range of opinions which, each in its own
way, tries to overcome the difficulties presented by the world of facts." (Løvtrup, S., "Darwinism: The
Refutation of a Myth," Croom Helm: London, 1987, p.352)
9/03/03
"Given the fact of evolution, one would expect the fossils to document a gradual steady change from
ancestral forms to the descendants. But this is not what the paleontologist finds. Instead, he or she finds
gaps in just about every phyletic series. New types often appear quite suddenly, and their immediate
ancestors are absent in the earlier geological strata. The discovery of unbroken series of species changing
gradually into descending species is very rare. Indeed the fossil record is one of discontinuities, seemingly
documenting jumps (saltations) from one type of organism to a different type. This raises a puzzling
question. Why does the fossil record fail to reflect the gradual change one would expect from evolution?"
(Mayr, E.W, "What Evolution Is," Basic Books: New York, 2001, p.14)
9/03/03
"The second use of the circumstantial ad hominem charges one's adversaries with being so prejudiced that
their alleged reasons are mere rationalizations of conclusions dictated by self-interest. And that is certainly
to abuse them. This particular kind of ad hominem is sometimes called `poisoning the well,' for obvious
reasons." (Copi I.M., Introduction to Logic," [1953], Macmillan: New York, Seventh Edition, 1986, pp.93-94)
10/03/03
"In fact, as Descartes himself quite correctly observed, language is a species-specific human possession,
and even at low levels of intelligence, at pathological levels, we find a command of language that is totally
unattainable by an ape that may, in other respects. surpass a human imbecile in problem-solving ability and
other adaptive behavior." (Chomsky N., "Language and Mind," [1968], Harcourt Brace Jovanovich: New
York, 1972, Enlarged Edition, p.10)
10/03/03
"Old Testament Evidence for an Old Earth. Turning away from general revelation, let us look at special
revelation. If an earth of great age is mandated by the evidence from nature, then the inspired Scriptures
ought to agree. Rest assured, they do. In Job 15: 1, Eliphaz asked Job, "Wast thou made before the hills?"
Does it seem reasonable that Eliphaz would have used this question of digging sarcasm had he thought the
age of the hills and the age of man were virtually the same, varying by a scant five days? The intent of
Eliphaz in Job is confirmed by Habakkuk 3:6. The mountains are described as "everlasting," the hills are
"perpetual." The Hebrew words 'ad and 'owlam mean "long duration" "ancient," "forever," and "continuous
existence." Does the Bible comment on the earth-age dispute? Consider Ecclesiastes 1: 10: "Is there any
thing whereof it may be said, See, this is new? it hath been already of old time, which was before us." Could
"any thing" include an earth, for example? (Fischer D.*, "The Origins Solution: An Answer in the Creation-
Evolution Debate," Fairway Press: Lima OH, 1996, pp.81-82)
10/03/03
"Many have come to believe that interpreting those creative days as long periods is a relatively modern
phenomenon dictated by the recent findings of science, i.e. sedimentation rates, radioactive decay rates, a
vast and expanding universe, and so forth. But such is not the case. Some of the early church fathers took
their cues from Scripture alone without the benefit of a wealth of mitigating evidence from nature. Irenaeus,
Origen, Basil, Augustine, and Thomas Aquinas, to name a few, argued that the days of creation must have
been long periods of time solely from their understanding of the biblical text." (Ross H.N.*, "The Fingerprint
of God," Promise Publishing Co: Orange CA, 1989, p.141)" (Fischer D.*, "The Origins Solution: An Answer
in the Creation-Evolution Debate," Fairway Press: Lima OH, 1996, pp.148,162n)
11/03/03
"In fact, the processes by which the human mind achieved its present stage of complexity and its particular
form of innate organization are a total mystery, as much so as the analogous questions about the physical or
mental organization of any other complex organism. It is perfectly safe to attribute this development to
`natural selection,' so long as we realize that there is no substance to this assertion, that it amounts to
nothing more than a belief that there is some naturalistic explanation for these phenomena."
(Chomsky N., "Language and Mind," [1968], Harcourt Brace Jovanovich: New York, 1972, Enlarged Edition,
p.97)
11/03/03
"min. Kind. The word min occurs in thirty-one passages (chiefly Gen 1, 6, 7; Lev 11; Deut 14),
thirty of which belong to Moses' Pentateuch. The other one is Ezk 47:10. The etymology of min
cannot be established with certainty. ... Some have argued that when God created min, he thereby
fixed the `species.' This is a gratuitous assumption because a link between the word min with the
biologist's descriptive term species cannot be substantiated, and because there are as many definitions of
species as there are biologists. In light of the distinctions made in Gen 1, such as the distinction between
herbs and grasses which are, however, members of the same class (Angiosperms), it is possible that in some
cases the biblical term min may indicate a broader group, such as an order. Elsewhere, in Lev 11:14,
15, 16, 19, 22 (four times), min appears consistently as equivalent to nothing broader than genus.
However, Lev 11:4 `the falcon after its kind,' and 11:16 `the hawk after its kind,' refer to divisions within the
order Falconiformes, yet both have subdivisions called min. Likewise, as Payne points out, the
locust, bald locust, cricket, and grasshopper all belong to the order Orthoptera and the locust, bald locust,
and grasshopper belong to the family Acridiidae, but again each has its subdivisions called min
(genus?). God created the basic forms of life called min which can be classified according to modern
biologists and zoologists as sometimes species, sometimes genus, sometimes family or order." (Kaiser
W.C.*, "min. Kind," in Harris R.L., Archer G.L. & Waltke B.K., eds, "Theological Wordbook of the
Old Testament," [1980], Moody Press: Chicago IL, 1992, Twelfth Printing, Vol. I, pp.503-504)
12/03/03
"Chinese Water Torture. As its name implies, this involves getting your way by a persistence reminiscent of
the drip, drip, drip of the fabled Chinese torture. Children are the acknowledged past masters of this
technique and every parent will shamefacedly admit to having given in as a result of persistent and
apparently never-ending nagging. No amount of patient reasoning will prevail against the child who whines
incessantly, 'But I want an ice cream!' However, adults do it too. Most grown-up people find it a little
undignified to go on and on trying to get their own way in the face of determined opposition. But it is just
this squeamishness that makes Chinese Waver Torture such a devastatingly effective technique. Those
who adopt it have the single-mindedness not to care: what other people think of them. All they want is to
win the argument. ... The Chinese Water Torture, as used by adults, has a number of distinct variations. One
involves a single marathon argument in which you try simply to outlast your opponent. There is more than
one way to do this. In the first you follow the advice of Robert Owen (the Welsh educational and social
reformer): 'Never argue, just repeat your assertion'. This, however, may become tedious and look as if you
lack invention. The second, more difficult method is to filibuster until your opponent gets fed up. This
requires considerable powers art oratory and a sound knowledge of your subject. There is a third way that
has enjoyed considerable success. In this you do not try to argue with your opponent over the issues that
actually divide you. Instead you digress endlessly and talk about a whole range of subjects, the duller the
better, that have little or nothing to do with the subject under discussion. With luck your opponent
eventually gives up and leaves you victorious." (Allen R., "How To Win Arguments: The Complete Guide
To Coming Out On Top," Thorsons: London, 1996, pp.47-48)
12/03/03
"But of course the naturalists do not leave theistic enclaves alone nor should they. A naturalistic
government that regulates everything else does not hesitate to reward theistic educational institutions with
their own tax money if they agree to accept "diversity" standards. Secular academic societies
understandably withhold their approval from faculties that do not meet secular standards of rationality.
Seminarians trained in naturalistic thinking enter the ministry in droves with the mission of saving
Christianity by leading it into an accommodation with modernism. Granted the metaphysical assumptions,
none of this is in any way reprehensible." (Johnson P.E.*, "Reason in the Balance: The Case Against
Naturalism in Science, Law and Education," InterVarsity Press: Downers Grove IL, 1995, p.203)
12/03/03
"No matter how the logic of natural selection is presented, it is a blockbuster of an idea, and this was
apparent to many people as soon as they read On the Origin of Species, which quickly became a
best-seller. If the concept is valid, it means that humans and all other living things exist to reproduce; this is
the biological significance of life. Therefore, an understanding of Darwinian theory offers a worldview of
animal behavior, one that shapes the kind of hypotheses that we are likely to try to test. ... Theory
shapes our hypotheses. Persons who use Darwinian (individual selection) theory develop different kinds of
ultimate hypotheses than those who rely on the theory of evolution by group selection." (Alcock J.,
"Animal Behavior: An Evolutionary Approach," Sinauer Associates: Sunderland MA, Fifth Edition, 1993,
pp.9-10. Emphasis in original)
12/03/03
"Biochemists and biologists who adhere blindly to the Darwinism theory search for results that will be in
agreement with their theories and consequently orient their research in a given direction, whether it be in the
field of ecology, ethology, sociology, demography (dynamics of populations), genetics (so-called
evolutionary genetics), or paleontology. This intrusion of theories has unfortunate results: it deprives
observations and experiments of their objectivity, makes them biased, and, moreover, creates false Problems.
... Assuming that the Darwinian hypothesis is correct, they interpret fossil data according to it; it is only
logical that they should confirm it: the premises imply the conclusions. The error in method is obvious."
(Grasse P.-P., "Evolution of Living Organisms: Evidence for a New Theory of Transformation," Academic
Press: New York NY, 1977, p.7)
13/03/03
"It is an interesting question whether the functioning and evolution of human mentality can be
accommodated within the framework of physical explanation, as presently conceived, or whether there are
new principles, now unknown, that must be invoked, perhaps principles that emerge only at higher levels of
organization than can now be submitted to physical investigation. We can, however, be fairly sure that there
will be a physical explanation for the phenomena in question, if they can be explained at all, for an
uninteresting terminological reason, namely that the concept of `physical explanation' will no doubt be
extended to incorporate what ever is discovered in this domain, exactly as it was extended to accommodate
gravitational and electromagnetic force, massless particles, and numerous other entities and processes that
would have offended the common sense of earlier generations." (Chomsky N., "Language and Mind,"
[1968], Harcourt Brace Jovanovich: New York, 1972, Enlarged Edition, p.98)
13/03/03
"It is sometimes maintained that the argumentum ad hominem (abusive) is not fallacious when used in a
court of law in an attempt to impeach the testimony of a witness. True enough, doubt can be cast upon a
witness's testimony if it can be shown that that witness is a chronic liar and perjurer. Where that can be
shown, it certainly reduces the credibility of the testimony offered." (Copi I.M., Introduction to Logic,"
[1953], Macmillan Publishing Co: New York NY, Seventh Edition, 1986, p.94)
14/03/03
"There are, it is true, a few references to Malthus in the trial essays before the Origin, but not to the
exclusion of other workers such as de Candolle. Oddly enough, in confiding his great secret to a few of his
intimates, Darwin seems to have placed little emphasis upon Malthus. One reads with surprise a letter from
Hooker to Darwin written in January 1863. `Did you ever read that painful book, Malthus on Population?'
Hooker writes. `I did the other day and was painfully impressed by it.' If one turns back to Darwin's letters of
the 1840s, one gets the same impression of neglect. Though Darwin wrote often to Hooker, Gray and Jenyns
about his work, and about the struggle for existence, Malthus remains unmentioned. In fact, the indices to
the first three of the five volumes of Darwin's published letters record no reference aside from the single
remark in Darwin's autobiography; and the following two volumes contain only three brief references, two of
which concern letters to Alfred Russel Wallace." (Eiseley L.C., "Charles Darwin, Edward Blyth, and the
Theory of Natural Selection," in "Darwin and the Mysterious Mr. X," E.P. Dutton: New York NY, 1979, p.67)
15/03/03
"A second obstacle to a complete acceptance of Darwin's statement lies in an unnoted half-discrepancy of
the Autobiography itself. Darwin says he read Malthus in October 1838 and at this point glimpsed how the
principle of artificial selection could be transformed into natural selection in wild nature. Yet farther on in
Darwin's own reminiscences (p. 127) he tells us that he was studying the cross-fertilization of flowers with
an eye to the species problem as early as the summer of 1838. As I noted (pp. 64) this same interest
in the conservative aspects of intercrossing is expressed by Blyth. It seems a little unlikely that if Darwin
first grasped the Malthusian principle in the fall of 1838 he would have been so intensively occupied with
the conservative aspects of crossing in the summer of the same year unless his thought on natural selection
was already well advanced. Rather it suggests, once more, that Darwin was engaged in seeking a way
through this obstacle to divergence observed by Blyth and of which Darwin was already aware through a
perusal of Blyth's paper." (Eiseley L.C., "Charles Darwin, Edward Blyth, and the Theory of Natural
Selection," in "Darwin and the Mysterious Mr. X," E.P. Dutton: New York NY, 1979, pp.242-243n. Emphasis
in original).
15/03/03
"Because of the enormous prestige of Darwin, as well as this very elusive quality of a simple idea, the
discovery that Blyth had written upon natural selection in 1835 fell upon deaf ears. No one, it appears,
thought of actually examining Darwin's volumes with Blyth in mind. The present writer sought to do so for
just one reason: I failed to comprehend how Charles Darwin could have been unacquainted with the
periodical in which Blyth published. It was one of the leading zoological journals of the day. Darwin's
friends, Henslow, Jenyns, Lyell, had all appeared in its pages. To assume that a man of Darwin's `prodigious
memory and power of abstraction' was unacquainted with writings on the species problem in so prominent
an organ as The Magazine of Natural History in the period from 1835 to 1837 seemed illogical in the
extreme." (Eiseley L.C., "Charles Darwin, Edward Blyth, and the Theory of Natural Selection," in "Darwin
and the Mysterious Mr. X," E.P. Dutton: New York NY, 1979, p.50)
16/03/03
"Contrary to what is commonly believed in liberal and neo-orthodox circles, there is a long tradition in the
church that represents the teaching of Scripture as being without error. References to the Scriptures as
inerrabilis are to be found in Augustine, Aquinas and Duns Scotus. The adjective infallibilis was applied to
Scripture by John Wycliffe and Jean de Gerson. Luther and Calvin described the Bible as being infallible and
without error. Calvin referred to the Bible as `the unerring rule' for faith and practice. The word inerrancy first
became current in English in the middle and later nineteenth century. it was first generally used by Roman
Catholics and then by conservative Presbyterians. The paramount question is whether the Bible itself
teaches its own inerrancy. A second critical question is whether those who employ this terminology always
mean the same thing. The truthfulness of Scripture is indeed espoused by the prophets and apostles, but it
must be kept in mind that they were using `truth' and `truthfulness' in the Hebraic sense of faithfulness and
veracity rather than precision and absolute factual accuracy, as in our modern empirical milieu." (Bloesch
D.G.*, "Holy Scripture Revelation, Inspiration & Interpretation", Intervarsity Press: Downers Grove IL, 1994,
pp.33-34)
16/03/03
"Ignoring these multifarious possibilities, conventional iconography has fastened upon a primary model, the
"cone of increasing diversity," an upside-down Christmas tree. Life begins with the restricted and simple,
and progresses ever upward to more and more and, by implication, better and better. ... The stem splits to a
few basic stocks; none becomes extinct; and each diversifies further, into a continually increasing number of
subgroups. ... All these trees show the same pattern: branches grow ever upward and outward, splitting
from time to time. ... Evolution unfolds as though the tree were growing up a funnel, always filling the
continually expanding cone of possibilities. ... I know no greater challenge to the iconography of the cone-
and hence no more important case for a fundamentally revised view of life-than the radical reconstructions
of Burgess anatomy presented by Whittington and his colleagues. They have ... turned the traditional
interpretation on its head. By recognizing so many unique anatomies in the Burgess, and by showing that
familiar groups were then experimenting with designs so far beyond the modern range, they have inverted
the cone. The sweep of anatomical variety reached a maximum right after the initial diversification of
multicellular animals. The later history of life proceeded by elimination, not expansion. The current earth may
hold more species than ever before, but most are iterations upon a few basic anatomical designs. ... In fact,
the probable increase in number of species through time merely underscores the puzzle and paradox.
Compared with the Burgess seas, today's oceans contain many more species based upon many fewer
anatomical plans. ... The maximum range of anatomical possibilities arises with the first rush of
diversification. Later history is a tale of restriction, as most of these early experiments succumb and life
settles down to generating endless variants upon a few surviving models." (Gould, S.J., "Wonderful Life:
The Burgess Shale and the Nature of History," [1989], Penguin: London, 1991, reprint, pp.38-39,46-47)
16/03/03
"Most of the animal phyla that are represented in the fossil record first appear, 'fully formed', in the
Cambrian, some 550 million years ago. These include such advanced, anatomically complex types as
trilobites, echinoderms, brachiopods and molluscs." (Barnes R.S.K., Calow P., Olive P.J.W. & Golding D.W.,
"The Invertebrates: A New Synthesis," [1988], Blackwell Science: Oxford UK, Second Edition, 1993,
Reprinted 1995, p.10)
16/03/03
"Three mechanisms are supposed to prevent behavior that can lead to fraud and compromise in scientific
research. The first is the peer review system, by which committees of specialists in a field determine the merit
of the individual proposals submitted for funding. The second is the referee system, by which scientific
papers are sent out for review to qualified reviewers who recommend whether the papers should be
published, changed, or rejected. The third mechanism is the replication of experiments. In theory, other
scientists attempt the same experiment; if they cannot replicate the results, the claimed result is dismissed.
Replication of experiments, however, rarely takes place; there is almost no money available for it, or in it.
Why should peer reviewers allocate some of the limited funds to duplicate what has already been done?
Also, a scientist who simply replicates other researchers' results would soon be labeled a hack and wouldn't
get further funding. Instead, rival scientists try to establish their reputations by extending the results in
some way. ... Grant peer review, journal peer review, and experiment replication are supposed to make
science self-correcting. But Impure Science illustrates that preeminent people involved in science are
repeatedly defeating these mechanisms. If science is at all self-correcting in the United States, it is despite
the efforts of some of these powerful individuals, not because of their efforts." (Bell R.I., "Impure Science:
Fraud, Compromise and Political Influence in Scientific Research," John Wiley & Sons: New York NY, 1992,
p.xiv)
17/03/03
"But in the final analysis, the answer to the question of human descent always depends upon
preconceptions about the way this evolution occurred. For example, no scientist could logically dispute the
proposition that man, without having been involved in any act of divine creation, evolved from some ape-
like creature in a very short space of time speaking in geological terms - without leaving any fossil traces of
the steps of the transformation. As I have already implied, students of fossil primates have not been
distinguished for caution when working within the logical constraints of their subject. The record is so
astonishing that it is legitimate to ask whether much science is yet to be found in this field at all. The story
of the Piltdown Man hoax provides a pretty good answer." (Zuckerman S. "Beyond the Ivory Tower: The
Frontiers of Public and Private Science," Weidenfeld & Nicolson: London, 1970, p.64)
18/03/03
"Daniel Koshland, Editor of Science, thinks fraud in science is rare. He stated in an editorial that `99.9999%'
of scientific papers `are accurate and truthful.' William Broad and Nicholas Wade, the authors of a widely
discussed book on science fraud, take the opposite view. `We would expect that for every case of major
fraud that comes to light, a hundred or so go undetected. For each major fraud, perhaps a thousand minor
fakeries are perpetrated.' ... The evidence suggests, however, that the fraud cases that come to light are but a
small fraction of the whole. A study at a major university showed that of the 32% of researchers who
suspected that a colleague had falsified data, 54% did not report it or try to verify their suspicions." (Bell
R.I., "Impure Science: Fraud, Compromise and Political Influence in Scientific Research," John Wiley &
Sons: New York NY, 1992, p.xii)
18/03/03
"Vilenkin, indeed, takes things a step further than Tryon did in 1973. Tryon talked about a `vacuum
fluctuation,' implying that some form of space-time metric existed before the Universe came into being; but
Vilenkin is trying to develop a model in which space, time, and matter are all created out of literally nothing
at all, as a quantum fluctuation of nothing. `The concept of the universe being created from nothing is a
crazy one,' Vilenkin says in one of his papers (in Physics Letters, Volume 117B, November 4, 1982, page 26),
but he goes on to show how it is mathematically equivalent to the creation of an electron-positron pair that
then annihilate each other, and this is in turn equivalent to one electron being created out of nothing,
traveling forward in time for a while, then turning around and traveling backward in time to meet up with its
own creation. In this and other recent papers, Vilenkin puts a lot of respectable mathematical icing onto the
basic cake baked up by Tryon, in more speculative form, in the early 1970s." (Gribbin J., "In Search of the
Big Bang: Quantum Physics and Cosmology," Heinemann: London, 1986, pp.375-376)
18/03/03
"Doves waste no time fighting, and they run no risks. If two doves both need a piece of food or territory
then, the theory is, they share the goods equitably. Game theory supposes that each action has some
attendant advantages, which can be quantified, and some attendant disadvantages, which can also be
quantified. Game theory calculations show that to be a dove in an all-dove society is the best possible way
to be. Everyone gains, and the advantage to the society as a whole - measured as individual gain X number
in the society - is maximal. Jesus Christ advocated universal dovishness in the Sermon on the Mount, but
Peter later took him to task: `"Lord, how oft shall my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? till seven
times?" Jesus said unto him, I say not unto thee, Until seven times; but, Until seventy times seven."'
(Matthew, 18:21-22.) From this, Christ emerges as an excellent game theorist. ... Note, too, that if you add up
all the advantage points of all the hawks and doves in the evolutionarily stable society, the total is less than
it would be in an all-dove society. Note indeed that neither the hawks nor the doves in the ESS society do as
well as doves would do in an all-dove society. This again runs absolutely counter to the predictions of
group selection. But then, the predictions of game theory, based on the selfish gene, are more robust.
Perverse though it may seem, a society in which everyone loses to some extent, and the society as a whole
loses quite a lot, is more stable than one in which the society as a whole maximises its advantage. Again we
see that Christ was an excellent games theory theoretician." (Tudge C., "The Engineer in the Garden:
Genetics: From the Idea of Heredity to the Creation of Life." [1993], Pimlico: London, 1995, reprint, pp.123-
124)
18/03/03
"During the past few years, the most exciting area in science has been in this overlapping area between
high-energy physics and astronomy. The frontier of knowledge of the early universe has been pushed back
to somewhere between 10^-35 and 10^-43 second of the Big Bang-an interval so short that our concept of
time itself may have to be redefined before we go any further. This synthesis has been so successful that
theorists are now engaged in an attempt to push the frontier all the way back to the moment of creation
itself, and a few of the more audacious investigators are going further and asking the ultimate question:
Why does the universe exist at all?" (Trefil J.S., "The Moment of Creation: Big Bang Physics From Before
the First Millisecond to the Present Universe," Charles Scribner's Sons: New York NY, 1983, pp.2-3).
18/03/03
"EUGENICS ... The word (for which he at one time used `viriculture") was coined by Francis Galton (1822-
1911), who in 1908 introduced the notion in the following terms: `Man is gifted with pity and other kindly
feelings; he has also the power of preventing many kinds of suffering. I conceive it to fall well within his
province to replace Natural Selection by other processes that are more merciful and not less effective. This
is precisely the aim of eugenics.' These words, if murmured while gazing at a photograph of Galton in his
prime-a benevolent-looking gentleman with the air of an elderly London clubman-might create the
impression that Galton, deep at heart, was a reasonable and kindly scholar working to spare mankind the
cutting edge of natural selection. Any such interpretation would be wide of the mark indeed: Galton
envisaged the development of a strong `caste sense' among the naturally gifted members of each social
class. These, the genetic elite, would have the biggest say in legislation and, where called for, the first claim
upon charity. Galton wrote: `I do not see why any insolence of caste should prevent the gifted class, when
they had the power, from treating their compatriots with all kindness, so long as they maintained celibacy.
But if these continued to procreate children inferior in moral, intellectual and physical qualities, it is easy to
believe the time may come when such persons would be considered as enemies to the State, and to have
forfeited all claims to kindness' (Fraser's Magazine 7 [1873]). So much for all that fine talk about man's being
`gifted with pity and other kindly feelings.' Galton's is the morality of the gas chamber." (Medawar, P.B. &
Medawar J.S., "Eugenics," in "Aristotle to Zoos: A Philosophical Dictionary of Biology," Harvard
University Press: Cambridge MA, 1983, pp.86-87)
18/03/03
"At this time [1873], Francis Galton, Darwin's second cousin, was strongly advocating a policy of eugenics
and had published an article in Fraser's Magazine entitled 'Hereditary Improvement'. What he proposed was
to improve the human species by means of differential breeding: 'a sentiment of caste among those who are
naturally gifted' should be built up and a policy adopted to give them various social preferences. In addition,
a society should be founded to keep a register for breeding purposes. In his reply to Galton's letter, Darwin
points out a number of practical difficulties, of which the greatest, he thought, 'would be in deciding who
deserved to be on the register; ... Though I see so much difficulty,' he concludes, 'the object is a grand one;
... yet I fear [it is] utopian.'" (Darwin, C.R., letter to F. Galton, January 4, 1873, in Darwin F. & Seward A.C.,
eds., "More Letters of Charles Darwin: A Record of His Work in a Series of Hitherto Unpublished Papers,"
John Murray: London, 1903, Vol. II, p.43, in Bowlby J., "Charles Darwin: A New Life," [1990], 1992, W.W.
Norton & Co: New York, reprint, pp.415-416)
19/03/03
"Many years ago the great Italian physicist Enrico Fermi suggested that if intelligent life was common in the
universe, then the Earth would have been colonized by aliens: 'If they existed, they would be here.' The
Earth is much younger than the universe, so if alien civilizations can arise, many will have done so billions of
years ago, giving them plenty of time to get here. As there is no reliable evidence that alien beings have
even visited the Earth, let alone colonized it, during its long 4 billion-year history, Fermi concludes that we
are alone in the universe. According to Tipler, this line of reasoning did not originate with Fermi but can be
traced back at least two centuries. A common counter-argument is that Fermi attributes human motivations
such as curiosity, and the desire for exploration and colonization, to unknown alien beings. How can we be
sure that they will share our passion for multiplying and spreading aggressively to all available habitats?
However, it needs only one such aggressively colonizing community in the galaxy for the more passive and
sedentary ones to be 'taken over'. If, as SETI enthusiasts claim, life on Earth is typical, it is unreasonable to
suppose that human intelligence is unique in the above respects but not in others." (Davies P.C.W., "Are
We Alone?: Philosophical Implications of the Discovery of Extraterrestrial Life," Penguin: London, 1995,
p.45)
19/03/03
"In the next chapter of the adaptationists' story, the fruit of these chance alliances, the internally elaborate
eukaryotic cells, diversified through random variation and selection, developing various specialties. Some
were adept at using their cilia for locomotion, others for sensing the existence of harmful chemicals, others
for responding to light. And then these eukaryotes formed alliances of their own. A light-seeking eukaryote
that happened to stick to a eukaryote with a swiftly lashing tail would beat its competitors in the race to find
the brightest sunlight, the nectar for its chloroplasts. And so is born a primitive organism. With more feats
of imagination one can come up with a story of how more complex animals with kidney cells, liver cells, and
brain cells came to be. The stories are driven by a compelling logic. But at every step of the process, a great
deal of luck is involved. To the believers in laws of complexity, these rather ad hoc explanations begin to
sound like Rudyard Kipling's Just So Stories. How the Rhinoceros Got His Skin, How the Tiger Got His
Stripes. How the Algae Got Its Chloroplasts, How the Sperm Cell Got Its Tail. When they hear their
colleagues straining perhaps a little too mightily to squeeze every thing into the Darwinian framework, some
biologists call the result an evolutionary Just So story: a compelling tale based on scant evidence, which
sometimes has the facile ring of reasoning after the fact. Could the complexity we see around us come from
nothing more than one chance event after another, selected by the filter of evolution? This strikes some
skeptics as an awfully long string of `too good to be true's.'" (Johnson G., "Fire in the Mind: Science, Faith,
and the Search for Order," [1995], Penguin Books: London, 1997, pp.236-237)
22/03/03
"The Lausanne Covenant gives this potent witness: `We affirm the divine inspiration, truthfulness and
authority of both Old and New Testament Scriptures in their entirety as the only written word of God,
without error in all that it affirms, and the only infallible rule of faith and practice.' We can heartily assent to
this statement but with the proviso that the infallible truth of Scripture is not something self-evident. The
doctrine or message of Scripture, which alone is infallible and inerrant, is hidden in the historical and cultural
witness of the biblical writers. They did not err in what they proclaimed, but this does not mean that they
were faultless in their recording of historical data or in their world view, which is now outdated. The
Scriptures are entirely trustworthy in what they purport to give us, but this trust worthiness is a property
not simply of the letter of the Bible but of the Spirit, the primary author of the Scripture. Apart from the work
of the Spirit, the inherent, transcendent truth of the Scripture cannot be perceived. This is why our ultimate
criterion is not the Scripture in and of itself but the Word and the Spirit, the Scripture illumined by the
Spirit." (Bloesch D.G.*, "Essentials of Evangelical Theology," HarperCollins: San Francisco CA, 1982, Vol. 1,
reprint, p.65)
23/03/03
"Further evidence of genetic linkage between man and other higher primates can be derived from an
endogenous retroviral sequence imbedded in our DNA that is also found at the same point in the DNA of
chimpanzees [Bonner T.I., O'Connell C. & Cohen M., `Cloned Endogenous Retroviral Sequences from
Human DNA,' Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Vol. 79, 1982, pp.4709-4713.
http://www.pnas.org/cgi/content/abstract/79/15/4709]. Retroviruses are a particular class of virus, which
includes the HIV virus that causes AIDS, for example. These viral agents have the ability to annex
themselves directly into a DNA sequence, and an ancient virus apparently did. The entire genetic code was
then passed to future generations, including the retroviral sequence. This retroviral sequence has no
activator mechanism, and thus is harmless, but here is the point. Not only do man and chimpanzee have the
same number of muscles, bones and teeth, our DNA has a correlation of nearly 99%. But in addition, an
identical alien viral sequence can be found at the same locus point on both human and chimp DNA. A
rational explanation is that the viral sequence became attached to the DNA of a common precursor. It has
remained in the DNA, and has been copied in both man and chimp for millions of years. This additional
confirming data for relatedness to an animal that already looks to be a close relative anyway, makes a strong
case for a brachiating forbear on our family tree. The theory that the highest primates, including man, are all
divergent twigs off a common branch has strong supporting evidence. Whether we like it or not, gorillas,
chimps, and man do not appear to be separately created entities." (Fischer D.*, "The Origins Solution: An
Answer in the Creation-Evolution Debate," Fairway Press: Lima OH, 1996, p.65)
24/03/03
"The two 'tablets' of the beginning each teach in their own way the solidarity of mankind with the animals.
Mankind arrives on the sixth day, as do all the various animals, and God appoints their food to all at the
same time." In the paradise narrative, God models or fashions from the ground both the man and the animals
that will pass by before him (2:7, 19). Without going as far as St Francis of Assisi in calling the beasts our
brothers, the Bible informs mankind of his links with the animal kingdom." (Blocher H.*, "In The Beginning:
The Opening Chapters of Genesis," [1979], InterVarsity Press: Leicester UK, 1984, pp.82-83)
25/03/03
"Any principal criticism of current thoughts on evolutionary theory is directed to the strong use of the
notion of `randomness' in selection. The process of speciation by a mechanism of random variation of
properties in offspring is usually too imprecisely defined to be tested. When it is precisely defined it is
highly implausible." (Eden, M., "Inadequacies of Neo-Darwinian Evolution as a Scientific Theory," in
Moorhead, P.S. & Kaplan, M.M., ed., "Mathematical Challenges to the Neo-Darwinian Interpretation of
Evolution: A Symposium Held at the Wistar Institute of Anatomy and Biology, April 25 and 26, 1966," The
Wistar Institute Symposium Monograph Number 5, The Wistar Institute Press: Philadelphia PA, 1967, p.5)
25/03/03
"Sometimes anthropologists are asked whether it is true that primitive languages don't have a grammar. The
answer is that if there were any system of sounds that was grammarless, whatever else it might be, it
certainly wouldn't be a language. Grammar comprises the formal rules by which the meanings of sounds are
governed. The fact is that many `primitive' languages aren't any more primitive than most of the rest of the
culture; indeed, they are often a great deal more complex and more efficient than the languages of the so-
called higher civilizations." (Montagu A., "Man: His First Million Years," [1957], Mentor: New York, Revised
1958, Third Printing, 1960, p.90)
25/03/03
"For most biologists, Darwin's magnificent theory is enough to explain the stunning order and complexity of
the biological world. But even a few of Darwin's admirers feel a tug of dissatisfaction at the possibility that
the life we know lies at the end of such a long chain of contingencies-that, anywhere along the way, a
different roll of the Darwinian dice might have meant no Darwin, no theory of natural selection, no science at
all." (Johnson G., "Fire in the Mind: Science, Faith, and the Search for Order," [1995], Penguin Books:
London, 1997, p.263)
26/03/03
"Darwinism is so powerful in its ability to array the isolated facts of biology into a coherent whole that few
scientists have found reason to resist it. But one doesn't have to be a fundamentalist Christian to feel a
sense of disbelief at the idea that something as complex as a human is the result of a chain of accidents
stretching billions of years into the smoky past, that if a cosmic ray hadn't caused a point mutation in one of
our evolutionary ancestors, we and all our inventions-our glorious architectures and imaginary spacesmight
not be here at all." (Johnson G., "Fire in the Mind: Science, Faith, and the Search for Order," [1995], Penguin
Books: London, 1997, p.265)
27/03/03
"Putting together our [Progressive Creation] picture we have something like this: Almighty God is Creator,
World-Ground, and Omnipotent Sustainer. In His mind the entire plan of creation was formed with man as
the climax. Over the millions of years of geological history the earth is prepared for man's dwelling, or as it
has been put by others, the cosmos was pregnant with man. The vast forests grew and decayed for his coal,
that coal might appear a natural product and not an artificial insertion in Nature. The millions of sea life were
born and perished for his oil. The surface of the earth was weathered for his forests and valleys. From time
to time the great creative acts, de novo, took place. The complexity of animal forms increased. Finally, when
every river had cut its intended course, when every mountain was in its purposed place, when every animal
was on the earth according to blueprint, then he whom all creation anticipated is made, MAN, in whom alone
is the breath of God." (Ramm B.L.*, "The Christian View of Science and Scripture," [1955] Paternoster:
Exeter, Devon UK, 1967, reprint, p.155. Emphasis in original)
27/03/03
"And if diatoms prevailed by such good fortune, let us not forget a key reason behind the possibility of this
most immediate interaction between me as writer and you as reader. Dinosaurs and mammals had shared the
earth for more than 130 million years, fully double the subsequent period of mammalian success that led to
the possibility of Homo sapiens among some 4000 other living species in our mammalian clade. If the
data of Sheehan et al. (1991) hold, and dinosaurs did persist in respectable abundance right to the
moment of impact, then we may reasonably conjecture that, absent this ultimate random bolt from the blue,
dinosaurs would still dominate the habitats of large terrestrial vertebrates, and mammals would still be rat-
size creatures living in the ecological interstices of their world. In this most vitally personal of all cases, we
really should thank our lucky stars that, at least in one cogent interpretation, certain marks of our ancestral
incompetence-persistently small size in a dinosaurian world, for examplesuddenly turned into a crucial and
fortuitous advantage under the different rules of K-T impact, while the former source of triumph for
dinosaurs may have spelled their doom under these same newly imposed rules. To be sure, this speculative
scenario only references a particular event, and its much later impact upon the possibility of origin for one
odd species. Yes, of course, we seek general theory as the goal of science, not the explanation of such odd
particulars. But this tale, above all, happens to be our particular, and the most precious source of our
possibility." (Gould, S.J., "The Structure of Evolutionary Theory," Belknap: Cambridge MA, 2002, Fifth
printing, p.1320)
27/03/03
"Homo sapiens did not appear on the earth, just a geologic second ago, because evolutionary
theory predicts such an outcome based on themes of progress and increasing neural complexity. Humans
arose, rather, as a fortuitous and contingent outcome of thousands of linked events, any one of which could
have occurred differently and sent history on an alternative pathway that would not have led to
consciousness. To cite just four among a multitude: (1) If our inconspicuous and fragile lineage had not
been among the few survivors of the initial radiation of multicellular animal life in the Cambrian explosion 530
million years ago, then no vertebrates would have inhabited the earth at all. (Only one member of our
chordate phylum, the genus Pikaia, has been found among these earliest fossils. This small and simple
swimming creature, showing its allegiance to us by possessing a notochord, or dorsal stiffening rod, is
among the rarest fossils of the Burgess Shale, our best preserved Cambrian fauna.) (2) If a small and
unpromising group of lobe-finned fishes had not evolved fin bones with a strong central axis capable of
bearing weight on land, then vertebrates might never have become terrestrial. (3) If a large extraterrestrial
body had not struck the earth 65 million years ago, then dinosaurs would still be dominant and mammals
insignificant (the situation that had prevailed for 100 million years previously). (4) If a small lineage of
primates had not evolved upright posture on the drying African savannas just two to four million years ago,
then our ancestry might have ended in a line of apes that, like the chimpanzee and gorilla today, would have
become ecologically marginal and probably doomed to extinction despite their remarkable behavioral
complexity." (Gould, S.J., "The Evolution of Life on the Earth," Scientific American, Vol. 271, No. 4, October
1994, pp.63-69, p.64)
27/03/03
"About sixty million years ago the dinosaurs, which at that time were the dominant vertebrates especially on
land, suddenly became extinct, together with a large number of other species of both animals and plants.
...Alvarez and Alvarez ... proposed that an asteroid, some six miles in diameter, hit the earth, producing a
tremendous cavity and scattering a large amount of material into the atmosphere which, spread by winds all
over the world, blocked out the sunlight for several years until at length even the finest dust particles had
time to settle. ... As a result of this massive loss of plant material the food chain was totally disrupted. This
would have been especially lethal to the larger animals at the top of the food chain. Thus, all the dinosaurs
became extinct except possibly a few small ones, the ancestors of the birds. The earliest mammals had
evolved about 200 million years ago, but at the time of the catastrophe they had not had a great deal of
success, probably because they were kept down by the dominant dinosaurs. These early mammals were
mainly small, nocturnal insectivores and might thus have survived the years of darkness. When the light
eventually returned, the mammals rapidly evolved to occupy all the various ecological niches vacated by the
now-extinct dinosaurs ...soon forming the many species whose descendants we see all around us today.
One branch, the primates, developed good color vision and an enlarged cerebral cortex, eventually
producing man. The key question is whether the dinosaurs, if they had been left undisturbed, would have
evolved any animal intelligent enough to develop science and technology. This we cannot answer with any
certainty, but one has a sneaking suspicion that the dinosaurs had specialized in the wrong direction. If so,
then the evolution of a higher intelligence on earth depended crucially on this very drastic jolt given to
evolution by the asteroid." (Crick, F.H.C., "Life Itself: Its Origin and Nature," Simon & Schuster: New York,
1981, pp.109-111. Ellipses mine)
27/03/03
"When the skies cleared after the impact, the Cretaceous period was over. The giants were gone. The long-
necked sauropods that converted whole forests into muscle and bone were extinct, along with
Tyrannosaurus rex and the other big meat-eating dinosaurs. Giant marine reptiles and spiralshelled
ammonites disappeared from the seas. After a few thousand years the plank ton in the oceans rebounded, as
did the plants on land. But the ecosystems of the early Tertiary period were bottom-heavy and top-light.
Once again, a mass extinction had cleared the way for a new burst of evolution: the age of dinosaurs was
followed by the age of mammals. "The death of the dinosaurs allowed mammals to evolve into many
ecological niches that were not available for them," says Ward. "It was the removal of the dinosaurs
through mass extinction that allowed so many lineages of mammals to come about through the evolutionary
process. In that sense, it's really a good thing. There would not be humans here but for that mass
extinction." (Zimmer, C., "Evolution: The Triumph of an Idea," HarperCollins: New York, 2001, p.165)
27/03/03
"The notion of species that come into being very quickly, and then appear to be relatively stable for long
periods, has an intuitive appeal to those who believe the earth was populated according to God's design.
But the new theories are intended only to explain how evolution came about-not to supplant it as a principle.
Says Harvard's Stephen Jay Gould, who along with Niles Eldredge of the American Museum of Natural
History proposed the punctuated-equilibria theory in 1972: `Evolution is a fact, like apples falling out of
trees.'" (Adler J. & Carey J., "Is Man a Subtle Accident?," Newsweek, November 3, 1980, pp.54-55, pp.54-55)
27/03/03
"Evolution is thus a plain fact, not a conjecture or assumption. It is very questionable whether the term
`evolutionary theory' should be used any longer. That evolution has occurred and takes place all the time is
a fact so overwhelmingly established that it has become irrational to call it a theory. To be sure, there are
particular evolutionary theories such as those of common descent, origin of life, gradualism, speciation, and
natural selection, but scientific arguments about conflicting theories concerning these topics do not in any
way affect the basic conclusion that evolution as such is a fact. It has taken place ever since the origin of
life." (Mayr, E.W, "What Evolution Is," Basic Books: New York, 2001, p.264)
27/03/03
"Furthermore, one must not forget that chance always plays a considerable role even at the second step of
evolution, that of survival and reproduction. And not all aspects of adaptedness are tested in every
generation. Or let us look at the 35 or so living phyla of animals. They are the survivors of the 60 or more
body plans that existed in the early Cambrian. When one studies their differences, one does not get the
impression that they are necessities. Many or even most of their unique characteristics may have had their
origin in a developmental accident that was tolerated by selection, while the seeming failure of those that
became extinct may have been the result of a chance event (like the Alvarez asteroid extinction event). S.J.
Gould (1989) made such contingencies a major theme in Wonderful Life, and I have come to the conclusion
that here he may be largely right." (Mayr, E.W, "What Evolution Is," Basic Books: New York, 2001, p.229)
27/03/03
"Like theories of cosmology, the theory of evolution cannot be tested with a controlled experiment. There is
no way, except in our imaginations and our computers, to rewind the tape and play it again. We are
confronted with a world, a fait accompli, and we must work backward, piecing together a story of how it
came to be." (Johnson G., "Fire in the Mind: Science, Faith, and the Search for Order," [1995], Penguin
Books: London, 1997, p.265)
27/03/03
"I further believe that the current version of the `modern synthesis' remains so unmoved by the data of
systematics, paleontology, and large scale ecology that we truly still face the very situation diagnosed by
historian F. J. Teggart in 1925 just as the synthesis was beginning to emerge through the labors of R.A.
Fisher, J.B.S. Haldane, and S. Wright: we still have a theory of evolution that is not directly addressed to the
actual events of the history of life."(Eldredge, N., "Unfinished Synthesis: Biological Hierarchies and Modern
Evolutionary Thought," [1985], Oxford University Press: New York, 1988, reprint, p.v)
27/03/03
"If one spends enough time around the Santa Fe Institute, it is not uncommon to find biologists who
consider strict Darwinism in much the same light as many psychologists consider strict Freudianism: less a
science than an ideology. At a conference on laws of complexity sponsored by the institute in the summer
of 1992, a British biologist named Brian Goodwin flatly declared that natural selection is not primarily
responsible for the order we see in the biological world." (Johnson G., "Fire in the Mind: Science, Faith, and
the Search for Order," [1995], Penguin Books: London, 1997, p.265)
28/03/03
"What shall we say of the eye? Is it conceivable that this transcendant organ with its power of adjusting its
focus to different distances & of letting in more or less light, - with its nearly perfect correction for chromatic
& spherical aberration, could have been formed by the accumulation, through natural selection, of
infinitesimally slight variations, each useful to its possessor. I confess that no language at first seems too
strong to condemn the absurdity of such a notion." (Darwin, C.R., in Stauffer R.C., ed., "Charles Darwin's
Natural Selection: Being the Second Part of His Big Species Book Written From 1856 to 1858," [1975],
Cambridge University Press: Cambridge UK, 1987, reprint, p.359)
29/03/03
"The question is often asked, Are we the only intelligent beings in this vast universe? If we want to find an
answer to this question, we must break the question down into a number of components. Where could life
exist? Only on planets, because suns are far too hot. Surely, many stars must have planets, but it is only in
the last 20 years that planets beyond the solar system were discovered. But so far all of them turned out to
be quite unsuitable for the origin and maintenance of life. The set of conditions found on the Earth (and
perhaps at one time also on Mars and Venus) that makes life possible is seemingly quite exceptional. Even
so, considering the high number of planets, some of them probably do have conditions suitable for the
origin of life. ... Therefore, it is quite conceivable that some primitive forms of life have repeatedly originated
on other planets. If such evolution was successful, it might ultimately result in bacterialike organisms. Alas,
the rutted road from bacteria to humans is long and difficult. Following the origin of life on Earth there were
nothing but prokaryotes for the next billion years, and highly intelligent life originated only about 300,000
years ago, in a single one of the more than one billion species that had arisen on Earth. These are indeed
long odds. Even if something parallel to the origin of human intelligence should indeed have happened
somewhere in the infinite universe, the chance that we would be able to communicate with it must be
considered as zero. Yes, for all practical purposes, man is alone." (Mayr, E.W, "What Evolution Is," Basic
Books: New York, 2001, p.263)
29/03/03
"Yet human language is absolutely distinct from any system of communication in other animals. That is
made most clear by comparison with other animal utterances, which most nearly resemble human speech and
are most often called `speech.' Nonhuman vocables are, in effect, interjections. They reflect the individual's
physical or, more frequently, emotional state. They do not, as true language does, name, discuss, abstract,
or symbolize. They are what the psychologists call affective; such purely affective so-called languages are
systems of emotional signals and not discourse. The difference between animal interjection and human
language is the difference between saying `Ouch!' and saying `Fire is hot.' That example shows that the non-
language of animal interjection is still present in man. In us it is in effect not a part of language, but the
negative of language, something we use in place of speech." (Simpson, G.G., "The Biological Nature of
Man," Science, Vol. 152, No. 3721, 22 April 1966, pp.472-478, p.476)
30/03/03
"Many other attempts have been made to determine the evolutionary origin of language, and all have failed.
... Moreover at the present time no languages are primitive in the sense of being significantly close to the
origin of language. Even the peoples with least complex cultures have highly sophisticated languages, with
complex grammar and large vocabularies, capable of naming and discussing anything that occurs in the
sphere occupied by their speakers. ... The oldest language that can reasonably be reconstructed is already
modern, sophisticated, complete from an evolutionary point of view." (Simpson, G.G., "The Biological
Nature of Man," Science, Vol. 152, No. 3721, 22 April 1966, pp.472-478, p.477)
31/03/03
"The second great achievement of the reptiles, also indispensable to full liberation from the water, was the
land egg. It had to give to the developing embryo all that the water had once provided; it had to be the river,
the lake, the sea in miniature; and to achieve this, the reptilian egg contains three sacs enclosed in
membranes, the whole enveloped by another membrane covered with a parchment-like shell. One of the sacs
is filled with a fluid by which the embryo is surrounded and protected, the second contains a supply of
food, and the third receives waste products. A fourth membrane, the chorion, encloses them all. With this
kind of egg, the vertebrates could at last spend their whole lives on dry land. It was a fundamental advance.
It began as a substitute for the ocean - or for the pond; but it was so much more efficient than either, and the
embryo was so much better protected and nourished than it ever had been, that a great economy in egg-
laying could be made. Female fishes shed millions of eggs into the sea, the human female releases one a
month, and the reptilian egg is the link between these extremes." (Vyvyan, J., "Sketch for a World-Picture: A
Study of Evolution," Michael Joseph: London, 1972, pp.111-112)
* Authors with an asterisk against their name are believed not to be evolutionists. However, lack of an
asterisk does not necessarily mean that an author is an evolutionist.
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Copyright © 2003-2008, by Stephen E. Jones. All rights reserved. These my quotes may be used
for non-commercial purposes only and may not be used in a book, ebook, CD, DVD, or any other
medium except the Internet, without my written permission. If used on the Internet, a link back
to this page would be appreciated.
Created: 2 January, 2003. Updated: 4 December, 2008.